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Gris Gris banned at Sydney Indoor 28-Jun-2006 At 2:09:57 PM garbie

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After a second accident involving a Gri Gri, we have now banned them.

A climber with 26 yrs experience was being lead belayed by another experienced climber. Both climbers have used GriGris for many years, indoors and outside. It was threaded the correct way, but the rope was only 9.6mm. He has used that rope with a GriGri a lot before, but knew it wasn't ideal. When he pulled slack up to clip, he fell and the device didn't lock. The belayer is unsure what happened, or whether they grabbed the cam or not. He was at about 10m, landed on his feet and has broken both heel bones. The softfall matting here probably prevented anything worse, and from that height I guess he was pretty lucky.

The other incident last year was caused by the Gri Gri threaded the wrong way, experienced climbers again, and once again two broken heels.

A lot of leading, and falling, gets done here - probably more in one week than most crags in a month so its a bit of a lab for possible problems. We know no device is foolproof, and accidents with other devices are possible. But we've banned them for the following reasons:

• GriGris are not effective on ropes of less than 10mm. Ropes under 10mm are increasingly common.
• GriGri’s can be threaded by the rope in the wrong direction
• They are difficult to use in the way that the manufacturer recommends. In particular, paying out slack quickly while keeping control of the tail end of the rope is very difficult. So people tend to “cheat” and hold the cam or let go of the tail end. This leads to two possible failures: the belayer can continue to hold the cam as the climber falls, preventing it from locking, or a thin, new or slippery rope is not locked by the cam properly while the tail end is not locked off.
• In the hands of an expert the Gri Gri if used on a 10mm – 11mm rope may be safe, but the level of skill required is hard to learn and hard to teach.
• Gym staff cannot monitor the use of Gri Gri’s as effectively as other devices because they cannot readily see if it is threaded the wrong way or if an undersized rope is being used. Belaying technique using conventional devices is easier to monitor.

We've also banned ropes of less than 9.8mm, no matter what device is being used. Ropes of less than 9.8mm can be used with conventional devices, but the margin for error is slimmer, there is less friction and more chance of an error. We have therefore set a minimum thickness of 9.8mm.

Does anyone have an opinion of the Faders Sum? Is it better than a Gri Gri?

Mike/SICG Management
www.indoorclimbing.com.au