This is an ATC, or an Air Traffic Controller. It is a belay device, used to add large amounts of friction to a rope when working on high-ropes courses. A couple of months ago I was working on such a high-ropes course (I won’t name it, nor will I name the individuals involved). We were working with a middle-school group, and operating a team-belay system. In this system, there are anywhere from 4-5 people working on belaying another person who is taking on the element we are focusing on. The way team belay works is that the first person in the line is the anchor. Their responsibility involves wearing a harness to which a carabiner attaches with the rope and the ATC. Their job is to pull down on the rope coming to them, to make a tight connection between them and the person participating in the element. That is all they do, if the person falls, or it is time for them to come down, they should let go and stand firm. The next 2-3 people stand in a line beside the anchor, and their job is to pull the rope through the ATC so that there is no slack between the ATC and the participant. The last person in the line is responsible for coiling the rope, so that it is not left on the ground to be trampled on should the belay line need to move (IE, following the participant along an element such as a catwalk or mohawk-walk). Depending on the situation, and generally a good idea anyway, an additional person will hold the back of the anchor’s harness so that in the event the participant outweighs them, they aren’t lifted off the ground at any point.

Anyway, this is relevant because I was working a high element using team belay, and the anchor was a young girl with long hair. It got caught in the ATC when the participant was coming down from the element. Some quick thinking and movement from the team of facilitators meant that safety was never a risk for the participant, and after about 10 very intense minutes, we were able to free the hair and lower the participant to the ground.

I was wearing my harness, unusual in the circumstances, as I was facilitating and not participating in any of the technical work beyond instructing the young people on what they needed to do. I was also the one who anchored the anchor, as it were. She was a small girl, and the participant larger than she, so I put my hand in her harness to hold her down. As I was doing so, she tipped her head and said “it’s caught, my hair is caught” – in my stupor I checked I wasn’t pulling it with my hand slipping behind her harness, and removed it again. But still, she had her head to the side. It was at this moment I looked at what was happening and realized Bad Things(tm) were going on. I called over the other two facilitators on the ground (a third was up a tree, working on fixing an earlier problem whereby he had lost the pull-rope through a pulley for an element). They pulled down on the rope to relieve tension from the ATC, but it wasn’t enough, the hair had got itself well and truly stuck. I ran for the equipment shed, and about 30 seconds later was attaching a new ATC to the rope just up from where the stuck one was, before attaching to my harness (God works in mysterious ways!).

This allowed us to work freely on the problem ATC device. As I said, it took about 5-6 minutes from this point (from point of realization to getting the new ATC in place was about 2-3 minutes) to get the hair removed. Someone had the genius idea to pull half the rope through, and that then it may be removable with an extra 1/2″ of space to work with in the hole. Unfortunately, this end of the rope was the one with tape around it marking what it’s purpose was, and wouldn’t pull through. And so, off to the kitchen one of the facilitators went, intending to take the vehicle they’d brought. He returned a few seconds later with a pair of scissors, and we cut off about 3 inches of the rope end. It was a matter of seconds at this point before the rope was removed, the hair untangled. It has since been reinforced that all hair must be tied back and away from all places where such things may happen to entangle and trap individuals.