I will soon be heading off to Taiwan, where I hope to engage in a number of hikes. It seems that ascending and descending sections of cliff are done via a fixed rope, and commonly done without a harness helmet etc. As seen in this video:
I don't have much experience with ropes, fixed or otherwise. The hikers in this video are seen wrapping the rope around their wrists. Is there a safer technique to using fixed rope such as these when not wearing a harness?
The ropes arent ropes as such - they are long tapes. They also seem to be a funny colour - so I am wondering how long they have been in place.
Either way, it is unlikely they would take a shock load, so my view is they are little more than a a handhold/way to assist yourself.
On that basis, not having a harness is kind of academic - if you were securely attached to the "rope" and slip/fall the shock will snap it...so you may as well just forget it as a safety device.
Not completely what you are asking for, but may be handy if you want to secure yourself when all you have is some rope:
About 30 years ago I did a glacier walking course in Norway. Equipment was more basic then, and Norway seemed rather behind as well. We didn't use harnesses but created a chest harness out of a length or rope. Basically a couple of times round your chest under your armp pits, secure with 8-knot, and then a loop over your shouler, around the rope at the back and then back to the front and fasten, to stop it from slipping down.
You still need further rope and carabiners to make it into a klettersteig (or via ferrata) setup.
Exercise for knot lovers: how did we then attach ourselves to the main rope without using a carabiner (the ends are easy, but how about the middle while there were already people at either end).
If you take a rope, double it up and tie a bowline at the doubled up end, you end up with three loops that can be adjusted to form a superb harness - one loop for each leg and one round your waist. If you can find an Ashley book of knots there is, iirc, a nice drawing of a sailor being transferred between two sailing ships secured by just such a knot.
As people said, they are fixed lines to be used as a handrail, rather than be attached to. You see this sort of thing a lot in the Alps around huts and on easy (or indeed not-so-easy (eg. Matterhorn)) mountain routes.
If you think that the fixed lines look dodgy then you should not weight them heavily. Having glanced at the video, if I were doing that route I'd proboably carry a couple of slings, a lighweight rope and a helmet. If it were in the conditions those guys had done it in I'd have had crampons/axe with me too.Then again, videos are not always a good indicator of difficulty, and a guidebook grade or local knowledge (ie. not from us lot!) would be a lot more useful.
