To use the belay loop or the tie-in loops?

Greg D wrote: Biners breaking is far from just theoretical. Many have broken in the field over the years. I don't know of any belay biners though. But, biners are the second weakest link in the climbing system. They do warrant protecting.

Let's use the statement in the context it was made and that is specifically using a biner to belay on through the tie in loops. The theoretical failure, assuming your biner isn't cross loaded, is the tri-axial loading you could get from the tie in points separating during a fall and providing load from multiple directions. I have never read a report or seen real testing so its pretty much theoretical unless someone can provide test data.

Very unlikely that anything would happen if you belay off tie-in points, yet belaying off the belay loop is better.

On the subject of tieing in to the wrong parts of the harness, I was climbing once with a friend who had given me the impression that she had a fair amount of experience. I led an easy trad route and she followed me up it. We walked down and then she led the easy trad route and I followed her up it. When I reached her belay I discovered that she had clipped in to the anchor off one of the gear loops on her harness, and of course she was belaying me off her harness as well.

Fortunately it was an easy route! This happened years ago and was a good lesson for me - never assume things about your partner's experience!

She explained that she had seen people belay this way at the North Shore of lake Superior, where belaying from the top is standard practice; I can only assume that someone clipped themselves to the anchor via a full-strength haul loop on the back of their harness, or perhaps they were using that supersafe harness from petzl? In any case, she certainly got the wrong idea re: which parts of the harness were strong!

I recall reading some document a while back, from Petzl I think ;) It stated that carbines can break as little as 80 pounds when loaded across the actual gate. I've been using ANSI rated stuff (16 kn gate strength) for important connections lately. Both DMM & CMI make some light alloy ones.

I follow the manufacturers specifications. People keep bringing up the Alpine Bod. That harness is built differently then a standard climbing harness. Yes back in the day the diaper style harness was the norm and as such you used a carabiner through the leg loop and waist belt to connect it. However if you look at an Alpine Bod or Bod harness they are built differently then a regular sit harness. The leg loop "loop" is longer making it join with the waist belt higher, eliminating the triaxial loading that is common when a regular harness is connected using a carabiner. Using a carabiner to attach the legs and waist of a regular (non diaper style ) harness is not a good idea. Here is a link to what BD has to say about it:
blackdiamondequipment.com/e…
Here is another one:
blackdiamondequipment.com/e…

I would think that the companies that stand to be sued over gear failure would have the final say in how their gear works the best and how it is intended to be used and should be used.
Just my thoughts
Dallen

Sunny-D wrote:I follow the manufacturers specifications. People keep bringing up the Alpine Bod. That harness is built differently then a standard climbing harness. Yes back in the day the diaper style harness was the norm and as such you used a carabiner through the leg loop and waist belt to connect it. However if you look at an Alpine Bod or Bod harness they are built differently then a regular sit harness. The leg loop "loop" is longer making it join with the waist belt higher, eliminating the triaxial loading that is common when a regular harness is connected using a carabiner. Using a carabiner to attach the legs and waist of a regular (non diaper style ) harness is not a good idea. Here is a link to what BD has to say about it: blackdiamondequipment.com/e… Here is another one: blackdiamondequipment.com/e… I would think that the companies that stand to be sued over gear failure would have the final say in how their gear works the best and how it is intended to be used and should be used. Just my thoughts Dallen

actually in neither of your two links does it say explicitly not to belay off the tie in points

as to the "leg loop" being higher with the alpine bod ... all it takes is for someone taller with with a bigger waist to crotch gap for that argument to go out the window ... if that was the case then people with big "crotch gaps" shouldnt be using alpine bods ... which of course isnt the case

theres a reason why BD makes 2 of these harnesses ...





im still waiting for someone to bring up an actual accident report where the biner failed in a real life belay situation with this configuration ...

there are MANY things in climbing that WILL kill you ... this aint one of those big killers...

Avalon'cha wrote:I recall reading some document a while back, from Petzl I think ;) It stated that carbines can break as little as 80 pounds when loaded across the actual gate. I've been using ANSI rated stuff (16 kn gate strength) for important connections lately. Both DMM & CMI make some light alloy ones.

thats from BD and nose hooking ... not a problem with properly locked lockers

a biner cross loaded will meet a minimum rating of 7 KN ....

;)

bearbreeder wrote: thats from BD and nose hooking ... not a problem with properly locked lockers a biner cross loaded will meet a minimum rating of 7 KN .... ;)

No, it was not regarding cross loading, at least not the way we think of it. But rather, a load resting on the actual gate, not the nose. And it will break much lower than the rated cross load strength, weather it's locked or not makes no difference. In fact I believe that wire gates averaged the strongest for gate strength.

Avalon'cha wrote: No, it was not regarding cross loading, at least not the way we think of it. But rather, a load resting on the actual gate, not the nose. And it will break much lower than the rated cross load strength, weather it's locked or not makes no difference. In fact I believe that wire gates averaged the strongest for gate strength.

the UIAA crossload test IS a test with the load on the gate



;)

Avalon'cha wrote: No, it was not regarding cross loading, at least not the way we think of it. But rather, a load resting on the actual gate, not the nose. And it will break much lower than the rated cross load strength, weather it's locked or not makes no difference. In fact I believe that wire gates averaged the strongest for gate strength.

