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General Climbing Discussion

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Top Stupid Mistakes to Avoid 19-Aug-2003 At 10:20:15 PM Onsight

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Point 6 is a good one too because lead climbers being prematurely taken off belay is a relatively common cause of climbing accidents these days, perhaps because it’s so easy to confuse “take” with “safe”, with obliviously potentially disastrous consequences. So, in addition to that, here’s something for you all to consider… My regular climbing partner and I have altogether eliminated “safe” from our climbing vocabulary – and replaced it with “off belay”. For example, the leader says “off belay Joe” when they are safe and actually want to be taken off belay, and then the belayer confirms it back with “off belay…”. Like Jacqui said, it’s also a good idea to incorporate names into these calls.

We picked this up climbing in the US, where it’s used a lot. At first it took a bit of getting used to but now we wouldn’t go back to using “safe”. Two reasons for this: you won’t end up confusing “take” and “safe”, and secondly, it totally eliminates any confusion as to what the leader might want. This also applies particularly on sport routes where you clip in to the anchors, untie to thread the rope, tie back in and then get lowered. In this situation it is wrong to say “safe” because the last thing you want is to be actually taken off belay at this point. That has been the cause of actual accidents as well as many near misses. In that situation we use the call “in hard”, which, in our case, means “I’m clipped in directly to the anchors, gimmie a few meters of slack so I can thread the anchors, you can meanwhile relax a bit and chill out, pick your nose, get a drink, put on a jumper, and get ready to lower me in minute, but whatever you do don’t take me off belay cause I’m not safe!!!”.