Ghosting?

[forum8fox]

So who practices ghosting here? I've been trying my hardest to ghost everything I can but I still find sittuations that are a little tricky for what I know and the amount of time I have to figure it out or the amount of rigging I have on hand (webbing, chord etc.).

Anyone have good resources to direct me to so I can see alot of different methouds?

I wanted to ghost the last rap in hogwarts this weekend, we had 2 walmart special pot shots (duck taped stuff sacks with webbing, just incase we needed them for the supposed silo). I filled one to sit on to back up the burried deadman that was the existing anchor (it was mostly under water so we couldn't dig it up). We decided to see if the pot shot would hold in this area on it's own so I sat up a bit to give it room to catch but it never did so I sat on it and eased the weight onto the dead man while my friend Mark rapped.

I got the other pot shot and filled it with wet/damp sand as I was in a pot hole that had water receding in it. I only had 1 60M and about 20-30' of webbing left so I was short on supplies. I couldn't figure out how to get the pot shots to equally hold the weight while being able to pull seperately. I bailed on the plan to live another day and get home on time rapping off the dead man.

When I got down Mark brought to my attention I could have equalized them with the webbing, and used the extra 30+ meters to rig enough slack to pull them seperately. I would have prefered to use a pull line anyway so I didn't come up short on the ground. I never got to see if it would have even held weight, might have needed 3 pot shots.

If you equalize them do they twist up when you go to pull them down, and stop sliding (sliding X methoud of equalization) especially if you have 3 pot shots? your going to have to throw away the locker or rap ring when it hits the ground right from anything highter then say 20-30'?

I suppose you could just not use a ring or biner and the whole system would be free'd up when you pull the rope through where the carabiner should be in a sliding x setup. then you just have to replace the webbing which could be cheaper maybe, maybe not.

Also where can good info be attained about figuring out what constitutes the right amount of weight for different geometrical layouts? Aswell as what differnt geometric layouts can be used when dealing with pot shots/ sand bag's as retrievable anchors? What do you do when you have water thrown in the mix
Thanks

[ratagonia]

I should be putting up some tech tip stuff over the winter. Building anchors with Pot Shots takes quite a bit of practice to figure out how and when they work. In a wet pothole is one of the difficult situations.

1. You should use REAL Potshots (do I owe you some? send me your address again, please).

2. Use a block to equally load TWO potshots. Tie the tails off with slack between on the other side (the cleaning side), so you can pull them off the stack one by one.

3. If using a third potshot, stack it on top and don't block it into the rappel rope. Do tie it into the cleaning rope to clean first.

4. Really, a sandbag anchor needs to be well-tested before the last person launches on them. It helps to have two people just a little heavier than the anchor-maker-and-goer-last. One to test it (make adjustments), then one to final test it after adjustments (make more adjustments), then YOU!

5. Don't blow it. Better to get your rope stuck than to end up in a heap at the bottom of the drop.

6. Often, tension needs to be kept on the rappel rope to keep the lowest Pot Shot from backsliding into the pothole, while the top bags are pulled. Also pulling on the rappel side is often counter productive, until you are sure you are pulling ONLY on the last bag.

7. Do leave the tops of the bags open, so the sand can pour out before landing on your head. If you pull a fullish, tightly closed bag 40' down onto a slab or water, the Pot Shot will explode, blowing out the side seams. It is much harder to use without the sides sewn up.

Be careful out there - here's a quote from the great Walter Bonatti ==>