Let's see the data.

rging wrote: Let's use the statement in the context it was made and that is specifically using a biner to belay on through the tie in loops. The theoretical failure, assuming your biner isn't cross loaded, is the tri-axial loading you could get from the tie in points separating during a fall and providing load from multiple directions. I have never read a report or seen real testing so its pretty much theoretical unless someone can provide test data.

see the link i posted at the end of page 2.

moviedeaths.com/cliffhanger…

youtube.com/watch?v=XOW1rhZ…

Sunny-D wrote:I would think that the companies that stand to be sued over gear failure would have the final say in how their gear works the best and how it is intended to be used and should be used.

I agree. But there are pig-headed people out there like the OP's "mentor" who feel they are smarter. As others have said, it makes you wonder what other "improvements" they've incorporated into their climbing practice.

20 kN wrote: Proponents of the myth state that threading the biner through the tie-in points is safer because it is redundant, unlike most belay loops.

Metolius SafeTech harnesses remove this concern with double belay loops.

Ryan Kempf wrote:Oh god... Here we go.

I apologize for my comments above. You were right. I should have known better; I've been around here long enough. What a joke.

Syd wrote: Metolius SafeTech harnesses remove this concern with double belay loops.

I didn't realize we were shooting for complete redundancy. I suppose everyone will be using two ropes and two belayers starting next year as well.

I suspect that a good deal of the fuss started from a report in the UIAA journal a few years ago (I think by Pit Schubert) documenting some failures in which a figure-eight device had indeed levered open a locking biner clipped through the tie-in points of a harness. My memory is that there had been more than one incident and I think a fatality.

The failure mode seemed to be particular to the figure-eight device and a biner clipped through the harness tie-in points, and in that situation something unusual had to happen, with some very bad results. I'm afraid I don't remember the details, but I think the mode of failure involved some rotation or twisting of the figure-eight, and depended on the rigidity of device. It seems conceivable that other rigid devices, like a Gri-Gri or Smart or Alpine Up might also be able to induce the same type of failure.

My guess is that manufacturers decided, not at all unreasonably, not to wait to find out if there were ways that something analogous could happen with other devices (after all, the figure-eight situation was unanticipated) and made the belay-loop recommendation universal.

So where does this leave climbers generally? As usual, everyone will have to make decisions for themselves. Personally, I'd say that we know that there are unusual situations involving rigid belay devices that can cause a biner bound in place by being clipped to the harness tie-in points to fail at relatively low (i.e. rappelling) loads. If you use such a device, it seems pretty reasonable to me to attach it to the belay loop to avoid any unusual twisting and loading issues.

I don't think, as a number of posters have suggested, there have been any incidents involving belay devices that are attached to the locker through the harness tie-in points by a semi-flexible wire bale. It seems that the chance of some kind of bad loading for these devices would be extremely small, and as bearbreeder keeps saying, you really need to be worrying about other things.

That said, the primary argument for using the tie-in points seems to me to be entirely bogus. Redundancy is an important climbing and engineering concept that seems to have been elevated in the climbing world to the status of an unquestioned commandment. Not all systems are redundant and the concept itself has to be viewed in the context of the probability of failure of the system purportedly requiring back-up.

Most climber's tie-ins consist of a single loop of rope through the tie-in points, a loop that not as strong as the belay loop, and yet we hear about the need for redundancy when virtually all climbers accept (and rightly so) the absence of redundancy in their tie-in. And I don't buy Ben Beckwith's argument comparing climbing harness to industrial harness that have double loops. If you are "hanging from my two-loop work harness with power tools and chemicals and lots of sharp and/or hot steel all over the place" that is a different context from the climbing context and should not be confused with it.

I'm afraid that the only thing the Skinner tragedy proves is that you can negate the enormous safety margins of the modern harness if you are prepared to indulge in significant long-term neglect. The accident has no other lesson to teach us than that, and doesn't come anywhere near providing a decent argument for clipping the belay biner through the tie-in loops.

Multipitch climbers who insist on redundancy for their belay attachment can avoid the potential twisting leverage failure issues by clipping the belay carabiner through both the belay loop and their rope tie-in loop. We can only hope that they are attending to other real dangers while assiduously guarding against mostly imaginary ones.

Edit: Here's the article: theuiaa.org/upload_area/fil… . The problem can happen with the belay loop as well, but is more likely with the locking biner clipped to the tie-in loops, so the articles states, "Clipping the attachment karabiner to both leg-loops and waist-belt should be avoided."

The failure modes seem to depend on the fact that the clip-in portion of the figure-eight device is relatively large and so can easily drop over the locking sleeve. This is either unlikely or impossible with other rigid devices whose carabiner hole is too small, so the considerations I mentioned above may be of less concern than I suggested. The fact remains that, at the end of the day, there is still no good reason not to use the belay loop.

Syd wrote: Metolius SafeTech harnesses remove this concern with double belay loops.

As does the BD Big Gun. However, the point of the dual belay loops is not really for redundancy, but rather to simplify operations in a multi-pitch environment. Although I have never found them to really simplify things that much. There really is not much I can do with a dual belay loop that I cannot do with a single.

When I belay using a harness with dual belay loops, typically I only clip one. Since the chance of belay loop failure is almost zero, clipping both yields virtually no advantage. However, if I clip both, the chance of crossloading the carabiner increase as I now have roughly 1 3/8" of webbing running through the biner as opposed to 11/16" (the belay loops sit side-by-side, not under-and-over).

3 pages really? Tie in through leg and waist, belay/rappel off the loop. End of discussion.

Not to open up another can of worms, but how do people feel about personal anchors girthed through belay loops. I was taught that all soft materials go through the hard points since they're reinforced to take the nylon on nylon wear, but I see tons of people girthing slings and PAS systems through the belay loop. Thoughts?

Can opened.
Soft stuff through tie in points. Hard stuff in belay loop. Can closed.