Worst Belay Ever

Walt Barker wrote:As for worst belay, anything involving the belayer and a damn smartphone...

^This.

This one time at the Gunks, up on the GT ledge (i.e. several hundred feet off the deck), I saw a guy belaying someone with a gri-gri, lying flat on his back, smoking a cigarette one hand on his iphone. Status update: teehee...my partner thinks he's on belay...joke's on him!

Alexey Dynkin wrote: ^This. This one time at the Gunks, up on the GT ledge (i.e. several hundred feet off the deck), I saw a guy belaying someone with a gri-gri, lying flat on his back, smoking a cigarette one hand on his iphone. Status update: teehee...my partner thinks he's on belay...joke's on him!

Maybe he escaped thru a time warp from Wales in the 1950's. In which case I'd rather have him belaying me then most of the uptight yuppies posting up stream

Indoor climbing.

Climber is on a long horizontal roof route. Struggling to make a clip, he tries three times. Each time he pulls up more slack with the belayer blindly feeding out the rope (not pulling in any excess after each attempt). Third try to reach out and clip the draw results in the fall. Poor kid pops off and burns in from about 30ft, head first arms out in front of his head. Concussed and broke both his arms. Worst belay I've ever seen.

FrankPS wrote: Pretty sure he was joking. And maybe looking for a reaction. Which he got!

:) .... I thought that shortly after my post. Pretty sure you are dead on. I fell for it... good one ;)

General inattentiveness seems to be rampant these days.
I think we've all seen belayers who are distracted, disengaged, or doing something else. If I'm climbing in sight, I kind of expect my belayer to watch me--and anticipate. Am I climbing, clipping, falling? If they can see me, then they should know.

It's pretty easy to find folks who never even glance upward to the climber. And also, I guess, climbers who never even glance down to scope the quality of their belay. (That's critical!)

I might have trust issues, and I'm kind of old school, but I'm real careful about who is on the other end of my rope.
We all should be.

Eric LaRoche wrote:I don't know how you would feed rope to a lead climber without loosening your brake hand.

it's a matter of how much you loosen your grip. when you're paying out slack with an atc the rope is tensioned, allowing you to slide your hand while barely loosening your grip. on a TR belay that tension doesn't happen because you aren't pulling rope out above the device. without the tension, you have to loosen your grip significantly more.

i'm glad to say the worst i've seen was just someone lead belaying with a huge loop of slack (touching the ground) but the route was steep and the climber probably wouldn't have decked. i'm no saint, though, i've caught myself with one hand barely gripping the rope with my alpine smart. even though go hands free sometimes while rapping to deal with the rope caught in a tree or twisted or something, it still freaked me out when i noticed. needless to say, i took a break from the smart for a while

Nathan Self wrote:General inattentiveness seems to be rampant these days. I think we've all seen belayers who are distracted, disengaged, or doing something else. If I'm climbing in sight, I kind of expect my belayer to watch me--and anticipate. Am I climbing, clipping, falling? If they can see me, then they should know. It's pretty easy to find folks who never even glance upward to the climber. And also, I guess, climbers who never even glance down to scope the quality of their belay. (That's critical!) I might have trust issues, and I'm kind of old school, but I'm real careful about who is on the other end of my rope. We all should be.

So true. I wish one of my climbing partners would read this. He thinks it's OK to not watch me, as long as he catches my fall. Despite telling him probably eight times to keep his eyes locked on me when I'm leading, he doesn't (because I do look down, occasionally). Our days climbing together are numbered!

Edit: Apparently, I need to specify that the belayer does not need to move away from the wall to keep his eyes locked on me. As long as I'm within sight (while he's standing close to the rock), I want him to watch me.

Had the misfortune to climb with a fellow a number of years ago who believed that watching the leader was cheating, as it gave him info on how to execute moves. Seriously. Another person who climbed with him noted this and pointed out that he expected this **!( to give him the "deluxe belay," where he actually did watch the leader.

First and last time I ever climbed with that guy.

youtu.be/jd8VT7PfO1A Its 8 minutes long but well worth it to see an epic fail. Make sure you can hear what his belayer has to say after the action happens.

A skilled belayer should be able to belay safely without seeing the belayer

If not then you better not do multi with that person ... Or any climb with roofs, bulges, etc ... Where the climber will be out of sight

Forcing the belayer to "keep in visual" contact imposes certain risks as many times theyll need to stand farther away from the wall to keep in sight ... Especially on trad

Zippers, belayers dragged and slammed into the wall, belayers getting smoked by rock/ice fall, etc ... Its all happened

;)

That video is something else.

bearbreeder wrote:A skilled belayer should be able to belay safely without seeing the belayer If not then you better not do multi with that person ...

This is true. You guys are a bunch of whiners if you won't climb with someone who doesn't keep their eyes glued to your ass while your climbing. It's probably not as hot as you might like to imagine.

