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Injury at Spurt Wall 30-Apr-2015 At 6:35:06 AM Wendy

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On 29/04/2015 hikingoz wrote:
>I heard the belayer took in a length of slack and sat down on the rope
>to avoid a ground fall so obviously it was a hard catch. I'm more interested
>to know whether anyone else has had a problem with the distance between
>bolts on Dial-a-lama.

I don't remember feeling like it was that close on the fourth clip? 4th bolt up is a long way up to be worried about a ground fall. Of course, pulling rope out to clip adds to that risk. I almost always feel like falling whilst clipping is not an option on short sport routes. I did a bunch of fall training on that route a few years ago, but it was onto the 5th bolt I think.

On the topic of soft catches - I like to be watched fairly closely because there's something very disconcerting about falling further than you have in the back of your mind that you should be. However, being little, anyone other than little belayers tend to step forward as I come on to the rope to spread some of the impact. I have seen some enthusiastic belaying way away from the cliff in order to really step forward a lot, and I find that rather disconcerting (as well as rather problematic on trad routes). Another technique that Ihave heard worked for others is using an atc style device and having a small amount of slack between the device and the brake hand, so there is some slower running of rope through the device before the actual catch.