Rappeling to the Ground

Practice the following techniques in a safe setting first. Start small--for example tie your rope to a beam somewhere around your house and stand on a chair to try your first rappel. Then move to a higher practice structure as appropriate.
Using your second locking carabiner, wrap the rescue rope around the straight side of the carabiner, opposite the gate, five times. (See diagram below.)
Clip this rappel carabiner into your two short slings, alongside the carabiner clipped to the safety sling. Make sure that the tree end of the rope feeds into the rappel carabiner from the top and the ground end emerges from the bottom. Lock the carabiner.
Now snug up the rappel rope so there is no slack between the rappel carabiner and the tree. Hold the ground end of the rope securely in one hand and don't let go.
Test your braking friction by pulling in some more rope--until the safety sling goes slack--and holding yourself on rappel. If you don't have enough friction, take more wraps. If you have too much friction, take fewer wraps. It's best to determine how many wraps you need during practice sessions, not in a tree.
Now unclip from the safety sling. Always keeping hold of the rappel line, lower yourself slowly. Descend no faster than one foot a second to prevent the carabiner from getting too hot and damaging the thin rope. Once you're on the ground, you'll have to unclip from the rope and abandon it. Unlike the rappel method used by mountain climbers, the technique described here offers no way to retri