Another Accident due to mis-use of the Gri-gri

20 kN wrote: I think his reasoning is that if you are pulling down on the climber strand (that is, toward you as a belayer) then it can cause a new belayer to instinctively and inadvertently try to catch the fall by letting go of the GriGri brake strand and instead trying to simply "grab" the rope without the assist of the belay device.

Nope. Completely wrong. First, I'm not "reasoning". I have direct, personal experience. I've also, twice, seen it happen from a few feet away. I've spoken to several people who've been dropped and to belayers who have dropped partners. Luckily, only one (now two) of the people decked.

This type of accident has been reported several times in the last few years here on MP. It's happened to very experienced belayers; some of whom you've seen in the magazines. I suppose there's many more incidents world-wide.

If you hold the climbers side of the rope hard enough, the Gri-gri will not lock, regardless of whether you have a hold of the brake side. The classic evidence is rope-burn on one or both of the belayer's hands, or gloves. If they have a glove on their left hand, the climber is more likely to hit the deck.

Here's an easy experiment: Have your partner climb up something steep and take. Gri-gri's locked, no problem. Now, grab the climbers-strand and pull kinda hard. The Gri-gri will unlock, and the rope will start moving, even though you have a good hold on the brake-strand.

Don't believe me? Go try it, and try not to drop your partner.

John Byrnes wrote: If you hold the climbers side of the rope hard enough, the Gri-gri will not lock, regardless of whether you have a hold of the brake side. .

What do you mean by hard enough? As in you try to resist the falling climber using your non-brake hand on the climber-side of the rope in such a manner that the GriGri does not experience a load initially, but your hand does instead?

If you're so sure of this phenomena, record an example and upload it to YouTube, post it here and send it to Petzl. If you know of a way for the device to fail while using the recommended belay technique outlined in Petzl's video, I am sure they would like to see it.

Brian Scoggins wrote: So my options are: choose to climb with people who know what they are doing

But everyone thinks they know what they are doing. That's the problem. I'm trying to educate people about this particular Gri-gri failure mode because few climbers, especially some in Estes Park, seem to know about it.

Brian Scoggins wrote:Buy another device and continue to operate under the erroneous belief that its the device, and not the user, that causes these accidents. The single, unassailable thing to take away from all of these accidents (with gri-gris, cinchs, smart alpines, VRCs, Mega-Juls, etc) is that no device is idiot-proof, and the most important single cause of belay accidents is some idiot like yourself promoting any device as idiot-proof.

Yes, exactly! ALL the devices are good, including the Gri-gri (I have two). But, as you say, they ALL can fail if not used properly.

Emil Briggs wrote: I don't use a Grigri so I'm wondering how much friction you get when it doesn't lock if the brake hand is held like you would with an ATC?

Essentially zero.

Tradoholic wrote:Buy one of these and stop worrying: mammut.ch/en/productDetail/… edelrid.de/en/Edelrid/Sport…

Folks around here have been dropped or near-dropped by the smart

That device is not "foolproof" no device is

And i own and use all versions of the smart extensively

Ive observed that assisted braking sevices lead to bad habbits with newer belayers and even experienced ones as well

Over and over again ive seen bad habits and lazyness with grigris, smarts, etc ...

And ive caught myself more than once making those same mistakes, despite being what most would consider to be a "good belayer" ... Anyone whose honest will admit the same

So ive taken to keep using and catching falls on th atc every now and then, in thr gym if nothing else to keep in practice

Grigris, smart and othet assisted devices are great if used properly ... However look closely next time yr at the crag and youll see even experienced belayers get lazy with em

20 kN wrote: What do you mean by hard enough? As in you try to resist the falling climber using your non-brake hand on the climber-side of the rope in such a manner that the GriGri does not experience a load initially, but your hand does instead?

Basically, yes. From my crude experiments, all you really need to do is pull on the climbers-strand harder than the brake-strand. You're an engineer, right? Go experiment.

20 kN wrote:If you're so sure of this phenomena, record an example and upload it to YouTube, post it here and send it to Petzl. If you know of a way for the device to fail while using the recommended belay technique outlined in Petzl's video, I am sure they would like to see it.

Do you really think they don't know? When it happened in Rifle this October one of the Petzl reps was actually watching. Doh! Luckily, the Gri-gri locked with the climber about 10 feet off the ledge. Belayer's hand was burned.

as to "grabbing the climbers side of the rope"

Grabbing the climber’s rope in a fall. This reduces the pull on the device and prevents it from fully engaging.

climbing.com/skill/grigri-b…

and 6-7 minutes in ... a video everyone should watch

youtube.com/watch?v=FHdqjjy…

vimeo.com/80481246

Here's a Petzl video briefly discussing what John is warning.

