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Backing Up Marginal Anchors

Description

In canyoneering, we often use anchors that have unknown capacity. This could be existing webbing with unknown sun damage or hidden damage, cairn anchors made by another group, deadman anchors made by another group, bolts of unknown or questionable quality, untested sand traps or water traps, or basically any other anchor out there. It's often not practical to rebuild every anchor to bomber quality, so we can add extra safety by backing up marginal anchors. This adds redundancy so if the primary anchor fails, the backup anchor will protect the rappeller. 

The most common way to back up marginal anchors is to use a meat anchor. But any other anchor type is also an option. The meat anchor uses their PAS (personal anchor system) to connect their harness to the rappel ring or rapide. They then hunker down and wedge themselves in a stable location where they could hold the weight of the rappeller if the primary anchor fails. Their PAS should have about a foot of slack so they're not holding any weight.

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Inspecting Existing Anchors