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Not all who belay can belay

Greg D · · Here · Joined Apr 2006 · Points: 883
The Phoenix wrote: I call complete BS on this one Greg... sorry man but pls explain to me how the rope continues to feed through the grigri when you're holding the breaking end and the climber is falling... I'll hang out and wait for a plausible explanation...
Perhaps you misunderstood me. I agree with your above statement. The only reason I chimed in here was a few people thought it was a good idea to teach people to just let go of everything. What I was saying is that the gri doesn't lock 100% of the time by itself. A hand on the brake is essential. That's all. But if someone is cool with their belayer going hands free, that is their business.
M Mobley · · Bar Harbor, ME · Joined Mar 2006 · Points: 911

before the grigri came out it was rare the belayer could jerk one off while belaying safely

Guy Keesee · · Moorpark, CA · Joined Mar 2008 · Points: 349

MJM.... are you tryin to say it was(is) a rare belayer who could use one hand only??????????????????

Or use one hand to belay?

And Locker has good form.... holding his head up like that, belayer neck?

Marek Sapkovski · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Jun 2013 · Points: 65
TheBirdman wrote: ATC for trad and multipitch; softer catches and lighter weight with the same functionality.
Actually, in my humble view. a near-perfect belay system for a two-person team is a Gri-Gri + Reverso (or any other auto-lock plus auto-block pair of belay devices). Works fairly well on free big walls and alpine rock routes that use single rope. The benefits of that system outweigh (sorry for the pun) the extra 90g that you have to carry.
J Q · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Mar 2012 · Points: 50

I have been doing this long enough to know all about the slow fall you are talking about. Don't top rope on the gri and it won't happen, especially if you are a 13 year old girl who eats helium.

Most importantly, a 10.2 will never, ever, fail to catch in any gri if a fall occurs. Unless some asshole holds down the lever and then lies to you afterward, you are all good. These are simply foolish little rants, created by lawyers and imbecile. No imbecile likes to admit that he held the auto lock device down, of course not, that was mechanical error!!! Talk about a good one that everyone has heard before.

That fat ass 10.2 can barely feed, it cannot accidentally slip through the device if a real fall occurs. You wanna know how I know? From actual experience, not from some website. And there you have it. I am simply trying to explain what every sport climber knows, your argument are simply policies designed to eliminate liability.

Still I keep my hand on the rope, but that has never caught a fall.

Locker · · Yucca Valley, CA · Joined Oct 2002 · Points: 2,349
"And Locker has good form.... holding his head up like that, belayer neck?"

No! It's Weiner neck caused by the two hand thing. Stand me up (in the photo) and you'll notice that my head is actually tilted down.
rgold · · Poughkeepsie, NY · Joined Feb 2008 · Points: 526

Well, I’m certainly an old fart, in fact an older and fartier old fart then the majority of mere pretender old farts here, but I (naturally!) don’t find myself and my fellow aged ones deserving of the blanket scorn recently being heaped upon us.

I think the belay debate, to the extent that it pits old against young and sport against trad is primarily an opportunity for folks with grudges to mouth off. The latest rants about “experience” strike me as missing the point too. What matters in belaying, if we may assume knowledge of the appropriate techniques (yes, I know, we can’t always assume that much) is attentiveness. I’ve seen plenty of failures in this department occur across the spectrum of age, experience, and preferred genre of climbing and, so, as far as I can tell, there are no intrinsic advantages to any of those categories.

I will repeat here something I’ve been saying for a long time, and that is that I don’t think ATC-type devices provide enough friction for stopping the type of big leader falls that can occur in trad multipitch situations, especially when the ropes in question are on the thinner side.

I climb primarily with double 8.5’s, and I don’t fully trust myself to be able to hold, say, a UIAA standard fall on a single strand with any ATC on the market except possibly the DMM Bugette and the Metolius BRD, both of which impose handling problems as the price for their high-friction properties. I say this as someone who has held twenty or so UIAA standard falls with a 180 lb weight and one factor-two fall in the real world, all of these with a hip belay. Given that no one practices this type of thing any more, I am arguably as “experienced” a person as it is possible to find when it comes to high belay impacts, and my opinion, for whatever it is worth, is neither hypothetical nor based on other people’s accounts of their experiments.

Of course, the majority of falls are not a problem to catch, regardless of the device employed. Indeed, one could interpret the current interest in soft catches (invented, studied, and practiced nearly seventy years ago but now newly new) to be evidence that most of the time it is a bit too easy to just stop falls.

I think that assisted locking devices are the way to go. I use an Alpine UP, which I think is the best of the lot for effective handling of double ropes, but the Mammut Smart, which is not as good for double rope handling, seems to be considerably more appreciated for single ropes. Other possibilities exist, but at least at present their drawbacks do not seem to merit mentioning them.

