• you're climbing in the mountains on well-established, fairly moderate routes and using a light rack (e.g., the Wind Rivers). You will often build a minimal anchor and give a harness/body belay--good anchors can be found but your may not have the necessary gear and your goal is to move fast.

• you're on a well-established route but the belay is, in reality, not all that great. It's fine, adequate enough, but you belay off your harness for that extra little measure of security--your body is the first line of defense. I feel that a lot of Eldo routes (rotten ledge system belays) fall into this sneaky category.

• you're on a difficult route that has a few very easy pitches up top (say 5.4 on a 5.11 route or something). The sun is going down and you need to move fast, so you use a body belay rather than setting up a bomber 3-piece anchor at the top of these pitches.

• the anchors are bomber as can be but annoyingly far from a good stance or good place to sit. In these situations a harness belay is often a sensible option, if you can sit and brace yourself.

• the anchor is bomber but for whatever reason has no convenient master-point, you prefer not to redirect through a single piece, and there's a good stance.

• the anchor is bomber but you prefer to sit and watch/coach your partner, whom you expect to struggle.

How old was the cinch that was used in the accident? The older cinches had a handle that could be forced into an off position, holding the device open. They have since been redesigned.

I use a cinch most of the time when belaying. I prefer to belay off the anchor when bringing a second up, especially on a sub-par anchor. I also think that because of the static design of the cinch, less shock-loading than a gri-gri (which has a spring mechanism) happens in a fall for a second belayed tightly using a cinch.

I can see how a cinch over the leg could cause some problems, and probably would opt not to use this configuration. I also always carry some kind of atc for rappelling when on multi-pitch routes.

I'm curious what "very experienced leader" means by the gentleman who took the fall.

Another climbing partner and I have been playing around with the Cinch since the accident and one thing that strikes us both as inherently dangerous about this device is that if something obstructs it and it doesn't lock off, which according to the instructions that came with it is a definite possibility, there's almost no bend in the rope to provide friction. It's not like a tube-style belay device where the rope makes several sharp bends and then goes out to the brake hand. Instead the rope makes almost a straight shot through the device. I attached a picture to try to explain what I mean.

What's really disturbing to me about this is that Trango says you must keep your hand on the brake strand in case the device doesn't lock, but it seems like if the device doesn't lock you have no hope of stopping a fall because you're essentially just holding onto the rope with no other method of applying friction. You might as well just have the rope going through a biner and call that your belay device!

Path of rope through obstructed Cinch Submitted By: ABMFB on Apr 3, 2012

I've belayed off my harness for years. Of course I learned a hard lesson about that. My first lead was on Whitney-Gilman back in the early 90's. Led up the first pitch. Set what I thought was one kick ass anchor that would make my mentor proud! Dumb noob mistake... I belayed through my harness while standing on the edge. For some reason he popped off..He fell.. I fell... causing him to land on his back. Thankfully he was wearing a pack and wasn't hurt. Thankfully my kick ass bomber anchor held me. Learned a very valuable lesson that day. Haven't forgotten it since and haven't had any issues belaying off a harness when it's not convenient to go through the anchor.

we're all gonna die!

The way they used to do it Submitted By: Crag Dweller on Apr 3, 2012

Megagaper - the point I was trying to make, which I apparently failed miserably to make, was that contrary to AMFDM's claim, the Cinch with the brake strand correctly oriented, even when obstructed, should not create a straight rope path. And that even when obstructed, the belayer should be able to orient the brake strand such that the device should provide sufficient friction to arrest a TR fall. I've seen a TR fall arrested with a figure 8 when the brake strand was held vertical (essentially a 180 bend around a biner in that position), belayer got burned hands, but he held the fall.

Do I think it's adequate to belay with only a single 180* bend, hell no. But we aren't talking about using an ATC, munter, etc., the issue is whether the Cinch in an obstructed position, with the brake strand oriented in the proper position will provide enough friction to hold a second in such an emergency. Hopefully, that clarifies the point I was trying to make.

Edit - talking about belaying the second from the anchor as shown in ABMFB's pic.

JoeP, I wasn't trying to start an argument. I'm sorry if it seemed that way. I'm just a little agitated about this whole situation.

All I was trying to do was point out what I think is a design flaw in the Cinch and see if anyone else agrees or disagrees with what I see.

For the record, the instructions for the Cinch say to pull the brake strand away from the climber in order to stop a fall, like I've got it in the picture. This would also be the natural instinct of someone belaying off their harness. However, if the device fails to lock, and even if you have your hand on the brake strand in the braking position it seems like you would have very little chance of stopping a fall because the device provides almost no friction. All the braking force would now have to come from how hard you can squeeze the rope which of course wouldn't be enough.

Trango calls it a brake assisting device, emphasis on "assisting". But it looks to me like it doesn't assist the belayer at all. It either works and locks off the rope, or it doesn't work and the climber falls and there's nothing the belayer can do to stop it.

ABFMB - no worries, I wasn't intending to argue with you either, and can fully understand still realing from the incident. With that I'll leave it at I'm not sure I agree with your analysis. Glad your okay.

What is not to agree with JoeP? Your 180 degree argument is a straw-man. If the rope runs straight through in order to lock off, you've got to re-orient the rope just to *start* to get some friction going (with all that free time available while a climber plummets at something approaching 9.8m/s/s). That's worse than the figure 8 belay you saw which miraculously saved someone from decking; itself bad enough that none of us would ever willingly subject ourselves to such a situation without backup...

The rope doesn't run straight through when the device is used to belay a second from above and the brake strand is oriented properly. Check the cinch instructions. I further don't agree that the brake strand position when belaying a second from above is away from the climber strand. ABFMD may be correct when belaying a leader, but that isn't the situation. He even admits that the belayer instinct is (wrongly) to pull the brake strand away from the climber when belaying from above off the harness.