A Petzl Croll is an ascending devicePetzl Sport - Croll Chest Ascender
/ref> used in caving and industrial rope access made by the French company

Petzl Petzl is a French manufacturer of climbing gear, caving gear, work-at-height equipment, and headlamps based in Crolles (near Grenoble), France. The company was created by the cave explorer Fernand Petzl in the mid-1970s. Their three specialtie ...

. Its name comes from the town

Crolles Crolles () is a commune in the Isère department in southeastern France. It is located in the Isère valley, 20 km northeast of Grenoble, upstream on the river Isère. It has given its name to the Dent de Crolles mountain (2,062 m), which s ...

where Petzl's company headquarters are located but might also be a reference to the nearby cave system of the

Dent de Crolles The Dent de Crolles () is a karstic mountain (2,062 m) of the Chartreuse Mountains range, north east of Grenoble, Isère, France. It has a characteristic "tooth-like" profile and is easily recognizable in the Isère Valley (Grésivaudan) in the G ...

, the exploration of which triggered a lot of technical effort leading to innovation in caving equipment.

Usage

The Croll is normally used in the chest position and in conjunction with an upper ascender or

Jumar An ascender is a device (usually mechanical) used for directly ascending a rope, or for facilitating protection with a fixed rope when climbing on very steep mountain terrain. Ascenders can also be used as a braking component within a rope ha ...

. This configuration allows a climber, caver or rope access worker to rapidly ascend a rope.

History

In 1968 Bruno Dressler asked

Fernand Petzl Fernand Petzl (April 7, 1913 – May 31, 2003) was a caver and manufacturer of outdoor equipment under the brand name Petzl. Petzl lived most of his life in the village of Saint-Ismier (near Grenoble), France at the foot of the mountain Dent De ...

, who worked as a metals machinist, to build a rope-ascending tool, today known as the Petzl Croll, that he had developed by adapting the

to the specificity of pit caving. Following these developments, Fernand Petzl started in the 1970s a small caving equipment manufacturing company

Standards

* EN 567 This standard allows the Croll to be used by IRATA qualified technicians. * EN 12841 * CE 0197

References

Climbing equipment Caving equipment {{Climbing-stub