Abseiling, also called rappelling, is the controlled descent down a rock face using a rope. Climbers use this technique when a cliff or slope is too steep and/or dangerous to descend without protection. Rope access technicians also use this as a method to access difficult to reach areas at height for various industrial applications like maintenance, construction, inspection and welding. Slang terms for the technique include: rapping or rap jumping, deepelling and abbing. The term rappel / rappelling, used extensively in the United States, is derived from the French language. In the Alps, the term "calata" (from Italian) is used. Abseiling is used in a number of applications, including:
1. Climbing, for returning to the base of a climb or to a point where one can try a new route.
2. Recreational abseiling.
3. Canyoning, where jumping waterfalls or cliffs may be too dangerous.
4. Caving and speleology, where underground pitches are accessed using this method (Single Rope Technique).
5. Adventure racing, where events often include abseiling and other rope work.
6. Industrial/commercial applications, where abseiling techniques are used to access parts of structures or buildings so as to perform maintenance, cleaning or construction, e.g. steeplejacking, window cleaning, etc.
7. Access to wildfires.
8. Confined spaces access, such as investigating ballast tanks and other areas of ships.
9. Rescue applications, such as accessing injured people or accident sites (vehicle or aircraft) and extracting the casualty using abseiling techniques.
10. (Military) Tactical heliborne insertion of troops and special forces into the battlefield close to the objective when proper landing zones are not available.
Abseiling can be dangerous, and presents risks, especially to unsupervised or inexperienced abseilers. According to German mountaineer Pit Schubert, about 25% of climbing deaths occur during abseiling, most commonly due to failing anchors. Another frequent cause of accidents is abseiling beyond the end of the rope. Backing-up the rope set-up with a friction knot (autoblock, Kleimheist, or prusik) such that the slipping of the rope is stopped even if the climber lets go of the control rope provides a measure of safety with regard to the control of the rate of descent.
Abseiling is prohibited or discouraged in some areas, due to the potential for environmental damage and/or conflict with climbers heading upwards, or the danger to people on the ground.
Source: Wikipedia
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