Talullah gorge georgia. No partner,but wanted to climb. Got permit to go into gorge. Hiked in found copperhaed snake in tree next to my face. Later on rim ranger and i see people climbing. Ranger says "they dont know what they are doing". I wanna climb. I go down into gorge to check it out. Arrive to 4 people at a random place...not the main cliff. One person climbing and falling repeatedly on "top rope". Belayer has no harness, guessing they only owned one. Belay consisted of a large piece of rod in the rock about 30' away from the cliff 1/2 ish in diameter with a square nut at the top about 1 1/2 inches diamter. There was a qiuck draw clipped around the metal rod then rotated so the smaller side of the biner "caught" under the nut. There was then a string of biners clipped to each other in a chain with an atc at the top on a non-locking biner.
Needness to say i decided a climbing-less day was fine.

Fajita Dave wrote:http://youtu.be/jd8VT7PfO1A Its 8 minutes long but well worth it to see an epic fail. Make sure you can hear what his belayer has to say after the action happens.

At least the first cam held!

The worst belays I have ever seen were when people got dropped in the gym...that aside here is my shameful story.

My friend, wife, and I went to Malibu Creek in the middle of a heat wave. It was the first time I had ever been outdoors climbing (been in the gym a few months and lead belayed MAYBE twice with little instruction). My friend hopped on an easy 5.10 over a bone breaking pile of rocks. Mid way up he stuck his hand into a pocket that happened to be full of wasps! He freaked, and me being the noob I was didn't have a solid grasp on the brake strand from my ATC. As he jumped with all his might away from the wasps pouring out from the hole I lost grip on the brake strand completely. Freaking out I grasped the climbers side of the rope with just my left hand and arrested his fall. I have no idea how I didn't end up with rope burn or a dead friend but I guess adrenaline and fear cause a serious strength boost (I would also assume the friction from the 'biners and the loosely hanging brake strand helped a bit). Since that day I learned proper technique and have always been an extremely solid belayer.

Does forgetting to clip into the auto-belay count?

bearbreeder wrote:A skilled belayer should be able to belay safely without seeing the belayer

"Skilled" being the operative word here. Most of the folks you see at the gym chattering with their neighbor or staring at their shoes don't exactly fall into that category.

Base of High E, just this past Friday.
Left hand holding rope above ATC.
Right hand smoking pot.
Facing away from cliff talking to friends.
5-10 feet of slack piled on the ground.

It was a group of DB NYC bros out with a guide. I later heard that "belayer" being reprimanded for taking out the directional, eventhough he had been instructed to reclip the trailing rope through all pieces. He was arguing back that he didn't take anything out. The guide said "you have gear on your harness. The only way that could have happened was for you to have taken it out and clipped it onto your harness."

A skilled belayer doesn't need to see their climber to give a good belay. But if my belayer can see me, I damn well expect them to watch me while I'm climbing. Different demands for entirely different situations. Just like a belayer may be forced to hang or sit on a ledge while belaying off the ground., this does excuse my belayer from standing and paying attention when on the ground where they are not forced to be tied to one location. Different demands for different situations.

Fajita Dave wrote:http://youtu.be/jd8VT7PfO1A Its 8 minutes long but well worth it to see an epic fail. Make sure you can hear what his belayer has to say after the action happens.

Only 1min in.... but omg can't he tell he's climbing pebbles glued together by mud? I was warned about this type of rock, we have some like it locally...

Updt: He just hit the ground and is getting back on... this gon' b good!

Wow... where a helmet everyone, he obviously never warned her to wear one. Every time he looked down, and you can see the top of her head, not even looking up to see potential falling debris. Glad this didn't turn out worse.

csproul wrote:A skilled belayer doesn't need to see their climber to give a good belay. But if my belayer can see me, I damn well expect them to watch me while I'm climbing. Different demands for entirely different situations. Just like a belayer may be forced to hang or sit on a ledge while belaying off the ground., this does excuse my belayer from standing and paying attention when on the ground where they are not forced to be tied to one location. Different demands for different situations.

a few years ago a group of us climbed at jupiter wall at heart creek in the canadian rockies

on the right side there is a few 11- climbs with a bouldery start ...

once out climbers got through the overhand ... we stayed close to the wall under the overhand and belayed "out of sight" of our climbers

if we had stepped about 10-15 feet back from the wall we could have "watched our climbers" ... but on shiet limestone rock that imposes its own risks

sure enough when one of our climbers got near the top ... we heard ... "ROCK .... BIG FUCKANG ROCK !!!" ... and a microwave sized piece came off and splattered right where we would have been standing if we insisted of keeping our climbers in view

at least one of us would probably have been dead ... and the other belayer peppered with large fragments if our climbers had insisted that we look at em .... with the speed with which it happened, one may not been able to react fast enough

fortunately we knew enough and were experienced enough to belay by feel and the occasional voice command

seeing a belayer, especially a lighter one get dragged all over and slammed into the wall is not an uncommon occurrence out here .... because their climber insisted on visual contact ... the worst is when they are wearing flip flops and the ground is very rocky and boulder strewn

if yr belayer cant belay by feel ... then unless one is climbing the most simple straight forward single pitch climbs which have almost no chance of rockfall .... i suggest getting a more experienced belayer