Vergo

A birdie is like a worse grigri by most measures. It weighs 1 ounce more, doesnt feed any better, and doesnt have a progressive lowering handle which makes the lower less smooth. It is cheaper but I would not recommend it or the madrock lifeguard. They are inferior to grigri and its other clones Dep

Get the book “On the Line” by Andy Kirkpatrick. Every device has upsides, drawbacks, and failure mechanisms and that book is as close as there is to a comprehensive guide to TRS. That book unpacks all of those and also describes how to pair them in the way that makes them least likely to interact wi

The device you need for the ability to rappel is called a trango vergo, Madrock (hard to find), or a petzl gri gri +. Make sure you get large enough rope (9mm or bigger usually) to fit the specs. I run a trango vergo on a small bridge, then a longer bridge to a longhorn agile knot. Basically running