Locker · · Yucca Valley, CA · Joined Oct 2002 · Points: 2,349
"older and fartier old fart"

Remind me not to EVER be in a closed room with you.
rgold · · Poughkeepsie, NY · Joined Feb 2008 · Points: 526
VaGenius wrote:RGold, how'd you learn about/acquire an Alpine Up?
I think I learned about it originally by reading an account of one of the big trade shows. The suspicions I mentioned about the potential inadequacy of plates has kept me looking for better mousetraps. I did a little internet stalking and found the company, Climbing Technology, climbingtechnology.it/en-US… , and their page on the Alpine UP, climbingtechnology.it/en-US…. A bit more sleuthing showed that the device is distributed in the US by Liberty Mountain: libertymountain.com/product…. So I went to my friends at Rock and Snow in New Paltz rockandsnow.com/store/ and asked them to order me one.

It didn't take me long to be convinced it is the best thing for handling half rope belaying, and it also provides an autolocking rappel. The good folks at Rock and Snow, although skeptical, decided to try it out themselves and almost immediately ended up buying their own. They continued to appreciate it so decided to carry it rockandsnow.com/store/filte…, probably one of the few stores in the US to have it.

Warning: if you are interested: it is relatively large, heavy, and expensive. I don't think it handles at all well with ropes above 10mm. It also tends to twist rappel ropes, although in my case not as bad as the Smart, which I tried and sold. I find it to be worth these downsides, YMMV.

Sorry, I can't compare it to the Kong Ghost. I know some people who like the Ghost for skinny ropes, but I don't know anyone no who has compared the Ghost to an assisted locking device.
rob.calm · · Loveland, CO · Joined May 2002 · Points: 630

The problems addressed in this thread cannot be resolved in a definite fashion. Namely, is it safer to belay with device A or device B? A belay failure resulting in an accident is a rare event so that it is impossible to do a controlled experiment in which one large group is given an ATC to belay with and a control group is given a Grigri. After a season of climbing, one could compare belay accidents in the two groups.

So all we can do is guess with some guesses being more educated than others. Grigris are fine devices, but it appeared that after climbers began using them, there was an increase in belay accidents. I don’t know of any data to support this, I’m just saying that it seemed one heard about more belay accidents. If this be the case, there could be two reasons. The first is that using the Grigri changed climbers behavior. Since the Grigri was supposed to be inherently safer than an ATC, climbers became careless in how they belayed.

There is reliable data from Australia that showed bicycle injuries seemed to increase after the introduction of compulsory helmet laws. A common explanation was that wearing helmets made riders feel safer and so they rode more recklessly. This is a plausible conjecture. I read some time ago that a similar phenomenon occurred in England after the introduction of compulsory seatbelt laws, viz., there was an increase in injuries to front seat passengers, who were now riding in cars driven by those who felt immune to the danger of going fast.

Another possibility is that the Grigri being more complicated than the ATC is more susceptible to being used incorrectly.

In the case of the Reverso type devices, the conjecture that changed belayer behavior and complexity of the device has increased accidents seems more likely than for Grigri. With the introduction of guide-mode belaying there has been reported a number of accidents belaying seconds, something almost unheard of prior to the introduction of guide-mode belaying.

Let me add a historical coda. Several in this thread have mentioned that belaying with an ATC reduces the impact force on the gear compared to a Grigri. When Sticht plates were first introduced into climbing, the argument was made that they were unsafe since they increased the forces in catching a fall compared to a hip belay. Ed Leeper, a prominent designer of aid gear, quite eloquently expressed this point of view. There is some truth to it. If one is really concerned about gear pulling, it might be safer to use a hip belay (Disclosure: I haven’t used one in over 30 years).

Cheers,

Rob.calm

Syd · · Unknown Hometown · Joined May 2013 · Points: 0

Bearbreeder is absolutely right about the correct way to use a Gri Gri. Bearbreeder even gave an example of an accident resulting from incorrect use of a Gri Gri.

Why should following the manufacturer's instructions be so difficult for some ? The answer became apparent when some gullible fool announced that he was a true believer in the global warming scam. Any true believer should please provide evidence to support their claim that man has caused any of the warming since the Little Ice Age ... the warming that stopped 2 decades ago. They might also provide evidence why the Gri Gri's manufacturers don't understand the device they manufacture.

camhead · · Vandalia, Appalachia · Joined Jun 2006 · Points: 1,240

This three part article is pretty relevant to some of the comments here. Short version: if you climb multipitch trad with a skinny rope, don't use an ATC-type device.

gear.com/rope-thickness-and…

FrankPS · · Atascadero, CA · Joined Nov 2009 · Points: 276

^^^^

That is a good article. Although there are many factors involved (ropes, gloves, belay devices, etc.), it reinforces why I don't need a super-skinny rope.

