RRC Archives

I want to make it clear that I was in no way blaming the bolter on 59" Drill Bitch for the 35 foot fall.

ZSpider

Man, when you fall with clipping slack out, you are in for a ride no matter what the climb.

Mj

Yeah, try blowing the anchor clip on Tuna Town with clipping slack out.....weeeeee can you say 40+ footer boys and girls:)

Zspider wrote:As fast as the rope must have been whipping through the Grigri, it's suprising that she could have held on to the release lever.

If she was holding it wrong, it's possible that she was so shocked seeing her climber fall that she tensed up and held onto her gri gri even tighter. She probably wasn't holding it so it would at least pop out of her hand and lock up.

Was it a skinny rope?

Yea, a GriGri is designed to only be used with a 10mm rope. My 9.8 would slip through when it was new but it doesn't anymore.

Man, my heart goes out to this guy. I'm glad that his injuries weren't worse then they seem to be from the information that's been posted.

Even if a gri-gri fails you can stop a falling climber and lower him...

Gri-Gri's don't fail unless they are used incorrectly. This was a terrible accident, thank God he is not more seriously hurt. Before we crusify this poor belayer, shouldn't we also consider what the climber could have done before he left the ground to prevent this accident?

rhunt...

You wisely suggest we not crucify the belayer. At this point the facts are not clear enough to form any conclusions.

So, putting this particular incident aside, and in no way suggesting that it was misused, I would like to know what the readers of this thread think about a particular quirk of the Petzl GriGri.

The instructions that came with mine five years ago present explicit drawings and brief instruction on how to rapidly pay out rope to a leader. The words, "skilled use only requiring great experience" accompany the drawings, which show that a belayer briefly and completely removes his/her brake hand to heal down on the brake lever to facilitate rapid deployment of the rope through the device. It is important to note too that with a GriGri, the right hand must be used as the brake hand. In fact, Petzl includes a drawing with a no-no graphic and a skull and crossbones over a belayer using the right hand to guide the rope and the left hand to heal down on the brake lever.

I just checked the GriGri instructions in my latest Petzl catalog, and lo and behold, the rapid deployment technique has been deleted. Did Petzl decide this was too risky to suggest, even to climbers with "great experience?"

"Greatly experienced" or not, many of us who use GriGri's sometimes briefly heal the brake lever to feed rope to a leader. And sometimes, something goes badly awry. I've personally seen two cases where "GriGri Freeze" has occured. The belayer's brain goes into shock for a second or two as his leader unexpectedly falls. Two seconds of inadvertent braking and it's all over folks. Fortunately no serious injuries occured in these two cases.

Several climbers have reported similar situations.

But, on the other hand, I wonder how many serious accidents have been prevented by the GriGri's autoblocking function.

So, here's the question: For those of us who use GriGri's, how absolutely sure are we that sometime, somewhere, we might fall victim to that two-second GriGi freeze?

The day of the Torrent accident, a nice climber eating at Mark's adamantly exclaimed that she would never EVER hold the "panic button" down and drop her leader. I'm happy she feels so confident. I'm not so sure I could make that claim. Someday, when a screaming Shamu falls out of the sky, unannounced, trailing twenty feet of loose rope, will I catch him? It's worked fine so far, but what if...

Hmmm

Tim Powers, a highly respected climber who has successfully used the GriGri for years, wisely advises that newbies fresh from the gym, extensively practice belaying actual lead falls out on real rock, regardless of the belay device. Too many of these kids hit the crags aclimbin' without experiencing the huge difference between catching a one-foot toprope fall in a plywood palace and arresting a classic RRG whipper.

Rick Weber