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Topic Date User

Grigri for Lefties? 21-Dec-2006 At 2:19:33 PM psd

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On 21/12/2006 Organ Pipe wrote:
>I'm not a small climber (85kg's) ...
>My wife is just under 50kg's and I hate the thought of her having to arrest
>a screamer! I'll just make sure I tie her down well ; )

My wife and I are the same respective weights as you guys and we bought a gri-gri for her to use while belaying me and it has made things a lot easier for her than using her ATC. Although I do more a more sport than trad we do use it on trad routes without problems (but I haven't fallen on it on trad). She likes it because (she feels) that it's much easier to hold catches and if I'm hanging on the rope it's no problem to hold my weight and it's easy to lower me off. On the down-side it's heavy and feeding slack quickly takes practice. I'll use the gri-gri for top-roping her but my ATC if she's leading.

As to being non-dynamic one thing to bear in mind is that given your weight difference you two can still guarantee a dynamic belay when you're leading because if you have a decent fall she'll definitely leave the ground or at least load up her ground anchor. You could increase the energy absorbed in the catch by anchoring her using the end of the rope as opposed to static slings, leaving the knots a little loose - that sort of thing. The rope and the tightening knots will absorb a bit of the energy over time reducing the impact forces (sorry if that's the wrong terminology - I'm sure you get what I mean). Not sure whether this would offset the difference in impact force between a slipping ATC and a gripping gri-gri but would help.

In the end it's probably up to what risk you reckon is worse: 1) the difference in impact force pulling your gear; or 2) you wife not being able to hold the fall due to rope slippage/rope burn.