Life On A Line

Second Edition

Welcome to the official home of Life On A Line, the Underground Rope Rescue Manual.

The Second Edition of Life On A Line is now available in paperback and as an eBook in Adobe PDF format. You can purchase an eBook copy using PayPal or any major credit card and be reading it within minutes! Click here for info on buying a paperback or eBook copy.

Underground rescue from caves and mines is the most extreme form of technical rescue in the world, and demands the highest levels of skill in caving, engineering, excavation, geology, trauma medicine and of course ropework. Life On A Line was the first specialist rope rescue book written for and by cave and mine rescuers, and has become the standard text for hundreds of rescue teams, both underground and surface, across the planet.

The Second Edition is a completely new book, containing over 200 pages full of expanded information and updated techniques for all aspects of ropework, from equipment selection and basic rigging to the complex mathematics of friction and traverses. Entirely new chapters cover casualty care, stretcher selection and rigging, large animal and expedition rescue, plus in-depth explanations of the standards and legal frameworks affecting today's teams. It remains an international textbook, with techniques and explanations aimed at both European EN/CE, American ASTM/NFPA and international ISO/UIAA standards.

We concentrate on adaptable and proven techniques that can be applied by teams using their existing equipment, covering the full range of skills needed for rescue in the modern world:-

Equipment selection (rope, anchors, stretchers and everything in between)
Casualty care and stretcher management
Essential knots and anchoring systems
Rigging systems of all types, from the simplest abseil to highline traverses
Planning and management of expedition and large animal rescues
Maintenance, inspection and disposal of equipment
Legal policies and standards

We have also dramatically improved the quality of presentation, now that the growth of high-speed Internet access means that we can provide a larger download size of 30MB. The eBook is supplied in Adobe PDF 1.5 format, allowing it to be opened in Adobe Reader 6 and above. High-resolution images and text are used throughout, giving press-quality output on home laser or inkjet printers, plus fully indexed and searchable content. The eBook is intended to be viewed on screen or home-printed, with a page size suitable for both US Letter and ISO A4 paper.