camhead wrote:caribe wrote:steep4me wrote: You don't need your hand on the rope at all times with a gri gri--you need yor hand OFF the cam if there is a fall (one way to have your hand off of the cam would be to grab the rope instead).
this is sad. There are so many reasons hashed through previously why this attitude is so very incorrect.
Ok, I'm going to advocate for the devil here.
The attitude may be incorrect, but there is nothing explicitly wrong with the statement. Anyone who has ever done a big wall aid route knows that keeping your hand on the rope while belaying a three hour A4 pitch is absurd. There are plenty of circumstances throughout the climbing spectrum in which it is not 100% wrong to take your break hand off quickly. Beyond "don't die," every hard and fast rule of climbing has exceptions, and I have found that people who adhere to "ALWAYS" and "NEVER" statements tend to not have extensive bases of experience.
Belaying is an art. Good belayers know that there is constant mental improvisation and analysis that goes into split second decisions between a hard and soft catch, taking in or feeding out slack, sitting down or jumping off a ledge. It is all condition dependent, and is second nature to many of us.
I know of people with ten years climbing experience, who have caught every variety of whip with different belay devices. Sometimes, their break hands may leave the rope. I would feel infinitely more comfortable taking a whip with them than I would taking one on someone with his brand-new gym belay card, and indoctrinated with the attitude that all belaying is is "locking off and sitting down."
End of rant.
I see what you mean, of course. Reminds me of a scuba-diving instuctor friend who once said something like this: "when i teach, I tell my students never to go deeper than X hundred feet, never go exploring underwater caves alone, never to get into tight passages that they might not be able to trun around in, always turn back with excess oxygen leftover, etc. etc.-- and then I turn around and do all the things I told them not to do."
The more experienced someone is, the better that person is at evaluating risk (usually), and belaying is no different. And yeah, I'll take an experienced belayer over a gumby anytime.
But your examples of long aid climb simply isn't applicable to single-pitch sport climbing. I cannot see any reason why a belayer would need to take his hand off the brake in the time it takes to belay someone up 40-80ft climb. O.K., I can come up with special rare circumstance scenarios... but most of the time that there is just no reason to take the hand off in most cases of a single-pitch sport route -- other than complacency and belief that if the gear worked 100 times, it will work 101st time, too, no need to back it up.
The scenario I was thinking of, specifically, was at motherlode, a climber being at a kneebar rest, the rope not tensioned, and the belayer with both hands off miming to a friend the beta sequence for the next section of the climb.
Yeah, the climber probably wasn't going to fall off the rest spot. And yeah, the gri-gri would have probably worked, if he did fall off. And in the end, neither one of those scenarios happened, the climber happily finished the climb and was lowered off.
But I am uncomfortable with something like this. It would have been no harder to put a knot in the rope. Or to step on it. Or to just keep a light hand on the rope. No harder -- but a little safer.
We all know that there is no such thing as being 100% safe. Things happen that are beyond your control, mistakes are made, etc. etc. but there is a fine line where someone feels "safe enough", and everyone has their line.
