RRC Archives

Why you all bustin' on the belayer? It's the belayer's job to look cool and unconcerned. This reflects on climber and makes the climber look cool while trying to send.

Toad wrote:Why you all bustin' on the belayer? It's the belayer's job to look cool and unconcerned. This reflects on climber and makes the climber look cool while trying to send.

It was way more interesting than talking about spambots...

climb2core wrote:

Toad wrote:Why you all bustin' on the belayer? It's the belayer's job to look cool and unconcerned. This reflects on climber and makes the climber look cool while trying to send.

It was way more interesting than talking about spambots...

just when I thought we were friends.

Oh, did you write that thread? I didn't notice...

Sounds like a terrible accident. I assume the belayer feels terrible and is actively seeking remedial training. When I learned to belay we were using an 8 ring and later a stitch plate. There were NO active camming belay devices. We were trained that if you are not doing something active, i.e. feeding rope, to take the brake hand and while holding the rope try and touch the opposite butt cheek. This takes the belay device out of the equation, by creating not only friction in any belay device, but also half of the friction of a body belay. It may not look cool, but neither do casts. If someone were to, "take a break" by going in direct, the belayer could choose to tie a bight in the rope belay the device and take a break as well.

kek-san wrote: If someone were to, "take a break" by going in direct, the belayer could choose to tie a bight in the rope belay the device and take a break as well.

This is SOP if the climber and belayer take a break, tie a mule knot on the HMS biner. The wrong thing to do is to let the grigri flop about trusting only the auto-block.

Cue argument about letting go of self-locking belay device...

Toad wrote:Cue argument about letting go of self-locking belay device...

Which works every time....until it doesn't. The mule knot to the HMS is Petzl approved, takes a yank with the brake hand to undo, and performs the same function as the brake hand. I do it if my partner is in a sit down rest, but not if she's shaking out on a jug.

caribe wrote:

Shamis wrote:Sounds like another accident that could've been prevented by letting go with both hands.

Think holistically about this Gary. Programming a 'let go' response is going to be very difficult for the human to hardwire. We want to grab, catch and hold when something valuable is falling precipitously. Now add the need to have versatility with other belay devices and cross that with your experience driving a manual transmission and an automatic interchangeably. Sometimes we miss and step on a clutch that is not there. You are simply not considering the human element in your design of best protocol. As such your advice is just downright dangerous.

I've heard of lots of ATC users that have dropped people using a gri-gri because they panic braked on the cam. I've never heard of anybody dropping somebody on an ATC because they were too used to letting go of the brake line with a gri-gri.

I'd argue that I am considering the human element much more than you. People don't get dropped when the belayer lets go of the brake hand, they get dropped when the belayer tries to hold on to the brake line after they just pinched out some slack.

Shamis wrote:I am considering the human element much more than you. People don't get dropped when the belayer lets go of the brake hand, they get dropped when the belayer tries to hold on to the brake line after they just pinched out some slack.

If this worked Petzl would recommend it. You could get a lot more bang per syllable if you convinced Petzl. They would publish a little cartoon of the belayer just letting go of the rope with every purchase of a grigri. Hmmm, I wonder if they have thought of the 'just-let-go' method? I bet you Nancy Reagan did.

There is a no prize waiting for you if you got that little joke, but then again if you did you are probably too old to get up, and you can forget about climbing.