Arresting the fall

In the event of a crevasse fall, the fall victim should be held or arrested as quickly as possible. Team members should throw themselves to the ground to lower their center of gravity, digging boots, ice axe or hands into the firn.

While the person at the rear keeps the rope under tension, the front team member (the person nearest the crevasse, green helmet) sets up an anchor to transfer the load – this may be a t-slot or ice screw anchor, depending upon the terrain.

Building an anchor

To provide greater freedom of movement, the person at the rear takes the full load and the person at the front ties a medium-length Prusik to the load line – with an over hand knot directly after the Prusik knot. The Prusik loop is then clipped directly into the belay loop on the harness using an over hand knot. Now the person in the middle of the rope team can unclip from the rope, still protected via the Prusik. He now has greater freedom of movement to dig a t-slot anchor.

Now the person in the middle (green helmet) must build the anchor (t-slot or ice screw), before transferring the load using a sling that is fed through the loop of his tied in Prusik.

Making contact

The person at the front clips his roping up knot into the carabiner on the anchor as backup and takes up position beside the anchor (standing or sitting), with his personal anchor under tension, creating a secondary anchor. The person at the rear (blue helmet) can now slowly transfer the load to the anchor. He unties the spare rope, and (also protected by a Prusik loop) cautiously approaches the crevasse, untying any brake knots along the rope. He then begins setting up the pulley.

Lip of the crevasse

As the fall victim gets closer to the lip of the crevasse, hauling should slow down and be gentler: there is a very high risk of injury at the lip of a crevasse.

Arresting the fall and load transfer

In order to hold the fall, other members of the rope team should arrest it as best as they can. With larger rope teams, it is often sufficient to adopt a secure stance. Now good communication and coordination are required: The person closest to the lip of the crevasse ties a Prusik knot using a 5–6mm accessory cord around the rope and attaches it with an over hand knot to his belay loop. He then signals to the other rope team partners that he is about to unclip from the rope and that they must now take up the load

Making contact

While the other members of the rope team remain in position and hold the fall victim, the person at the front uses his Prusik hitch to approach the lip of the crevasse, where he makes contact with the fall victim.

Hauling the fall victim out

At the lip of the crevasse he places an ice axe under the rope to prevent it from cutting further into the lip. The ice axe is secured by tying it to the Prusik loop with a sling.

On the command of the person at the front, the remaining rope partners now walk backwards and carefully haul the fall victim out.

Getting over the lip of the crevasse

The final challenge is to haul the fall victim over the lip of the crevasse. The closer the fall victim gets to the lip of the crevasse, the greater the care required. To haul the fall victim over the lip of the crevasse, pull cautiously and allow the fall victim to lean back and try to climb up over the lip using his feet.

If the group is in a heavily crevassed area and, therefore, not able to walk backwards safely, each person should secure themselves using a Prusik and haul the rope while standing on the spot, sliding the Prusik forwards with each pull.