RRC Archives

and on a dead vertical wall too!!

I love that you're in love with klimbing. You'll climb anything. Don't let these guys steal your enthusiasm.

You guys can remember when you used to be in love with rock...right? You'd see a cliff and your hands would sweat. Or when you walked through a door you'd crimp on the knob. or drag a foot scum as you turned the corner. You remember that stuff right? Sitting on the couch trying to break in a too small pair of shoes while sipping on a 40 and watching "happy days". Come on man. I mean COME ON MAN!!!!

shit, i used to climb houses all the time. especially when drunk and on a bet. And my hands still sweat when i think about climbing

dustonian wrote:and on a dead vertical wall too!!

Really I just thought it would be funny to spray at the end of the video without saying a word.

another classic... i can't believe you have the time to keep this shit up. that's funny as hell.

ok..I give..who is gaming us?

nice to actually jump out of the frame and never show your face....

pigsteak wrote:ok..I give..who is gaming us?

nice to actually jump out of the frame and never show your face....

Saxman has been climbing with him before. So either Sax is in on the game or he can fill you in.

Speaking of which, I have a pretty epic video of him holding on to the draws and taking a lead fall:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SqHvKXlLr4

It looks like the bell ringing fall was a combination of jumping backwards, not having some extra rope out to prevent a swinger, and it does look like it could have been more dynamic.

The dynamic belay was done by KD standing pretty well back from the wall and running forward once he felt the tug on his harness, and then he lifted his legs against the wall. KD was hanging a few feet off the ground after the event. I think having a dynamic belay at first (the running forward) and then lifting your legs against the wall, would create a pretty static belay in the end. I want my belay to be dynamic all the way through and so I don't favor that belay method, but on slab, it beats getting your knees busted trying to give a normal dynamic belay. I read from some climbing book that if you outweigh your climber, the dynamic belay method KD used is preferred over the normal standing right next to the wall and lifting off the ground way, since a heavier belayer might not come off the ground due to being heavier than the climber and all.

What do you all think?


It's reason like that why I think the ATC is pretty cool, you can create a dynamic belay by just letting the rope slip through the device. Sometimes it happens whether you want it to or not; the original ATC starts letting rope slip through the device with just 600 pounds of force. A fall that generates 2000 pounds on the bolt will generate about 700 pounds at the belay device, and so wear your gloves when using a ATC people.

One problem with letting the rope slip through an ATC to give a dynamic belay is this: If you are partially breaking for a long amount of time, the prolonged force applied to the climber can injure their back(or other body parts), or make it so they can't keep their legs up the entire time. NOTE: some of the knowledge from the last two paragraphs came from Jerry Cinnamon's "The Complete Climbers Handbook".

I was in a gym once and a guy was training a girl to lead climb, I watched her fall and he partially braked for so long that she finally couldn't hold her legs up any longer and she just about near busted her kneecaps(and almost decked), but she was able to lift one leg again at the last second and caught the wall with her toe. I think her other leg was facing down because of her almost decking.

I bet you're a little bit scary as a belayer. A lot of accidents are caused by green belayers trying to give dynamic catches and jumping at completely the wrong time--coming down when they should be going up and making things a hundred times worse for the climber. My advice...more rock, less talk. If you are still this unsure about these concepts, better just to stand there below the first bolt and give an attentive belay, focusing on the fundamentals: not too much slack, not too little, brake hand completely on at all times. The subtleties will come to you with time, but I don't feel thinking about it so much and asking questions on the web is the way to go. It's more of an intuitive feeling kind of thing and less of a scientific abstraction--albeit a very rudimentary one at that.

Well that was an awesome assumption dunston, but you are totally incorrect. I not only know how to dynamic belay, but I have taught more than a handful of people how to. To make sure people aren't jumping just because they see you fall, I ask them to close their eyes, and use the force, I mean wait for the tug on their harness. Of course I make sure their belay station has no risk of knee injury or head injury if I ask them to close their eyes. O and of course they will open them once the tug actually happens.

I do know what you are talking about though, my first lead fall was a bad one because my belayer jumped as soon as I fell, and when I stopped falling, he was on his way down, making for one hell of a swinger due to the most static belay physically possible. This incident is why I make sure my belayer knows what they are doing before I lead climb with them.

I wasn't asking how to belay, the question is how do people feel about running forward belays...

I don't have any experience with them because A. I have never outweighed my climber enough that I felt it was necessary, B. I can give a dynamic belay perfectly fine on slab, and C. the majority of the articles I've read on the subject say to stay directly under the first bolt since it helps prevent grounders.