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Topic Date User

No good belay devices yet? 16-Oct-2010 At 5:19:38 PM dave h.

Message

On 15/10/2010 One Day Hero wrote:

>Why is the belayer standing back from the wall in the first place? If
>you stand in to start with, there's no slap and no drama

Doesn't have to be standing back (although I agree that's bad and is also to be avoided). The Petzl catalogue illustrates a scenario where belayers might be pulled into low roofs.

>I don't recall any of the belayers in Hard Grit being tied down......I
>think they tend to bolt backwards to remove rope from the system, bit hard
>to do that if you're on a leash

So you think we should base our behaviour while climbing on the practices shown in Hard Grit? If you're climbing Grit or rock with similar opportunities for protection, the fair enough. But I don't think the majority of Chockstoners are. Happy to be corrected though.

I'm talking about falls in the first 6-8m of a route, where falls produce higher impact forces because there is less rope in the system. In those scenarios any force on the belayer will be higher than a fall higher on the route which is reasonably protected.

Given a choice between a harder catch and hitting the ground I'd choose a harder catch.

I'm comfortable that I can adequately assess when it's appropriate to anchor myself. The real reason I wanted to push back on your original post is because I think it was overly simplistic, and that some readers who didn't know better might get the wrong idea.