I can belay, but what makes me a good belayer?

I find the best belays come from strong climbers, who go for it when making hard placements, bad clips, & don't mind a bit of airtime themselves. Most climbers that are scared to fall, are usually scared to catch a fall too.

Nothing worse than trying to move through a crux & being on a tight rope, especially because when your cranking as hard as you can You're usually holding your breathe & can't yell down for a bit of slack. Frustrating.

I wonder if JohnL is even a climber? It seems like he spends more time talking shit on MP then anything. Go climbing some time dude!

andrew smith wrote:I wonder if JohnL is even a climber? It seems like he spends more time talking shit on MP then anything. Go climbing some time dude!

I love to belay and all the things mentioned are the big ones. Also, I am 300lbs, and make a great anchor. So often do I see people not watching their partner, talking to someone else. Knowing that if they took a fall, disaster will ensue. Luckily we climb not to fall. I have been dropped 3 times from people not used to belaying someone of my massive girth. My climbing partner is used to belaying me and is about half my size and I have never once been worried about his skills.

I remember my partner was about 90ft off the deck, 45ft from his last piece of pro. He started to get the Elvis legs and all I thought was how much it was going to suck if he fell as I would be running backwards through thick, sharp, thorny bushes to keep him from decking.