Adding friction to a rappel

Some rappel situations (wet rope, skinny rope, a single strand, wearing a heavy pack) are made safer and easier when you add extra friction to the rap to better control your descent speed.  Here’s three ways to do this:

1) Clip a spare biner to your leg loop.  After you’ve put the rope through your rappel device and locking biner on the front of your harness in the normal manner, clip the brake strand of the rope through this biner.  By simply moving your brake hand up (more friction) or down (less friction), you can maintain better control.

2) Use 2 biners on your harness and clip your rap device and rope through both.  The extra friction of the second biner slows your descent.  This may be counter-intuitive - it seems that the sharper angle made by a single biner would slow the rope more.  It’s actually the opposite - try it yourself and see. 

3) Make a “Rappel Z” as shown in this drawing from Climbing magazine: