When cleaning pitches like the first two of West Face of Leaning Tower…
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Take 48” dynex runner and girth hitch it to your belay loop.
Make sure you have a fifi hook
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West Face pitch 1 and 2 have a looooot of bolts on each pitch, ideally, your leader will not be clipping the rope to all of them, and though he/she will try to mitigate this, skipping of bolts will lead to sections of overhanging rock where the rope traverses. As the second, you will curse him/her because of the tension that this causes in the rope. You will be stuck at the bolt, unable to get the quickdraw off of the bolt because of the forces pulling you to the right (in the case of West Face).
This is where you go to the books and know that the next step is to move the top aider above the piece and weight that aider in order to release tension on the rope below the piece and thus, take it off the bolt. This does not work when the next clipped piece is 4+ feet to the right though because you will be left hanging in space, unable to reach the piece you were trying to get out and more importantly, your lower aider will likely have been sucked into the piece in such a way that you will be unable to get it out without cutting the quickdraw. This is usually where you remember that you did not bring your knife with you.
Here’s a workable and painless way to get through these situations:
When you reach the offending bolt/protection you will know it because of the sharp angle of the rope as it shoots off to the right. If you find yourself thinking, “Hmmmm, the rope is definitely not going straight up anymore” you might be in such a situation.
Step by step is the way to go:
Step 1: Push both of your ascenders up to the protection.
Step 2: Pull yourself up and clip your fifi into the lower ascender.
Step 3: Take your dynex runner that is girth-hitched to your belay loop and run the end of the runner through the bolt hangar and pull yourself tight against the bolt hangar by pulling on the loop that you just put through the hangar.
This will place your weight upon the bolt, allowing the rope to be untensioned.
Step 4: Remove the quickdraw from the bolt. You can then let it hang on the lead rope above your top aider.
Step 5: let go of the runner you have going through the bolt hangar. You will swing away from the bolt hangar into space below the next piece of protection.
This is similar to lowering out on a piece, except that it’s faster and does no require you to leave anything on the bolt/piece you are lowering off.
Obviously this is not appropriate if the swing is gong to be long enough to create a pendulum that will slam you into anything, but on something like these pitches of West Face, you are only going to swing into space.
Step 6: curse your leader anyways because that’s what climbing walls is all about.
