Gri-Gri Brake Hand

Other Crags, Aid Climbing, Bouldering, etc...

Do you feel it is safe to take your brake hand off the rope while belaying with a gri-gri?

YES
32
44%
NO
41
56%
 
Total votes: 73

charlie
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Post by charlie »

Not when you use it like a real life belay device. You know, actually keeping your brake hand on the rope.
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pigsteak
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Post by pigsteak »

even with my brake hand on the rope using a gri gri, I would say I am not near as attentive as I am with an ATC. for some reason, using an ATC keeps me "zoned in" more.....I think the mere use of a self braking mechanism gets us all a bit "lazy".....
Positive vibes brah...positive vibes.
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krampus
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Post by krampus »

pigsteak wrote:even with my brake hand on the rope using a gri gri, I would say I am not near as attentive as I am with an ATC. for some reason, using an ATC keeps me "zoned in" more.....I think the mere use of a self braking mechanism gets us all a bit "lazy".....
thats exactly why I didn't use a grigri until last summer. I trust the grigri to perform properly, however I like the attentiveness that an atc forces on you.
How you compare may not be as important as to whom you are compared
whilojo
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Post by whilojo »

ynp1 wrote:climbers solo with a gri-gri all the time and i have never heard of it failing on a fall and they never have their hand on the brake side.
I decked after a 40 ft fall b/c my belayer, using a properly loaded gri-gri, did not have his hand on the brake end of the rope. (FYI: He was not holding the camming device down.)

Now you've heard a story about a gri-gri failing; maybe you'll believe that it can and does happen. It happened to me, and it sucked. All my belayer had to do was keep his hand on the brake end of the rope, and the whole accident could have been prevented.
When people agree with me, I always feel I must be wrong. ~Oscar Wilde
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pigsteak
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Post by pigsteak »

whilojo..you'll have to give specifics, because gri gris do not fail without user error.

was the rope too thin?
too much rope paid out?
inattentive belayer?

I am asking, because it is easy to blame the gri gri, when in reality it is the belayer who failed, not the gear.

did the camming device on the gri gri blow? bend? break?
Positive vibes brah...positive vibes.
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Josephine
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Post by Josephine »

since i outweigh several of my belayers by a at least 50+ lbs - i really like a grigri bec when i say TAKE - it catches. with an atc there seems to be slippage - and sometimes a lot of it. it's not like the people that use ATC's are going to let me plummet - but i like not having to re-do the last 10 feet that i fought my way up. now maybe if i insisted that they use one of the ATC's with teeth that might help. or mabye it's just bad belaying with an ATC. either way - i prefer being belayed w/a grigri over an ATC any day.
"Unthinkably good things can happen, even late in the game." ~ Under the Tuscan Sun
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ynot
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Post by ynot »

sounds like rope stretch Jo
"Everyone should have a plan for the zombie apocolipse" Courtney
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Saxman
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Post by Saxman »

whilojo wrote:
ynp1 wrote:climbers solo with a gri-gri all the time and i have never heard of it failing on a fall and they never have their hand on the brake side.
I decked after a 40 ft fall b/c my belayer, using a properly loaded gri-gri, did not have his hand on the brake end of the rope. (FYI: He was not holding the camming device down.)

Now you've heard a story about a gri-gri failing; maybe you'll believe that it can and does happen. It happened to me, and it sucked. All my belayer had to do was keep his hand on the brake end of the rope, and the whole accident could have been prevented.
Really? Who saw this? Did you send the Gri Gri to Petzl to be examined? This story is highly doubtful. Don't you think it was in your friend's best interest to "say" he wasn't pinching the cam?
The theory of evolution is just as stupid as the theories of gravity and electromagnetism.
Canuck
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Joined: Mon Oct 07, 2002 12:46 pm

Post by Canuck »

Whilojo ... I've had almost the same thing happen to me. But my belayer realized the gri-gri wasn't catching, grabbed the brake-end of the rope, got a nice rope-burn on his hand, and stopped me about 8 feet off the deck.

Piggie... No, there wasn't too much rope paid out. I fell about 10' after the end of the slack and rope-stretch. No, the rope wasn't too thin. It was 10.2. No, the belayer was not inattentive. He reacted well and kept me from decking.

What happens is that the gri-gri may not catch if the angle at which the brake-end of the rope comes into the device isn't right. It's a little hard to describe in words, but here goes. If your gri-gri is oriented with the handle horizontal and the rope stacked at your feet, then the rope enters the gri-gri at an angle and will catch.

But if the gri-gri is oriented with the handle vertical and the rope is a few feet out in front of you, then the rope actually enters straight into the device (i.e. at an angle perpendicular to the handle). When that's the case, the gri-gri doesn't always catch. One of the guys at the gym showed me - he'd played with the angles enough to replicate it at will. I've replicated this several times since then, and I actually use this knowledge to feed rope faster on clips when using sticky, fat ropes.

It doesn't happen all the time (maybe about as often as a back-clipped rope will unclip on a fall?) but often enough that it's a good idea to keep the brake-hand on.
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ynot
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Post by ynot »

There's your reason for never taking off the brake hand. gri gri or not.
"Everyone should have a plan for the zombie apocolipse" Courtney
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