Fixed rope is the practice of fixing in place bolted ropes to assist climbers and walkers in exposed mountain locations. They are used widely on American and European climbing routes but disdained by purist mountaineers. Many guided expeditions to any of the eight-thousanders normally set up fixed rope on steep or icy sections of the route. For example, on the Hillary Step of Mount Everest, fixed rope is used to reduce the bottleneck of climbers that typically results from climbing this technical section just below the summit.
Famous quotes containing the words fixed and/or rope:
“Marriage is the clue to human life, but there is no marriage apart from the wheeling sun and the nodding earth, from the straying of the planets and the magnificence of the fixed stars.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“I love him who does not want to have too many virtues. One virtue is more virtue than two, since it is more knot on which to hang the rope that is destined to hang him.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)