Relevant section starts at 5:54. At 6:06 "If you grip the climber's side of the rope too tightly, you run the risk of reducing or even negating the grigri's braking ability."

idahomike wrote:Seriously, what's the obsession with the GriGri?

Mountain Project and Supertopo secretly subsidize the production of the Grigri in order to keep forum traffic and pageview numbers going.

I hope this clears things up.

philip bone wrote:To get rope burns on both hands it may have been fed backwards.

You mean loaded backwards. A good thought, but my source told me the Gri-gri was loaded correctly.

I don't have the gear to test it but i don't think it would be to hard to test pulling the climber side of a grigri at different forces to find the area where you would still fall fast enough to get hurt but not fast enough for it to catch.

I only use them for belaying from the top on multipitches but i know they will slip a little because it takes time for them to lock if someone falls, the problem area is really grabbing the climber side in such a way to slow the rope preventing the lock or your hand blocking the locker. I always have a hand on the break side but I have never had issues with it not breaking for me.

I generally don't like people to belay me with them from below, If they don't know how to use a normal atc I don't want them belaying me.

It has been known for at least seven years that Gri gri's can fail to lock if the fall is "slow," as in a climber sagging onto a "take." (See, for example, thebmc.co.uk/gri-gri-unmask…). There has to be a certain level or rope acceleration to get the cam to engage, and if that doesn't happen the rope can run. Once the rope is running, the cam may or may not engage.

If the feeding hand is suitably locked on the rope as JB describes it could reduce the acceleration enough to interfere with or prevent locking, a possibility that Petzl acknowledges in the video and Rock and Ice explains in the linked Gri gri technique article. Petzl also says ( petzl.com/en/Sport/Belaying…),

"Another bad belayer reflex is to grip the climber side of the rope. In this case, the belayer burns his hand with the rope and worse, prevents the GRIGRI's cam from rotating, which then cannot brake the rope. Here also, the climber falls to the ground."

So there is a real problem that should be understood and compensated for.

I get where JB is coming from with the modified feeding hand grip. It is really hard for any belayer to catch a fall without fully gripping with their feeding hand as well as the braking hand---I think its a reflex you'd have to somehow untrain, and is even harder to do if you are being lifted by the fall. Think about what you end up doing with your feeding hand the next time you catch some falls. Still, I think it unlikely that many belayers will take consistently follow this advice.

High-friction situations make this type of Gri gri failure more likely, as would a fully extended feeding hand which couldn't itself be accelerated by the rope. In fact I suspect that a very high feeding hand gripping the rope hard is probably the cause of this type of locking failure, and this probably happens if the belayer is either trying really hard to pump out slack or take in slack and the fall happens at the moment of full extension.

Can we make this thread a sticky?

This is becoming more and more of a problem.

I honestly hope those injured have a safe and speedy recovery.

Dylan I loaded a gri gri backwards and lowered someone off it. I wouldn't say it's zero friction at all. It's technically different from a properly loaded gri gri that's failing to catch, but I would imagine the friction would be similar either way.

so....essentially what I'm reading from this, and numerous other threads about Gri-Gri vs Whatever Else is that we need to double check our belayer's system and that our belayer needs to keep their hands on the brake side of the device?? Guys/Gals....this is some groundbreaking shit right here.

John Byrnes wrote:THIS TYPE OF ACCIDENT IS HAPPENING FAR TOO OFTEN.

Which type of accident? The type involving a Gri-gri or the type involving not holding the brake hand? Why do you think they are happening "far too often" and not just a little too often? I don't hear of them often.

rgold wrote: Petzl also says ( petzl.com/en/Sport/Belaying…), "Another bad belayer reflex is to grip the climber side of the rope. In this case, the belayer burns his hand with the rope and worse, prevents the GRIGRI's cam from rotating, which then cannot brake the rope. Here also, the climber falls to the ground." So there is a real problem that should be understood and compensated for.

Thanks rgold, and also to Chad and Bearbreader.

rgold wrote: I get where JB is coming from with the modified feeding hand grip. It is really hard for any belayer to catch a fall without fully gripping with their feeding hand as well as the braking hand---I think its a reflex you'd have to somehow untrain, and is even harder to do if you are being lifted by the fall. Think about what you end up doing with your feeding hand the next time you catch some falls. Still, I think it unlikely that many belayers will take consistently follow this advice. High-friction situations make this type of Gri gri failure more likely, as would a fully extended feeding hand which couldn't itself be accelerated by the rope. In fact I suspect that a very high feeding hand gripping the rope hard is probably the cause of this type of locking failure, and this probably happens if the belayer is either trying really hard to pump out slack or take in slack and the fall happens at the moment of full extension.

