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Topic Date User

No good belay devices yet? 19-Oct-2010 At 3:17:42 PM ET

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On 18/10/2010 ricomonster wrote:
>A hard catch may prevent you from decking or hitting a ledge, but it may
>cause you to injure yourself in other ways. Whipping quickly into the wall
>may give you ankle injuries, and i've a friend who actually got an inguinal
>hernia from an excessively hard catch. Right catch for the right circumstances..
Fair enough, hard catches can cause injuries even with good pro. It's upto the leader (if s/he know's a fall is imminent) and the belayer to decide what catch is right for the situation.

On 19/10/2010 rightarmbad wrote:
>Then they should not belay, simple as that.
>All I expect of a new belayer is to keep hold of the brake rope.
>Anything after that is nice.
>
>If they can't do that, then they ain't never gonna belay me or anybody
>I care about again.

I wholeheartedly agree with that statement. However, you don't know how someone reacts when taken completely off guard until something happens, which by then it's usually too late. When new belayers are taught (at the gym or outdoors), someone is usually on the ground to supervise. But when the leader is told to fall, the new belayer has PLENTY of time to think (and usually asked if their ready or not) and do as they were instructed. That reaction could very well be the same when caught offguard, but I'm sure in many cases they will do something different than instructed.

When you bring a new climber outdoors, you may tell them not to look up if someone shouts "rock!" (depending on where you bring them...). What happens when when someone does call out rock? In a lot, if not most, cases that person will still instinctively look up to see who was shouting. You can condition yourself to react in a different manner after sometime, as I sure most of you have and in this particular case you can tell how people will react because this event happens quite often and looking up USUALLY ends with no serious consequences. Then there's also the cases of people grabbing the rope when falling one of the other threads even though they know not to grab the rope...

However, how many of you can say you've caught more than a handful of lead falls with NO INDICATION that the leader was about to fall? i.e. The leader looks strong (or is out of sight), no wobblies, doesn't say something like "oh this is interesting" and you probably only have one hand on the break end with the other still feeding rope out. My guess on those who say they have caught more than a handful of these falls have had several years of climbing experience and a lot more than me personally. I've only had to catch someone who didn't indicated they were about to fall in any fashion (no wobblies, appear to be on "good" holds, etc.) twice in my three years of climbing, both of which happened within the past year. In both cases I was in the middle of feeding rope before realising they were falling and locking off. In both cases however, the leader was significantly lighter than myself. I locked off the rope and that was the end, virtually no lifting and no other dramas. After 3 years though, I don't know how I would react in the case of a fall big enough to lift and happens sudden enough that I don't have time to think.

I remember a story that was told to me by a person (sorry bad with names... all I remember is he's a MD in Newcastle... I think) teaching me to climb outdoors. Anyway, an abbreviated story goes that he took a larger whipper then he thought he would because his belayer DIDN'T lock off the rope. He had held it up and tried to pull even though this was an experienced climber who KNEW how to operate his belay device correctly.

Anyway my point is, you can tell someone you don't want them to belay you because you know they're not going to catch if caught off guard, however you can only tell there not going to do that after something has happened and that possibly occurs after a serious incident. In my opinion it's better to prevent that situation from occuring in the first place. If the practice isn't unsafe (in the given situation) and it makes the person feel more comfortable, then let them do so. Do you (publicly...) tell religous soldiers not to pray to their deity before being sent out to the battlefield because they're idiots if they do so?

Or do we just climb with people with more than 10 years climbing experience only and know in the past they've caught more than 100 lead falls and more than 10 that were completely unexpected? Just don't introduce anyone new to climbing...