Not all who belay can belay

Peter D. wrote:Jim - I'm curious what's not correct? " Its when you pull the braking side of the rope that the cam rotates to brake the rope" - this is taken directly from Petzl's GriGri PDF.

Here is the exact legal language from their pdf:
"When a climber falls, the GRIGRI 2 pivots on the carabiner, the rope becomes taut and the cam pinches the rope, applying a braking force to it. The brake hand (holding the braking side of the rope) helps engage the cam, so you must always hold the braking side of the rope."

(a) Legalities aside, it is pretty obvious from the construction that it is the loading of the climber end of the rope that activates the cam.
(b) I would imagine that non-shock loading of the rope (e.g. slide down a slab) can result in some slippage of rope and delayed locking. It is to be kept in mind.
(c) You can give a soft catch with a GriGri - soft catch is mainly a function of the belayers body and sufficient amount of slack in the system.
(d) As I said, in my opinion, a combination of a GriGri and a guide plate device is the best belaying system for multi-pitch and big walls.

J Q wrote:If someone shows up to a mountaineering expedition with a Gri I would say the same, this person is fucking dangerous!

Does that include alpine rock? If yes, would you say that Blake Herrington is "fucking dangerous"?

The Phoenix wrote:You realize that there are many things in that statement that don't make any sense and bring into question the belayer's account? Do you want to point them out and explain or should I? Okay I will since you missed them... First off how does the climber take? Or does he mean fell? Or does he mean he took, and if he took then woudln't the device be locked? SO how would he then lower them without disengaging the brake? Right... so obviously that wasn't what he meant. So first is really what did the climber do? If the climber fell and THATs what he meant... pls explain to me how/why you lower someone simultanously when they are falling without removing your hand from the rope and not letting rope flow through the device ;-) oh right. This is impossible to do and totally contraditory. This account is riddled with issues and speaks to the fact that the user is a noob and doesn't even know how to get the terminology correct. I can tell you the only time I've seen a gri gri slip is when the user tries to catch the weight with the other hand on the climbers side. Then it slips a few feet until the belayer releases (putting the weight back on the cam) and locking the rope. And sure feel free to contact Petzl... I'd love to hear or see of an actual account where a device was locked and the rope kept on sliding through. Or a drop test with someone holding the brake end of the rope and the rope sliding through the gri gri while they hold firmly onto the rope. There's plenty of people who do drop tests and publish them on here... maybe they can test this out ;-) I'd gladly back off from this pedestal, only problem is I've been using gri gri for almost 2/3'rd of my life and for almost 20 years, for work, for play, for thousands of hours and NEVER had a grigri ever creep or slip even an inch on me when locked or when I had one hand firmly on the brake end. Oh and I use down to 9.8, those of u going lower then this what do you expect??? Either way I absolutely maintain that when used properly with the correct ropes and your hand holding the brake end it's 100% everytime will lock w/o slipping.

The climber had a bolt at his waist and said "take", so I did. He hung on the rope-I had my hand on the brake side-and with the rope stretch the GriGri did not catch. I let some rope feed through and after a few inches of slipping the GriGri caught. That is what I mean.

I have been actively climbing for over 20 year, and I have only seen this occur on one day. I do think the amount of wear on the GriGri contributed to the slippage, but it is something to keep in mind.

Elijah Flenner wrote: I have been actively climbing for over 20 year, and I have only seen this occur on one day.

yeah but you probably never ever whip repeatedly in the gym so...

MJMobes wrote: yeah but you probably never ever whip repeatedly in the gym so...

Nice. I do think that the GriGri would have caught if someone took a fall; actually I know that it would since it did on my falls that day. We never took our brake hands off the rope, so we did not have any issues all day. The point was that a GriGri can slip. It took me 13 years of using one to see it, and since this is such a rare occurrence that, statistically, some people would not see it in their lifetime. That does not mean that the slippage does not happen. There are other scenarios that could make it slip.

