Equipment Review: Climbing Technology’s Quick Roll

One of the manoeuvres you learn on your first day of rope access training at Ropeworkz is how to ascend on your descender. Not something you will need to do very often, but a helpful thing to know. There are a few ways to do this.

Firstly you can brute force it. This involves pulling the slack end of your rope through your descender and up as you ascend. Apart from being physically challenging, if not done correctly, you run the risk of your descender being shock loaded.

Alternatively, you can carry a pulley with you, attach it to your hand ascender and run the slack end of your rope through it. Pulling the rope down as you ascend requires less effort and will reduce the chance of shock loading your descender. However, this method means carrying extra equipment with you, is more time consuming, and runs the unnecessary risk of dropping gear.

Many of us were trained like this and still use one of these techniques. But then things started to change at Ropeworkz two years ago when we got our hands on Climbing Technology’s Quick Roll.

The Quick Roll is a hand ascender like most other hand ascenders, with an ergonomic grip, self-locking teethed cam and attachment holes. But with one significant difference, it has an integrated pulley designed specifically to make ascending with a descender easier.

With the Quick Roll, you can easily clip the slack end of your rope into the pulley built into the ascender’s handle with one hand. No extra equipment has to be attached, reducing the need to carry extra gear and the risk of dropping something.

We offer our technicians the opportunity to train with both a regular hand ascender and the Quick Roll, still teaching them the other ways to ascend on their descenders. But we have found when given the opportunity, the level 1’s often preferred using the Quick Roll. Our new full-time trainer, who has been an IRATA trainer for five years, gave his first course using the Quick Roll at Ropeworkz. He commented on how much easier it was to assist level 1’s in getting out of their mistakes, like recovering a loaded backup device, when using a Quick Roll.

But the Quickroll is not only for training venues and is an excellent piece of kit to have on any worksite. Window cleaners and painters who work so much with their descenders can quickly ascend to touch up a streak or smear. Offshore technicians who have to adjust their position regularly can do so with minimal effort.

The one thing that technicians need to be aware of is that the pulley is not suitable for hauling systems as it is only rated for 2kN, and it is only designed to make ascending easier.