Multi-pitch Techniques to Prevent Accidents and Get Yourself Off the Wall

Multi-pitching brings climbers up to new heights, vistas, and experiences. But the higher we climb, the further we get from both the ground and simple rescues. That’s why it becomes even more important to avoid accidents and the need for a rescue on multi-pitch climbs.

Another reason to become more self-reliant on the wall? The 2026 federal budget cuts include a devastating $1.2 billion to National Park Service (NPS), which is expecting 1,500 staff cuts on top of last February’s 1,000. According to the National Park Conservation Association, the NPS has already lost 13% of its workforce since January. Amidst this and a hiring freeze, the parks are ordered to maintain hours, making avoiding rescues even more of an imperative for climbers exploring the many routes in national parks.

Let’s say you’re prepared with a helmet, food, drinks, headlamps, med kit, phone/satellite radio, and extra layers. That’s baseline—before your feet leave the ground, make sure you’re prepared for the what-ifs, too.

I’ve broken down a handful of skills to help you avoid multi-pitch mishaps and escape tricky situations, so you can live to climb with your partner again—and avoid a costly rescue, too. After you master these, I also recommend scouring the accident accounts from the American Alpine Club and the annual Accidents in North American Climbing for more invaluable learnings.

It all starts with a solid anchor

Say you’ve made it to the end of your rope, or a ledge to sit and belay from. Or you’ve arrived where the guidebook says you should stop. Or maybe you prematurely sewed up the crack and you only have three pieces of gear left on your harness for an anchor. No matter where or why you’re making an anchor, how you make it is critical.

Building your anchor so that it can withstand falls, the failure of an individual piece, and a cut strand of cordelette can be the difference between a snafu and a full-on situation. A solid anchor will also keep you organized and safe, helping you avoid rescues and escape a belay, if needed.

Unless you’re using a firmly rooted tree, large boulder, or for some reason a trusty car hitch, your anchor should be SERENE: Solid, Equalized, Redundant, and No Extension. Let’s break that down:

• Solid: Each anchor piece should be placed well and attached to something solid. Knock on rock to test it, inspect the cam lobes, and use your best judgment.
• Equalized: The anchor points should each be weighted equally to distribute the forces. Before tying a master knot, pull the cordelette, webbing, or rope in the direction of the belay to tension each anchor point equally.
• Redundant: If any piece fails, the other pieces should back it up.
• No Extension: An equalized master knot ensures that if a piece fails, the master point won’t extend and shock-load the remaining anchor points.

Untying your overhand or figure-eight master knot anchor can be a real bear with some good falls. Clipping a carabiner into the fold of the knot makes it easy to undo.

Belay from above, the better way

Belaying from above can seem obvious. You put your partner on belay through your belay loop as per usual and yell “On belay!” Your partner wipes the Reuben sandwich and chalk off their face and starts climbing, right?

But wait: If they fall in this position, you’ll be yanked downward into the wall. Redirecting off an anchor point from your harness is slightly better, but it puts a two-to-one force on the anchor point. With a big sudden fall, you can still be yanked into the wall, this time with upward force.

Instead, why not clip your belay device into the master point of the anchor? The force asserted on the anchor will now be one-to-one. If the climber falls, the belayer won’t be yanked into the wall. As a bonus, it’s easy to escape the belay in case of an accident, because the belay is already on the anchor. Plus, it’s a simple set-up and easy to simul-belay two followers.

Know how to escape the belay, if it comes to that

So your partner is stuck and needs your help. Hopefully, they just need you to bring Vaseline for the knee that they wedged in the crack and it’s not because they’re seriously injured. The only trouble is: You’re not following the advice outlined above, and you’re belaying them off your harness, not the anchor. So how do you escape the belay?

First, you need to go hands-free. While maintaining tension on the belay strand of the rope, pull a loop of rope through the carabiner attached to your belay device and tie a mule hitch, pushing a bite of rope through. With that tail, tie a simple overhand knot. Now you’re hands-free!

Now you need to set up the belay to replace yours. Take a cordelette and prussik onto the rope between your partner and your belay device. Connect the other end of the cordelette to your anchor with a munter hitch. Take the slack out, cinch it tight, and set the munter hitch up to lower. Tie off this munter with another mule hitch and overhand knot.

Relevant Read: 8 Essential Climbing Knots

Now that you have two systems rigged to belay your partner, you can undo the mule-overhand on your belay device. Keeping a tight handle on your brake, lower onto the prussiked cordelette. Once the cordelette engages, tie a munter-mule-overhand onto the anchor using the climbing rope. Now lower onto this from the cordelette’s munter. You have now escaped the belay!

Escaping the belay feels like a big production the first time. That’s why it’s an ideal skill to practice on a rafter at home, a tree in the university quad, or at the base of your local crag. It’s much easier to figure out in these settings, than when you’re high up and further into your adventure than you realized. Don’t wait until you encounter an emergency to perform a belay escape under time-pressure. It’s also a great reason to belay off an anchor in the first place, assuming you’re above pitch one.