The Pheonix · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Apr 2013 · Points: 60
bearbreeder wrote: hold the brake and none of this becomes an issue how hard is it to keep a brake hand on?
We are in full agreement about this... But slippage to me assumes the device is locked and the rope is slipping through (this I would love to see vid of because it doesn't exist if ur using spec ropes). The device not locking because you don't have any resistance on the brake end is, to me misuse. The Gri Gri does not require a sharp tug of force to make it lock as others have said, it requires force and some form of resistance on the brake end of the rope to trigger the cam. The report u mention above BBreeder, clearly leaves the error up to human use and that slick ropes might have contributed (and I would argue contributed because the lower the friction at the cam and increase the resistance required on the brake end to trigger the cam.) Contributed yes, caused no. Cause = belayer misused device.
The Pheonix · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Apr 2013 · Points: 60
VaGenius wrote:I had a beal 10+ mil that pissed through a Gri Gri like water. I got rid of both. Infrequent but not impossible.
While you've got your hand on the brake end, the device is locked and under full weight of the climber and the rope is running through the device like piss??? I call BS...
M Mobley · · Bar Harbor, ME · Joined Mar 2006 · Points: 911

maybe VaGinaous had a greasy rope? it is a possibility, that or there was too much drag before the anchor

I also want to see a video of a 10.anything slipping through a weighted grigri with anyone besides a 12 year old girl full of helium weighting it

I think I'm whipping out a Kong figure 8 from my vast collection of figure 8s for tomorrow(when I go to send my 5.7+ project;) just to mix things up. I know I can give a soft catch with an 8, especially if I rig it just right

10 pages?

The Pheonix · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Apr 2013 · Points: 60
Guy Keesee wrote:if it's stupid to just let go of the thing... how can you depend on it to work if your belayer gets knocked out by falling rock? ( i'm more worried about my partners having strokes or heart attacks ) and yes I usuly use it just like an ATC, brake hand ready... aim the rope to get more or less friction etc. But I was at Malibux and one of the youngsters was there, he had a brand new, 9.2 something, hands me his Grigri 2... after putting the rope through it I couldn't get it to "lock" upto my satisfaction, so I switched back to the ATC with gloves. It was still hard to work the rope....and stop the many falls (poor rope) I was wishing I had my old device for belaying with twins. Thanks for the clarification...
First off, the 9.2 is way to small and I would not have like that setup either. I often let go of the brake end of the rope if I need to do something quickly BUT I always have contact w/ the brake end (foot stepping on rope etc, like mobes stated). This is more then enough to trigger the cam under any fall condition.

As for the emergency scenarios, there are many I can come up with but they all sorta go like this, climber gabs flake, flake breaks and both climber and flake are in free fall. Belayer catches climber, rockfall proceeds to continue falling to base and kills belayer. You are still locked off on device, w/ ATC - no question you are both dead or critically injured. Here's another. Climber take massive whipper, belayer is yanked forward towards cliff and is about to smash his face into wall. Great belayer and friend maybe be able to focus enough to hold rope while face is smashed in, most will let go because our instinct is to protect ourselves above all else. Likelyhood is belay throws up arms to protect themselves from wall and easily can drop brake end. If ur using a GriGri it has already locked when its dragging belayer to wall and you cannot be dropped, with ATC second belayer drops rope, you deck. Last one, your climbing flake rips off, you don't fall. Flack plummets to base of cliff and kills belayer, you are now leading, say 10 ft above gear with a body and a gri gri on the other end of the rope. You get scurd and pump out, falling 20 ft. That fall will trigger the cam and you will have a catch. Another ending to that is you are near gear or bolt, you climb down to that pull taught on the rope to engage the cam and ease yourself onto the locked end of rope. In every one of these very real scenarios, w/ atc you'd likely be dead.
J Q · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Mar 2012 · Points: 50
bearbreeder wrote: but it can slip fairly easily on a tendon ambition 10.2mm even under body weight ... ;)
Nope, not buying it, prove it

VaGenius wrote:I had a beal 10+ mil that pissed through a Gri Gri like water. .
Nope, common Killis, you don't expect someone who has been climbing their whole life to believe this do you?

I love these fairy tales, because that is what they are, fairy tales. Neither of you has seen a 10.1 piss or slip through a gri-gri. It does make for good ghost stories though.
Frank Stein · · Albuquerque, NM · Joined Feb 2012 · Points: 205

I have been using an original gri gri since 1994, got the version 2 the first year it came out. Still use the original in a gym or when I need two devices. I have used the original on a rope as skinny as a 9.7 and I am currently using the 2 on a 9.2. I have also caught a fall on an 8.9 with the two. Never have I had any issues whatsover with the device not locking up or slipping once activated. I do use a HB Sherriff or a SMC stitch plate (whichever I grab first from gear box) on anything other than single pitch cragging do to versatility, but I also wonder about the veracity of gri gri failure stories as I have never experienced this first hand.

Tom-onator · · trollfreesociety · Joined Feb 2010 · Points: 790
The Pheonix wrote:Flack plummets to base of cliff and kills belayer, you are now leading, say 10 ft above gear with a body and a gri gri on the other end of the rope. You get scurd and pump out, falling 20 ft. That fall will trigger the cam and you will have a catch.
Can we debate the ethics of continuing to climb with a dead belayer?
Bernie the belayer
Guideline #1: Don't be a jerk.

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