Big wall belays - a possible tip

Hi,
Just thought I'd pass the following on in case it is useful.

On the last wall I soloed I used a PAS-style daisy as the belay. All the belays were two good bolts. I clipped the middle portion of the PAS (which was a very long one: metoliusclimbing.com/ultima…) between the bolts leaving two or so links hanging down off each end, and maybe six links between the bolts.

This meant I had 12 clip points for the bags, ledge, camera, rack, me, water bottle...... I never got one carabiner trapped by another. I never had to clip carabiner-to-carabiner. It was always super easy to read the belay and what was what. There were no knots to untie.

I've used a PAS as a belay before on multi pitch when climbing in a 3 or 4, and it can sometimes be useful, but using it on a multi-day aid wall was really, really, good. I know it wouldn't work for that A5 rurp belay, but with two new solid bolts it really speeded me up. An alternative would for me to get more organised, but that seems a dream.

No doubt others have been doing this for years.

I like your basic idea, I've thought of it, but I'm currently using both my daisy chains to clip in at the anchors. It's good to hear the PAS helps organize anchors

Just one thought - as far as I know, all the PAS's in existence are made of non-nylon webbing (Dyneema etc). Aka, you can shock load the bolts/ placements in your anchor system using a PAS. You might want to backpedal in time, and get an old school daisy chain made from nylon, which will stretch under load, adding a bit of dynamism to your anchor. Also, given the way they are stitched, even if you loaded the middle pocket with 50#, the other pockets won't flatten out. The down side is that the bar tacks aren't designed for giant dynamic loads, they were originally designed for body weight/ short falls of aid, I don't think you could clip off the center pocket of a daisy as a lead rope anchor.

Copy and paste the line below to see video from DMM on anchor systems. It was enough to get me to change the way I build anchors, and the material I build them with.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vrgadjo9niY

As an alternative mid-ground, maybe bring an Air Voyager with you, and use that between your belay set up and your anchor. That way, you have the PAS you are familiar with, a way of organizing belays, and a method of reducing the hit you falling puts on the anchor.