RRC Archives

ah dang, tucky. this thing was about dead.

Brentucky wrote:regarding your #3 canuck, that brings up a question in my mind that i forgot to ask artsay. ARTSAY, when you belayed that day i'm curious if you had the locking carabiner through the belay loop or through the two harness loops?

My locking biner is attached to the belay loop, not the two harness loops.

Artsay wrote:

Brentucky wrote:regarding your #3 canuck, that brings up a question in my mind that i forgot to ask artsay. ARTSAY, when you belayed that day i'm curious if you had the locking carabiner through the belay loop or through the two harness loops?

My locking biner is attached to the belay loop, not the two harness loops.

Brentucky - I was going to ask the same question. For me this reinforces the reason why I do not use the "belay" loop to belay.

so today is a monumental day here on old red river climbing, never again do we need to have a discussion on weather the gri gri works. It looks like caribe is correct in that we should always hold the rope with the break hand and letting go completely in an emergency is optional however it is not 100% so do so knowing this. And we now have even more reinforcement to attach the locking beaner to the two harnes loops. of course do what you want, just please let this one drop, its becoming a wast of time to have to keep checking to see if we have hijacked this thread yet.

Canuck wrote:
Every time this damn topic comes up, I spend a few more minutes contemplating the physics of it all. Then I stop myself because, as caribe and others have mentioned, the simple solution is to train an automatic response to grab with the brake hand and only the brake hand, in the case of a fall. Besides which, I have other things I need to be worrying about, like finishing my dissertation. And on that note, I intend never to wade into this discussion again.

This is the single most important thing that ANYONE who is not completely comfortable with a gri gri needs to take from this discussion. I love gri gris, and will belay with them on almost all occasions: single pitch sport and trad, multipitch, bigwalls, whatever. I have belayed on walls during four hour leads while reading a book, but with the brake end of the rope still in hand to catch falls. In a way, all these gri gri gloom and doom discussions completely perplex me; I've caught many falls and never come close to having the cam fail to engage, probably because I always grab the brake end of the rope.

Oh, and good luck with the dissertation. I just finished mine, WOO!

Canuck wrote: Every time this damn topic comes up, I spend a few more minutes contemplating the physics of it all. Then I stop myself because, as caribe and others have mentioned, the simple solution is to train an automatic response to grab with the brake hand and only the brake hand, in the case of a fall.

"Grab?" Just to clarify, if you are ALWAYS holding onto the brake end of the rope, you don't have to grab it in the event of a fall, you just have to lock that bitch off hard.

Terry taught me how to belay with a gri-gri. I still don't like the things (and he let me belay him with my "rappel device"). He showed me how to pay rope out fast to the leader without touching the cam except in such a way that you lift the angle from below, no hand around the camming action at all. Seems much safer to me since our instincts when startled (or burned or whatever) are to contract our muscles, which causes the hand to clamp shut. Hence all the accidents we are hearing about with these things.

I will only belay leaders on an ATC and have never dropped anyone, even when I was seriously injured after being hit by a climber popping off just above the first bolt. If I had been knocked out, yeah, I would have let go. Maybe. But being creamed by the climber is almost always avoidable with forethought (just not in this particular case).

I almost miss climbing.

Using the grigri improperly is no different than using an ATC improperly. Refusing to adopt a piece of technology that makes belaying easier and safer is strange. I would hate to have to belay my fat ass friends for hours on their hang dog epics with an ATC.

I am a good safe belayer with an ATC and not at all comfortable giving a good lead belay on a gri gri, so I use the ATC. People who I climb with don't have a problem with it, why should you? And I have no problem with hang dogging.

Saxman wrote:Refusing to adopt a piece of technology that makes belaying easier and safer is strange.

Do you wear a helmet when you climb? When you belay? It would make you safer...

Ha ha ... hang dog epics.

Here is another piece of the puzzle, IMO. I find that I can belay with a grigri the same as an ATC just like Pru. What I mean is don't hold the cam down to pay out slack, but feed it through the device by pushing in slack with the brake hand and pulling it out with the guide hand in a slow and controlled manner. If you do this the cam won't lock and you never have to let go with the brake hand. I don't always do this but most times.

The reason that some new people struggle with this is that they are not leaving a small amount of slack in the line at all times. So as soon as their frantic climber yells "clipping!!!" and starts yanking on the rope it locks the cam up. That, and they aren't anticipating the clips closely enough. If you have about two feet of slack in the lead line (after the 2nd or 3rd is clipped) and anticipate your partners clips properly you can use it just like an ATC. It doesn't always work because there are exceptions like long clips, long moves, ledges, decking, etc.. to contend with. But if you are in the habit of using the grigri in this way most of the time, you'll be fine.

Sadly, the situation where I am the most lazy about this is when I know my partner is strong enough that they could free solo the route without worry. That's probably the time that I'll get a chuck of choss to the head and my climber will die.

Ok, fine. One more post. Sorry

krampus wrote:And we now have even more reinforcement to attach the locking beaner to the two harnes loops.

Actually, I think this is reinforcement to not attach to the two harness loops. You want your gri-gri to sit vertical at the end of the fall, which means you want your biner to sit horizontal at the clip-in hole on the gri-gri. If it's clipped into the waist tie-in point, it is more difficult for the gri-gri and biner to come to this orientation.

And yes, Pru's right... it would be better to say "continue hanging on to the brake end", rather than "grab".

Now, I'm getting out of this conversation. Really.