Exactly. We need to make people aware of the problem, and re-train some habits.

What often happens, as you say, is that the belayer sees that the climber is about to fall. They brace themselves; taking what I call the Tug-of-War-Pose. The left hand is high and grasping the rope, brake-hand is low, next to their hip.

If they're holding the climbers-rope too tightly, the Gri-gri can't lock even with the brake hand holding on. The reflex, in this moment of surprise and confusion, is to grasp both ropes even tighter, which does little to stop the rope.

By making people aware of the problem, we can take away the surprise and engender better habits, and perhaps save our friends.

I'm guessing that the ratio of long-non-injury falls to injury falls caused by this failure-mode is about 10 to 1. If no one is hurt, it doesn't get reported, eh? And since few belayers talk about their fuck-ups around the campfire, the message doesn't get around.

John Byrnes wrote: Nope. Completely wrong. First, I'm not "reasoning". I have direct, personal experience. I've also, twice, seen it happen from a few feet away. I've spoken to several people who've been dropped and to belayers who have dropped partners. Luckily, only one (now two) of the people decked. This type of accident has been reported several times in the last few years here on MP. It's happened to very experienced belayers; some of whom you've seen in the magazines. I suppose there's many more incidents world-wide. If you hold the climbers side of the rope hard enough, the Gri-gri will not lock, regardless of whether you have a hold of the brake side. The classic evidence is rope-burn on one or both of the belayer's hands, or gloves. If they have a glove on their left hand, the climber is more likely to hit the deck. Here's an easy experiment: Have your partner climb up something steep and take. Gri-gri's locked, no problem. Now, grab the climbers-strand and pull kinda hard. The Gri-gri will unlock, and the rope will start moving, even though you have a good hold on the brake-strand. Don't believe me? Go try it, and try not to drop your partner.

I hate to agree with Top Rope Hero, but John man, you are spouting off a little bit strongly about something that you aren't right about. Of course there is some truth to what you are saying, but the way in which you are presenting your point makes you come across as a know it all...and if you are going to do that, you better be close to 100% right about your point (which you are not even close to). As with most things in climbing (and life), there is a ton of gray area and denying that fact and making absolute statements just makes you sound naive and arrogant at the same time.

One might take the position that "once" is "far too often."

I have no idea whether accidents caused by Gri-gri's not locking are at all frequent. Surely they are an extremely tiny percentage of all held Gri-gri falls. I think the things described here (so not considering lowering accidents, which might be more frequent) require some pretty special circumstances to occur.

It would be interesting to do some experiments (gloved belayer, weights) to see if intentional gripping of the feeding hand can make the Gri-gri run in a leader fall. As I said before, my sense is that as long as the fall accelerates the gripped feeding hand, locking will occur, so unless the belayer is extremely strong and/or there is a large amount of friction in the system, it isn't going to matter much whether the feeding hand is gripping tightly or not.

As I said, the one possibly bad configuration is the feeding hand at full extension, in which case it can't be accelerated and might, if the other conditions are right, decrease rope acceleration enough to prevent locking. So I'd guess it would make sense to keep the feeding hand never nearly fully extended, and to be particularly careful in high-friction situations.

There was a comment about the Gri-gri still being an ATC if the cam doesn't rotate into the locked position. But I don't know how much friction you get from that ATC rope path; actual ATC devices vary considerably in the friction they provide. I've seen some situations, even top-rope situations, in which a young person and/or very light slender person either could not hold a bigger person with an ATC or could just barely hold them, so I would absolutely not count on a Gri-gri's braking ability if the cam isn't engaged.

I agree with the suggestions of several others that the real problem is assuming that assisted locking devices will provide automatic compensation for belayer inexperience. Every device has ways to be mishandled, and complacency about automatic locking is hard to avoid for everyone, not just beginners.

As technology improves, the absolute prohibition about ever releasing the brake hand has eroded, so far mostly in terms of upper "guide plate" belays, but even so has now become conditional rather than absolute. Moreover, as technology becomes more involved, the generic concept of "experience" is no longer valid. You can climb for forty years and be utterly inexperienced in the use of some new gadget; assuming those years of experience with other devices somehow confers competence with something new is a bad idea with potentially serious consequences. The true message of experience would be to realize when you are essentially a noob, no matter how long you've been climbing.

Tim Lutz wrote:OP, any details on the accident like a slow fall or grabbing of climbers rope as described above? Because from your post, I was about to melt my 1994 Gri down into a figure 8, but then I thought, hey, maybe I should get some facts before condemming THE estblished sport climbing device of the last 20 years!

The fall was on an overhanging-all-the-way sport route.

Don't melt your Gri-gri, I'm NOT condemning it. In my opinion it is the best device available for hard sport/project climbing and bolting.