Belaying the leader with a Munter off of the anchors

Steve0 wrote:Yeah, the climbing was in Freyr, nice place!

This guy's been climbing at Freyr for awhile...



I'll be darned if I can remember how he belayed, though...we passed two parties and were moving fairly quickly over steep terrain...so...I didn't notice (!). I'll have to pull up some photo's to see if I can tell.

Fun!

as others have pointed out, doing this would make it easier to escape the belay than belaying off your harness. but, it also risks putting force directly onto the anchor and a higher amount of force at that.

and, in a multi-pitch setting, i'd put more importance on minimizing the force an anchor might experience to the greatest degree possible. there are other ways to escape the belay when belaying off your harness. it'd be better to learn them because there isn't any great method to escape any belay when your anchor's blown and you're both falling through the air.

The primary reason for doing this it to minimize the chance of the belayer being lifted from their stance and slammed into the wall, thus dropping the leader. I found this to be common practice in the Dolomite Region of Italy. There a very few opportunities for gear to prevent the upward pull on the belayer. So, guides started using this method as an added safety feature with clients. The public has adopted this as well. Belaying with a Munter Hitch is very common in this region.

In case the entire anchor blows from an upward pull, it seems the belayer, who is somehow tied in to the anchor system, would provide a backup. Assuming the leader's first piece of gear continues to hold, Wouldn't the belayer's weight prevent the team from falling?

Peter Pitocchi wrote:In case the entire anchor blows from an upward pull, it seems the belayer, who is somehow tied in to the anchor system, would provide a backup. Assuming the leader's first piece of gear continues to hold, Wouldn't the belayer's weight prevent the team from falling?

Sure, could.

The fall factor is much, much lower too, since there's a piece of gear clipped by the leader apart from the belay anchor.

My fear would be a hard fall right onto the anchor. I usually have my partner on a draw/sling clipped to at least one point in the anchor. On some of the multi pitch stuff I've done in Europe (France, Italy, Belgium), I'd be very worried about some of the anchors I've belayed from...

Was climbing in Germany last year with a German mountain guide who explained that recent tests show that factor 2-ish forces are too much for a belayer to handle and that injury to the belayer would be likely - as well as dropping the leader. In Europe, where multipitch bolted climbs are so common, there is often less chance to place your own gear immediately off the anchor and so many pitches begin with a modest runout off a bolted anchor.
The solution the guide suggested is that if you see the potential for a fall onto the anchor, then belay directly off the anchor with a munter for the first few pieces, and then run the rope through a device on your harness, flip the munter out of the system, and belay normally off your waist for the rest of the pitch.
Here's a photo from Simon Mentz's Mt. Arapiles guidebook that reveals the issue - and this isn't even a factor 2 whipper...

Everybody around here (Munich) belays either off their body or the anchor with the Munter Hitch (they call it Halbmastwurf). I've gotten used to getting funny looks for carrying around an "unnecessary" ATC. :)

I think common sense would dictate that you don't belay off the anchor in uncertain alpine gear belays.

When I was guidint in Asia I had a guy that wanted to belay me this way. He had paid me to guide him up a "multi-pitch" and claimed to be very experienced in the mountains. But he couldn't climb for shit so I had to take up up a 45 meter 5.10 that has an intermediate anchor.

Anyways, once I began to lead the second pitch he wanted to belay me off the anchor on a munter. I understood the concept but thought that it would be awkward and didn't make much sense. He explained that it's better to have the load of a fall placed directly on the anchor. I don't think that is ideal in this situation but we were at a hanging belay and I had climbed the route about a hundred times so I told him to do what he wants and just went into "don't fall" mode like I think most guides do anyways.

But yea, I thought it looks awkward and contrived. It's not natural and it was obviously harder for him to feed out slack that it would have been had he just belayed me off his harness like he had when I was climbing the first pitch.

topher donahue wrote:Was climbing in Germany last year with a German mountain guide who explained that recent tests show that factor 2-ish forces are too much for a belayer to handle and that injury to the belayer would be likely - as well as dropping the leader. In Europe, where multipitch bolted climbs are so common, there is often less chance to place your own gear immediately off the anchor and so many pitches begin with a modest runout off a bolted anchor. The solution the guide suggested is that if you see the potential for a fall onto the anchor, then belay directly off the anchor with a munter for the first few pieces, and then run the rope through a device on your harness, flip the munter out of the system, and belay normally off your waist for the rest of the pitch. Here's a photo from Simon Mentz's Mt. Arapiles guidebook that reveals the issue - and this isn't even a factor 2 whipper...