Proper rope management is more important than you think

What’s worse than short-roping your bestie on lead? Short-roping them because you didn’t manage the rope properly. And now there’s a veritable pasta salad of rope four knots deep as your buddy’s struggling to clip at the crux. Rope management includes everything from neat stacking to proper belay and lead-end swaps. Practicing rope-handling when things are going smoothly builds habits that become critical when a storm rolls in, an emergency occurs, or a life’s on the line.

Stacking the rope while belaying from above is actually a solid personality test: Are you a loopy-sprawler or container-oriented? Here are two methods I recommend:

1. The Shoebox Rope Stacking Method

If you have a ledge the size of a shoebox or larger, the most straightforward method of organizing your rope is creating a pancake stack.

To keep it neat and avoid spilling over the edge and uncoiling down the cliff-face,      tamp the stack down periodically with a hand or foot. Also try to keep the pile small and organized.

Switching belays will be simple if you feed properly and carefully flip the pile. For fun, try stacking your sopping wet rope in the dark into an actual shoebox in under a minute.

2. The Curtain Drapes Rope Stacking Method

As you take in rope, create loops on both sides of your personal anchor tether (the clove-hitched rope or your personal anchor system). Alternate sides and start with long loops, gradually decreasing loop lengths as you stack further away from your harness. Take in the slack in this fashion before putting your partner on belay.

To switch the belay, flip the rope over onto your partner’s tether, so that the top is on the bottom. Alternatively, you can hang an alpine draw from an anchor point and stack the loops in the draw.

Get yourself back down with or without a belay device

It’s statistically improbable, but dropping a belay or ascent device happens. Being prepared to help yourself or your partner get up or down by other means can be the difference between shivering through the night waiting for help and getting back to camp in time for dinner. There are a few options, so have fun practicing!

1. The Buddy System

Rappel from one device. Start by extending your belay device, but ensure it’s still within reach. Both climbers will attach to it. The climber managing the rappel, the ropes, and the prussik backup attaches to the device with a longer tether; the other climber attaches via a short tether. This may be cozy and awkward to conduct, but it’s relatively quick and smooth to set up. It’s also great practice for rescue scenarios. At each rappel, you can alternate who acts as the rescuer managing the lower, and who plays the victim hanging limply just above them.

2. The Inchworm

Descend (or ascend) by using two prussiks with slings, one above the other. Weight the top prussik and pull down the bottom prussik. Weight the bottom prussik and pull down the top prussik. Repeat until you’ve figured out quantum physics, forgot how long you’ve been on this stretch of rope, or reach the ledge.

3. The Unorthodox Spare Carabiners

Both of these setups create enough friction to rappel safely, but you’ll still want to have a prussik back-up. And don’t forget any gear higher up—it’s much harder to ascend with this system.

• Three oval carabiners. Lace two oval carabiners in through a third outer carabiner, which is connected to your belay loop. Run the ropes through the outer carabiner, and thread through the two inner carabiners, then out the outer biner again.
• Three locking carabiners. Clip a locker to your belay loop and a second locker to the first. Push a bite of rope through the second locker. Clip the third locker through this bite of rope and the two strands of rope above.

Watch the author demonstrate rapping without a belay device and building a SERENE anchor

Core shots don’t have to stop you

When we climb multiple pitches, we drag and pull our ropes across more terrain, including sharp edges. Core shots happen. So how do we deal with a core shot after it occurs? Rappel with a core-shot rope?

Core shots—or any part of the rope that you no longer trust to bear weight—should be isolated and taken out of the tension system of the rope. To do this, tie an alpine butterfly knot and adjust accordingly so that the core shot or weakness remains in the loop.

To bypass the knot on rappel, attach a prussik (or ascender, or other rope-grab device) with a sling above the knot, connected to your belay loop, and weight it. Grab a bite of both ropes below the core-shot knot and tie a knot or hitch and clip it to your belay loop as a backup. Now you can disconnect your rappel device and reconnect it below the knot. If you are on a slab, you can pull yourself up and release your prussik and lower yourself to weight your rappel device and ensure it’s all connected properly, back-up included. Now you can detach your rope-grab above the knot and continue rappelling. Reverse these steps for ascent.

If you’re in a vertical or overhanging scenario, setup another prussik between your high point and the core-shot knot, and attach another sling to it to stand in. As you step up in this sling, slide down the high point, then lower yourself onto the high point. Do this until your high-point is slack and your belay device is engaged. Now you can disconnect those prussiks, undo your backup knot (or hitch), and continue rappelling.

When threading and pulling your core-shot or damaged rope, ensure that you thread the non-knotted rope first and pull from the side with the alpine butterfly so that the rope doesn’t get stuck with the knot at the anchor.

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