The real question is, why not take every reasonable precaution? My belayer and I kept our break hand on the rope all day, and had no issues-like The Pheonix advocates-even though he does not seem to want to believe me that the rope slipped.

Peter D. wrote:Jim - I'm curious what's not correct? " Its when you pull the braking side of the rope that the cam rotates to brake the rope" - this is taken directly from Petzl's GriGri PDF.

The Grigri was developed from an industrial fall-arrest device which in turn was developed from a rope-solo device, both of which are naturally hands-free.
The earlier Grigris were marketed as automatic.
The patent describes it as a "self-arresting rope belay device".
Current Grigris are certified to pr EN15151-1Typ6 and carry a UIAA Safety Label. The dynamic performance part of this certification is a hands-free drop test.

" Its when you pull the braking side of the rope that the cam rotates to brake the rope"
Well they must have a simpler version for the Americans, the English version says:-
"Working Principle.
When a climber falls, the GriGri2 pivots on the karabiner, the rope comes taught and the cam pinches the rope, applying a braking force to it. The brake hand (holding the braking side of the rope)helps engage the cam, so you must always hold the braking side of the rope."

Ignoring the vile use of commas and Petzl´s obvious confusion of what is the braking or braked rope the operating principle is clearly stated, that holding the dead rope helps doesn´t change this.

VaGenius wrote: ^^^wow. By this logic, if Tommy Caldwell works a route on a fat rope before taking his 9.1 out, he does not know what leading is. Stephen Hawking, your intellectual heir is at your heels.... And I agree with part of your second statement.

Exactly. I have climbed with guys who can onsight 5.13a but climb on some shitty 11mm rope. Some climbers are broke as shit and so they climb on the same thick rope forever.

I climb on a 10.5mm occasionally. I prefer a 9.4mm, but at the end of the day I have never failed to send a route because my rope was too thick. In fact, the hardest route I have ever sent (.12d) was on an old, shitty 10.3mm.

Jim Titt wrote: Current Grigris are certified to pr EN15151-1Type 6 and carry a UIAA Safety Label. The dynamic performance part of this certification is a hands-free drop test.

Jim probably has a copy of the pr EN 15151 Type 6 standard, but as far as I can tell you need a hundred bucks or so to look at it.

The dynamic component of the UIAA standard, theuiaa.org/upload_area/cer…, prescribes a fall of approximately FF 1.8 to be held by the device (hands-free) with a brake-strand tail of no more than 2m (so very little rope weight on the brake strand side), and specifies that under those circumstances there can be no more than 1.5m slippage of the brake strand.

The UIAA definition of "assisted locking" is that the device may require manual control to avoid slipping under low loads but must pass the above hands-free dynamic test for high loads. However, the standard does not proclaim that the test in question certifies hands-free use in all applications. In fact,

"The dynamic performance test may not represent appropriate use of the braking device. The device must always be used according to the manufacturer’s instructions, which may prescribe the necessity to always keep a hand on the free end of the rope and forbid the use of the device without a runner between the belayer and the climber."

VaGenius wrote: ^^^wow. By this logic, if Tommy Caldwell works a route on a fat rope before taking his 9.1 out, he does not know what leading is. Stephen Hawking, your intellectual heir is at your heels.... .

You seriously think a sponsored climber like Tommy takes a heavy over kill pig out just because that is what you would do? No one wants to drag heavy pigs up Yosemite just for fun, except all the poor climbers on MP ;)

Give me a break. He is not worried about the wear bra, it's called free gear.

Marek Sapkovski wrote: Does that include alpine rock? If yes, would you say that Blake Herrington is "fucking dangerous"?

Fuck yea Blake is dangerous. Next time he is in SW I am gonna have to tell him and his dangerous fucking dog that they are in fact dangerous, and not just for their little antics in the mountains. Haven't seen him in two years, so you might have to pass on the message.

