Worst Belay Ever

Well just for fun (hopefully no death) what is the worst belay you have seen?

Tonight while running near some local rock I saw a piece of webbing girth hitched to a tree, one locker on it and a rope running through it. While this anchor could be better and redundant with one brain cell let's leave this out of the conversation altogether. It just got me to peek a bit closer. The climb is 5 easy and many solo it for cardio, fun etc myself included. But, if you are bringing an inexperienced friend up, you may decide to rope up and belay your noobie friend. Totally good.

Sidebar. I took my good friend up a similar and nearby route years ago. On the first pitch, 20 feet off the ground he jumped off to test me and the system. Childhood buddy. Totally trusted me. I had a close belay 200 ft up. He slowly fell 20 ft ((10% stretch)) as the rope stretched and he wondered why he went so far. He understood after I explained rope stretch. We climbed another 1000 ft to the top.

Back on track:
Belayer is belaying via redirect 20 feet below anchor. She is tied into nothing. Again,not a big deal here unless her anchor failed. She is trying to pull in rope but there is tons of drag. Her follower yells up about all the slack. So she lets go of the belay all together and starts hauling rope up hand over hand. In seconds she has twenty feet of slack at her feet. At this point I politely interject "why tell your partner he is on belay if your hand is not on the brake"? Not to mention the pile of slack. She says its a hip belay. Wtf? At this point she has no idea if I am some tourist from Kansas or an experienced climber. If the rope is not around your hips and your hand is not on the brake you have no hip and no belay. Just some bullshit words.

Now she proceeds to haul in even more shack hand over hand and piles it up next to her. Again nothing through her belay device and no hand on the brake. I said why bother with the belay. She says well this route bla bla bla. I say yeah, I know the route. Then I said you know what you are doing I'm sure. Have fun. Then I walked away. I didn't care to see another accident.

My point. If you take a noob up an easy route and tell them they are on belay. Well fuckin belay them. If it is so easy that a fall is nearly impossible why rope up in the first pkace. You are giving your friend a false sense of security.

At the gym I saw a girl on lead about 3 bolts up. She's hanging on the rope shaking out. It's the gym so the first bolt is no more than 10' off the ground. The belayer is about 20' away from the wall, one hand on the climber side of his GriGri and the other hand is nowhere near the brake strand, instead gesticulating as he chats with someone. The climber calls down that she's about to start climbing again. I watch in horror, frozen in fear and unable to stop certain disaster. Nothing bad happened, I tried to forget I saw anything. The end.

I once saw a belayer sliding his brake hand up the rope while he slid his other hand up the climber side of the rope. I think we can all agree that if you loosen your grip on the brake side of the rope, without having another hand gripping it, that you are not providing any type of belay.

Wow. Crazy stories are piling up.

At a local gym (go figure) a belayer (who was wearing a lead belay tag) used a grigri to belayed her climber on TR. Once at the top, the climber decided to down climb the entire route (cool, I dig it). The belayer proceeded to remove her right hand from the brake strand and used it to hold the cam open on the grigri while feeding rope to the climber with her left hand. Exactly like this:

petzl.com/sfc/servlet.sheph…

Textbook scenario of what not to do.

Mike0110 wrote:I once saw a belayer sliding his brake hand up the rope while he slid his other hand up the climber side of the rope. I think we can all agree that if you loosen your grip on the brake side of the rope, without having another hand gripping it, that you are not providing any type of belay.

Just yesterday I was at my gym. Saw a man with is wife at the top of the wall, the stopper not pulled tight to the Grigri and 60 meters of rope laying slack at his feet. He had both had clinched on the climbers side of the rope. I politely walked up and asked if he had ever done this before. He said never. I quickly told the women to stay still (on 5.easy) and put her on belay on my harness. When she was safe he told me "I would have had her".

To the OP's witnessed bad belay; sounds like the belayer in question had a mix haste and pride. Probably got a little freaked at something and got in a hurry, missing a couple of steps in the process. I think it's appropriate to at least inquire about a questionable situation; a fall off of 5-easy will kill you just as dead as anything.
I've made a few mistakes, usually when really gassed. I put the "Slow is smooth and smooth is fast," adage to work.
As for worst belay, anything involving the belayer and a damn smartphone...

I was climbing in Big Cottonwood Canyon in a popular area. I was belaying my friend up an easy route, and to my left, a woman was belaying some guy who was lead climbing a 5.9/10 idk.

Anyway, the climber is on his 4th or so bolt and the girl that is belaying him just takes both hands off the rope, bends over, fumbles through a backpack and pulls out a camera. At this point there is plenty of slack in the rope but instead of giving a damn, she proceeds to turn on the camera and take pictures of the climber, holding the camera with BOTH HANDS.

It had literally been a minute or so before she starts belaying again. It was crazy. The climber didn't end up falling, but it still was quite the show to watch.

