“Thank you to Petzl for asking that AccessRULES provide a judge for 2026 Petzl Road Trip held in Salt Lake City, Utah, right after the SPRAT conference. I am grateful for the experience and certainly had a great time watching and judging many very talented folks perform rope access.”
– Dwight Witter
I would like to thank Petzl for asking AccessRULES to provide a judge for the 2026 Petzzl Road Trip held in Salt Lake City, Utah, right after the SPRAT conference. I am grateful for the experience and certainly had a great time watching and judging many very talented folks perform rope access. As a Petzl PTP (Petzl Technical Partner), we hope to continue to be asked to work with, learn from, and teach Petzl as well as the technicians in our industry.
That being said, I want to tell you a story. Imagine, if you will, three friends who all do rope access and very much love the industry. One is a trainer, and the other two were trainers, one for a training company, so full-time, and the other a part-time trainer. These three young men are at a SPRAT Annual Meeting which happens to be the couple of days prior to an international competition occurring in the same city and decide that they want to compete. Not for winning, but for the experience. Their problem is that they did not register a team, nor did they bring equipment with which to compete. Not a chance.
The day before the competition a team drops out. Now there’s space, but they didn’t register and still don’t have any equipment; their equipment is half the country away. Not to be discouraged, they get the idea that they will ask for donations from individuals and manufacturers at the Annual Meeting and basically beg, borrow, and steal enough kit to at least give them the bare minimum so that they can compete, if allowed.
The day of the competition, they show up at Petzl with their rag-tag appropriation of equipment, still not knowing for sure that they can enter the competition. They wait, not so patiently, and get the word – they’re in.
In the day and a half of competition, they do ok, the scoreboard shows them in 12th place of 14 teams near the end of the preliminary competition, but the board isn’t updated because Petzl wants to announce the semi-finalists. This may not be the result that they were hoping for. After all, on one of the challenges, a judge changed their score because a minor discrepancy was not tallied, and there’s those equipment and practice together things.
The preliminaries end and the team speculates that they’re probably in 6th place, only the top 4 are moving on to the semis. Everyone gathers around for the announcement and anticipation is growing for all the competitors. The fourth-place team is announced, and it’s not our boys.
Hopes are dashed because 4th would have been great and if they thought 6th or so, no way they would be higher than 4th. Glum faces on all three competitors. “At least we tried, and we didn’t have shit for equipment” was muttered.
Glum faces on all three competitors. “At least we tried, and we didn’t have shit for equipment” was muttered. The third-place team was announced, and the team has just a blank expression of loss when it dawns on them that their team was just announced in third place in the preliminaries. Now pandemonium. Yells and jumping, and hugs for everyone. It’s on to the semi-finals!
The location of the semis is a different place, in the mountains surrounding Salt Lake City. There are 4 teams left, all nervous and wondering what crazy rope stuff Petzl could devise that’s more difficult than that they already did. And they’re tired. They completed 3 competitions earlier in the preliminaries the same day.
In the semi comptition, the teams had to aid climb across a roof truss, do a huge swing off a very small rope, rig a beam and move it across a span without sliding it, and position it for the finals at a very specific location. The competition starts and our boys are a little behind at the big swing stage of the competition and seem to be losing more time as the competition goes on. When rigging the beam for the move, a rope gets caught and flips the beam on its’ side, but it doesn’t move much. The judges are watching closely and taking measurements as the action unfolds. The other team seems to be working flawlessly and look to walk away with the win. Then their beam shifts before becoming airborne. There’s hope. Again, the judges make measurements on the shift.
The beams glide through the air to be put into the specific locations for the finals and the crowd is shouting encouragement. The beam is to be situated exactly 4 feet from the roof truss. One of our team members is flipped upside down with a tape measure to ensure the beam height is accurate. They finish just ahead of their competition. Scoring comes down to how much movement the beam had prior to flying. Suspense builds as the results are announced. The team of under-equipped ragamuffins from Southern Louisiana moved their beam 6 inches less. They won! They’re going to the finals. The place erupts with applause and screaming because everyone knows what it took to get this far.
With little rest, the finals are announced. Petzl has given each team the task to move 4 large heavy letters across a zip line and fix them to the bottom of the beam that was set in the semi-finals. Further they were to wire the internal lights in position and light up the sign. Finally, they were to sit on the beam together for pictures.
The finals begin, and from the start, all the hard work of our team is shown in fatigue. The boys have done a lot today and lose in the final. There are downcast faces and curses and self-recrimination. But they placed second in a competition that they didn’t even register for, with no equipment, and no practice. They hadn’t even worked out how to communicate. Their heads should be held high, and they should feel the pride that I do as a friend, maybe a mentor, and as a rope access technician.
My most sincere congratulations to Dustin Schell, Cody McKenzie, and Ben Alexander for the best show of heart and cooperation that I’ve seen in a long time. Boys, you did it when really you shouldn’t have. Way to go, I’ve ordered a bell for each of you to commemorate your achievement.
If you have questions a bout AccessRULES and rope access, give us a call at 504 366-0586 or send us an email at [email protected] and we’ll help where we can. See you in a course soon!
Dwight