I loved my ten mil rope fellas, and I am cheap, but I haven't used that rope in over 15 years, it stayed in the 1990's with the rest of the bumble-chuff gear like ATC's, Big Bro's, and hexes.

There people who place priority on performance and are willing to sacrifice time, money, and effort to achieve it.

There are people who place priority on what ever ritual they developed over 10 years ago and are willing to deny reality, create bizarre arguments, and continue the charade just to justify their bizarre ritual.

Now for my bizarre ritual . . . .

Ryan Nevius wrote:I always make sure that my first few routes or pitches with a new partner are soloable. I treat these pitches as solos, while observing their attentiveness, technique, and apparent level of comfort. I have downclimbed (rather than lowering) from a climb due to belayer incompetence.

Huh? Utter nonsense imho.

Either you are safe or you are not. It IS that simple. I climb safe.

coldfinger wrote: Huh? Utter nonsense imho. Either you are safe or you are not. It IS that simple. I climb safe.

What Ryan described is safe. It's the new belayer he's concerned about. Not that hard to understand.

downclimbing is the next new cool thing really after DWS, stacking crates and highlining.

Tom-o Sapien wrote: ^^THIS^^ It's not the device used that's important but the attention given to the leader. That is the issue at hand.

Except Tom, you seemed to miss a VERY important point of this, for lack of a better term, discussion.

• If your belayer is incapacitated (rockfall, some other injury) the choice of your belay device could very well mean your life.

If, according to petzl,the gri isn't a hands free device, how am I to roll and light a spliff while homie is hanging through el project? !

I may need to reassess my level of involvement in this sport

"how am I to roll and light a spliff while homie is hanging through el project? !"

oh- David you can learn how to do that one handed..... one time I knew a cowgirl and she could do that with one hand.... take some practice.

that shit sounds crazy dangerous guys, belaying is much safer with a one hitter.

I just thought I would relate a recent climbing day to this shitpile of a thread. The other day, a friend and I got to the crag after a 20 minute approach. We then realized that he had brought the only rope, an 8.7mm, and I had brought the only belay device, my 10-year-old, worn down, Original Gri Gri (OGGG). Well, we also had a tube style rap device, but really, who the hell is going to belay on that? Not either of us, hehe.

Anyway, we both acknowledged that it was not an ideal situation to belay such a skinny rope with the OGGG, but that it was more ideal than wasting 40 minutes on one of the shortest days of the year to go get his Gri Gri 2.0 (now with WiFi, 4g, and HD!) out of the car. We just agreed to be a little more careful and vigilant in belaying than we would have been otherwise.

I proceeded to fall off the warmup (I'll admit that it was 11a, just so all you internet commentors can have the proper ammunition to call me a fucking n00b who is going to die). Then my friend fell on the first go of his project. We caught each other's falls, kept our brake hands on probably a bit more than if we'd had a fatter cord or a GG2.0, and used an additional friction point for lowering, just in case, but it was a non-issue for the most part, and we had a great and non-eventful day of cragging.

Here's the thing: if one of us had cratered due to a rope slipping through the gri gri, it would have been the BELAYER'S fault, not the gear's, and not even the fact that we used a super skinny cord with the wrong device. An accident report on this site or in a mag would have said, "they climbed with the wrong technical specifications!" but the reality would have been that the belayer was a shitty belayer not doing his job.

Moral of the story, trust your partner more than the gear. That is all.

Guy Keesee wrote: "how am I to roll and light a spliff while homie is hanging through el project? !" oh- David you can learn how to do that one handed..... one time I knew a cowgirl and she could do that with one hand.... take some practice.

She musta' been one rad chick...

Cowgirls are like that.... :>)

One hand on the Horse, one hand doing the rolling.... multitasking at its best.

camhead wrote:I just thought I would relate a recent climbing day to this shitpile of a thread. .

That was a huge turd to add to such a shitpile.