Collin Farley wrote:I was climbing in Big Cottonwood Canyon in a popular area. I was belaying my friend up an easy route, and to my left, a woman was belaying some guy who was lead climbing a 5.9/10 idk. Anyway, the climber is on his 4th or so bolt and the girl that is belaying him just takes both hands off the rope, bends over, fumbles through a backpack and pulls out a camera. At this point there is plenty of slack in the rope but instead of giving a damn, she proceeds to turn on the camera and take pictures of the climber, holding the camera with BOTH HANDS. It had literally been a minute or so before she starts belaying again. It was crazy. The climber didn't end up falling, but it still was quite the show to watch.

I was leading a slippery finger crack, pulled the crux and then looked down to grab a cam off of my harness and saw my belayer taking my picture with both hands off the rope. We never went climbing again.

Pretty sure it was ATC. Don't remember exactly though

Starting up a 5.5, something soloable, a simple warmup. Get to the first bolt. My belayer short ropes me... Looking down to be sure he's being attentive. Sort of, but instead of being locked in with a belay device, he's giving me a hip belay! "You wanna clip in there?" ... partly my fault for not reviewing his set up before setting off. An error I hope to never repeat.

At an indoor gym, they let climbers use their own belay devices/harness etc.. Im thinking, "Ok, cool....Now I don't have to rent used harnesses." There was a couple on a route beside my friends and I, the girlfriend was almost at the top, still climbing. She was struggling a little bit. Then, boyfriend completely lets go of the rope, yawns, stretches and starts talking to someone else. COMPLETELY let go. After the girl topped out and he brought her down, He and I had words over what happened. I was fired up, but not rude, and he learned quickly if he does that again, we're having problems.....not only with me. The gym as well. Dumbass....

Eric LaRoche wrote: The question is, did they still have control of the rope? If so, then I have no problem with this. I don't know how you would feed rope to a lead climber without loosening your brake hand.

Well, I've been guilty of setting up a bad belay. First time outside with my fiance, she was worried (on a top-rope) about stepping off the ledge behind us. So, rather than simply tethering her to the first bolt of the climb, I redirected the rope on a draw through the first bolt. Crazy, right? Had I fallen, it could have sucked her up against the wall, possibly causing her to let go of the rope, as that bolt was basically head-height. Our obvious noObishness scared away a couple young guns who obviously knew what they were doing. We survived. Pretty minor in the grand scheme of things. And while I can't pull hard on the 11's like most of you fine people, I've become at least semi-competent in the vertical world.

These days I climb regularly with some old dudes that actually prefer to use a hip belay. Having read a number of threads online, I recognize this would freak a lot of you guys out. So here's the deal: I place a lot of gear at short intervals, so if I fall, it's short. And I make it a rule not to fall. I have no doubt they would catch me; but it seems rude to go flailing about that way. They come from the old-school "leader must not fall" regime. I save the harder routes for my modern friends.

Haven't seen much in the way of bad belays outside, as I tend to avoid other people. But at the gym? Just about every time I've been there I've seen examples of poor technique, like dropping the brake strand, threading the gri-gri wrong, or just plain old inattentiveness. But for the best of the worst belays, you just gotta youtube it.

I was watching a couple climbing on the lead wall in the gym I used to go to. This guy was belaying for this girl who was struggling a bit but getting ready to clip the 3rd bolt (just a few inches above her head). This guy didn't like her position in relation to the bolt and told her to climb a little higher to avoid chicken clipping. She said she wanted to clip it and tried to pull up some slack. At this point he began pulling on the rope to keep her from clipping the bolt. He short-roped her until she was willing to climb a little higher to clip the bolt. She finally made it, but I didn't see them lead climbing together again for a long time!

Mike0110 wrote: Top roping is the purest form of climbing anyways so why bother with anything less?

Craig Childre wrote: I think 99.99999999% of those of us who lead will disagree with you. Might help if you review the definition of Pure. From where I stand, the purest form of climbing... free soloing naked and barefoot. Just you and the rock, nothing else.

A few months back my partner and I were in the gym and saw a belayer take both hands off the rope to clap when his climber made it to the top. Good thing the climber didn't top out then immediately let go to be lowered.

Edit: The belay device was an ATC. Not a gri-gri, so the climber had no safety at all during the victory clap session.

At my gym they aren't very good at verifying people's ability to belay and there are no tags or anything. There was a male/female pair top roping together one night at the gym a couple of weeks ago. I should have known they were trouble when she asked me how to tie herself into the pre-tied figure 8 because she "had done it before but couldn't remember", but I showed her and went about my business. I was belaying next to the guy when the girl yelled down to him from the top of a climb, trying to teach him how to lower her from there. He freaked and held the brake strand straight up while other climbers in the gym came to his aid. He was mortified. Staff came over and the couple left.

Takeaway from them: teach your partner to belay you BEFORE you go up the wall. Takeaway for me: heed the red flags of inexperience.