Austin, I got the same experience in June. Ironic how your emotion slowly moves from - arg - I lost the beginning of my season - to gosh ... lucky I was not hung from there :-)
After 4 trips up there and countless hours, I did manage to pass the messenger. I could not get the steps mentioned by Bill to work right away, but by building on it: * 10" hacksaw blade cut in half lengthwise - no more than 1/4" in width so it can fit partly in the sheave groove: The clearance on top of the sheaves is not enough to pass the bike chain - so you need an apparatus than allows the chain to be fed partly in the sheaves groove. * remove the first sheave! that is easy and was the game changer.Building a small wire handle to prevent it to go swimming helped me. * small fishing lead I have remolded to pass in the sheave groove - attached by a fishing line to the chain: I could not manage to prevent the chain to fold on itself, but passing the small lead first made all the difference - enough to keep the chain to fold along my blade mercilessly pushing it up to the sheave...
An important part - was the adjustable splice kleimheist to deal with the taper of the mast during the ascension.
