What is the technique that enables you to soft catch someone?

www.ukclimbing.com/articles/page.php?id=1844

My climbing partner's girlfriend that weighs 50 lbs less than me

"Euro-slack", Google it.

It has a lot to do with the action you take when you feel the weight of the climber come onto the rope, not the amount of slack in the system. Having said that, the three most popular methods are stepping in, small jump, or remaining neutral. It will mostly depend on the weight difference between climber and belayer. The main goal is always keeping the climber from hitting the ground an/or any obstacles.

i'm a little heavy and was taught to generally stay close to the wall and jump to soften the catch. So far partners - some much lighter - have been happy with the softness. The idea about standing away from the wall and moving quickly towards is seems a little more risky for the belayer than being below the first bolt.

but hey, opinions are like assholes.

Andrew Bisharat's book, Sport Climbing, has an excellent overview. Something that helps me time the jump is keeping a slight bow of slack out with my guide hand, and when I feel it go taut, jump.

A really great way to practice is to have a gym leading session where you are not allowed to clip the anchors, which forces you to take and catch lots of falls. Try experimenting (within reason) with slack, and various degrees of jump.

If there's enough rope drag (I mean A LOT), it might be necessary to give slack as the only way to provide "give" in the system.

Use a lot of screamers.

cool, thanks everyone.

@ divnamite, isn't that called "no-catch"?

Introducing extra slack in the rope before the fall is NOT the way to do it. This increases the force (for FF<1) instead of reducing it.

a little hop when the rope goes tight will do it in almost all situations.

if you're a fatty, step in. if they're a fatty, hang on. Leave enough slack off the end of your gri gri so when the climber makes a move they aren't short roped (usually for me this is enough that the gri gri sits just under parallel with the ground).

So when I am hanging off of 2 tied off knife blades equalized with a Snarg and my partner is out of sight whining about the verglas (at least I think that is what those noises are) and it's getting dark and the snow is getting heavier and we're 6 pitches up with 2 to go - should I be hopping up and down constantly in the hopes of softening the inevitable (and with the added bonus of warding off hypothermia)?

Do you think context might occasionally come into play?

Eric - strange post, dude. Climb on. Wally

""""use that thing between yr ears =P"""

Best advise yet seen on any web site.

A hip belay will give pretty soft catch I bet. I personally haven't needed to do a lot of dialing in of my catching system.

1. use a gri-gri 2. have alot of slack 3. when they fall run in opposite direction

In order to make any impact reducing the peak load you would have to jump at the precise nano second before the peak load. This would be just as the rope is starting to stretch but before it has come completely taught. So you would have to be starring at the leader ready to react with ninja like reflexes and time the precise moment right before the peak load.

To put it in perspective, a free falling body falls 16 feet in one second. So a 16 foot fall from start to finish will only take slightly more than one second because of the deceleration time. If you blink your eyes for a fraction of a second you are too late

I believe rgold has done some testing and found little or no evidence jumping does anything to reduce peak loads. The best thing you could do is use ropes with low impact ratings, use atc's vs grigris, give with your body a little, or climb with skinny chicks.

Jump on!.

Jump on!

Hey Greg, have you ever tried it in real life? It's not that hard and it does make a difference, at least based upon my years of experience.