I hadn't thought about that but I guess it makes sense.

But when I know my leader will have a runout before the first piece of pro, I do this instead:

I usually clove to the anchor, so I just leangthen my teather quite a bit so that I am hanging well below the masterpoint. Then the leader places a draw on the masterpoint and clips it like his first piece. The lower I am, the lower the fall factor.

Wonder if the HMS on anchor is safer? I would think that the more rope out, the better, which is why I do it my way.

same ... just lower off the anchor with a munter and tie off with a mule hitch, then belay off atc if a "factor 2" is very possible

having a 70m helps in this case if its a full 60 m pitch ....

You guys spouting off physics non-sense are retarded, your assumptions assume that the munter (or other belay method) is 100% static, which it is very much not so. The dynamacy of the munter is what makes belaying the leader off the anchors reasonably possible.

Russell Bangert wrote:The dynamacy of the munter

If you're going to call someone "retarded," you shouldn't make up words like "dynamacy"!

I don't even know how to respond to that. I beg to differ though, you should try googling it and will find plenty of people using the word.

Oh look, another word that isn't in your webster, oh no..

A good deal of the responses here were made without much thought on how catching someone would actually go down using this method. Someone's talking about using their atc in guide mode, backwards. A few others posts are full of false assumptions, and just plain ol' nonsense.

Mal, you are not thinking of this, are you?

Malcolm Daly wrote:I'm pretty sure that I've seen test results of an F2 fall on a Münter and they weren't pretty. With a human brake hand holding a locked Münter, the belayer was unable to stop, or even discernably slow down, an F2 fall. This is the the same result that occurs with a tube-style device. With the brake end of the rope held with a mechanical device to prevent any slipping, the rope breaks. I think you can find these tests on the UIAA site. Climb safe, Mal

Mal, I don't think this is entirely true. A few posts back, I posted a picture of a Munter on an anchor holding a factor-2 fall with steel weights, a situation more severe than with a falling body. Here's the video again:

youtube.com/watch?v=jZTZENu…

Note that there is hand movement but no rope slippage through the hand. That movement is critical, the testers know from long experience that it is critical, and they have set up the belay to allow for it. If the resisting hand can't move far enough, then there will be rope slippage, although that does not in and of itself mean the belay will fail.

Of course, the belayer is wearing a glove. If the rope does slip, then without a glove the belay is more likely to fail, and the belayer may experience serious burns.

Belayers using an ATC on their harness often have their braking hand inches from the device, so they are much more likely to experience rope slippage.

Strange as a direct leader belay off an anchor seems to Americans, there's nothing the matter with it in the European context of two beefy anchor bolts.

For those willing to spend half an hour watching people catch falls with Munters, there's also this recent video, made at a course for cavers. At some point they cut the sheath of the rope in two places and then drop the steel mass. They also compare to a Figure 8, they test the open-gate strength of a biner, and engage in other fun-to-watch activities. Fun for some of us, that is.

youtube.com/watch?v=UqRgoEd…

All the tests I´ve got (DAV, Manin,CAI etc) and my own tests give the HMS around 25 to 30% more braking power than normal belay devices.

The DAV has as usual been there and done that! (Panorama 05/2002). They did fall tests belaying direct from the anchor, from a powerpoint, inactive off the belayer and active from the belayer using HMS, Fig 8 and ATC.
The highest force on the first runner was from the direct and the force reduction with the other methods -11%, -2% and -24%.
The powerpoint belay gave considerable problems with uncontrolled movement of the belayer (who is naturally also attatched to the powerpoint) into the rock causing a real danger of loss of control and is not recommended for this reason.
The recommendation is for an active body belay or direct from the anchor using an HMS to give sufficient braking power, in all cases if a large fall is to be expected belay gloves should be worn.

Jim

A powerpoint is where the connections to the belay gear all come to a central point which is not the belayer himself so the belay device is somewhere between the gear and the belayer, the situation you get when you use an equalette or similar.

An inactive belay is when the belayer makes no moves to reduce the impact by either controlled feed of the rope through the belay device or more commonly by moving towards the direction of pull.

Jim

I have 3 books which demonstrate the Munter, and it's stressed that you always use an HMS biner with it in each of them. Anyone who knows how to use the Munter should know that they are a pair and that this is the original reason for pear shaped biners.

Maybe some of you should go pick up a copy of Freedom of The Hills?

A munter off the anchors on a standard locking D caught my first lead fall, a 15 or 20 footer on Hernia at Suicide Rock in SoCal in 1978. Worked fine, but it didn't clean my soiled pants.