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Chockstone Moderator

1-Jun-2017
2:53:31 PM

On 31/05/2017 dalai wrote:
>On 30/05/2017 Martym wrote:
>
>>Mods you should Nuke this thread.
>
>As mentioned above, as long as people can be civil it is opening an interesting
>discussion of procedures / calls used by the climbing community.
>
>I as one of the mods will not Nuke this thread. Can't speak for the others
>though as they may feel differently.

I conferred with Dalai about your proposal (before he posted his reply), and we are in agreement so I won't be nuking it either, though there are several other Moderators, some of whom haven't logged on for a while and as such may be out of the recent developments loop.

widewetandslippery

1-Jun-2017
4:56:51 PM

The banter of course doesnt worry me but it does show people do stuff differently and communication with a new partner prior to going up is important, see no reason to nuke. BTW I have been threading and looked down to see the belayer had wandered off, off belay on one draw, numerous expletives and I was back on belay.

rightarmbad

4-Jun-2017
9:40:18 PM

You should have just leaned back on the rope as that is the thing to do apparently.

widewetandslippery

4-Jun-2017
9:48:39 PM

I expect no matter what method you use you do not take the leader off belay unless directly and clearly told to by them

One Day Hero

4-Jun-2017
10:14:07 PM

On 4/06/2017 rightarmbad wrote:
>You should have just leaned back on the rope as that is the thing to do
>apparently.

Ok rab, here's my hypothetical test case;

Blind date at a single pitch sport crag with loweroffs on every route, first route of the day. Climber gets to anchor, clips into one draw and rethreads. Meanwhile the belayer takes them off and walks away without letting the climber know. Climber unclips and drops onto rope without checking the belayer, gets smashed to bits on the rocks below. Nothing procedural was discussed beforehand, but both climber and belayer presented themselves as experienced and competent.

How would you allocate blame? I'm not interested in what they should have done, just the % blame to each. 50/50? 60/40?

rightarmbad

5-Jun-2017
2:46:29 AM

Well seeing as the belayer may have come from an area where it is normal to abseil and clean you are both idiots for not discussing it beforehand.
The belayer and climber are both pretty stupid to assume an action/procedure will take place when at such a critical time.
You have no idea of the history, you need to have safeguards, look after yourself.

I climbed with two young people who already knew each other and the young guy got to the anchors, re-thread and dropped onto the rope just a moment after I had noticed that the young girl had taken her hand off the brake hand while he was re-threading, I grabbed the rope and just stated to say something as he dropped onto the rope.

He did what he sometimes did and she did what she always did.
Where she climbs, China, there is no expectation to belay whilst the climber is re-threading, only after the climber asks to take up the slack and ask for tension.
Different cultures, different areas, different expectations, languages and calls.
We all sat down and had a discussion before anymore climbing.

Jumping off onto the rope after re-threading is just as dangerous as letting go of the brake strand.


Goshen

5-Jun-2017
10:20:43 AM

>>Jumping off onto the rope after re-threading is just as dangerous as letting go of the brake strand [or going off belay].

Agreed - so the only way to apportion blame is 100% to each the climber and belayer.... However, the more I think about it, the more that the situation appears to be more preventable by the climber - if they just hadn't slumped onto the rope before the belayer takes in, at least.

Both parties are making assumptions about the other partner; but only one of them has the motivation of death or serious injury if that assumption is wrong. Therefore, I reckon I can change my opinion of responsibility to 80% climber, 20% belayer - in your particular scenario, sorry ODH.

Pommy

5-Jun-2017
11:39:23 AM

I think it's fair to say that both sides are 100% wrong in doing what they did.
If the climber landed on the belayer, it would probably be a fair outcome.

One Day Hero

5-Jun-2017
2:18:03 PM

This is where we needed to get to 3 pages ago. I find it really interesting (and disturbing) to read the answers so far. Better to know about it though.

For starters, I would have thought it was obvious that there is one unit of blame available, therefore the 100% of blame should be divided between the belayer and climber. But nope, two out of the three people responding have allocated 200% of blame.

I would allocate 95% of the blame to the belayer. There is no reason why they should wander off, but even if that is "how they do it", choosing to not inform the climber as they take them off belay is ridiculous. 5% goes to the climber for not picking up that the belayer was a walking liability during the pre-climb chat.


Goshen

5-Jun-2017
2:59:41 PM

>But nope, two out of the three people responding have allocated 200% of blame

Not without intentional irony. 50% each just doesn't portray the idiocy of the situation.

One Day Hero

5-Jun-2017
3:22:05 PM

On 5/06/2017 Goshen wrote:
>Not without intentional irony. 50% each just doesn't portray the idiocy
>of the situation.

I was hoping you were being ironical.

The way you guys are treating this just doesn't compute with my experience of climbing. What if it's somewhere like Taipan or Boronia? You can't see or hear your belayer cause you're round a bulge. Can't rap because the ground is too far away (or you'll miss the ledge), can't get your draws off on rap anyway. At some point, someone is going to have to get lowered off without being able to check their belayer. How do you deal with these situations? Are you having screaming matches down a 35m pitch to check if you're still on belay?

Wendy

5-Jun-2017
3:46:47 PM

On 5/06/2017 Goshen wrote:

>
>Both parties are making assumptions about the other partner; but only
>one of them has the motivation of death or serious injury if that assumption
>is wrong. Therefore, I reckon I can change my opinion of responsibility
>to 80% climber, 20% belayer - in your particular scenario, sorry ODH.

Dunno about you, but i'd feel more than 20% responsible if i'd taken someone off belay and they fell in that situation. Sure, the climber has the added motivation of ensuring they are not going to die. The belayer has the added motivation of ensuring someone else isn't going to die. Don't know that that should be any less of a motivation.

Said "cultural practice" just sounds wrong. I mean, why would you even bother taking someone off belay for the brief amount of time it takes to rethread anyway? Sure, I pile out a bunch of slack. I've probably got them on a cinch so if I actually ate ham and pickle sandwiches, I might take a bite of one. Or I'd tie off an atc to do so. But they'd still be effectively on belay the whole time.
>
>
>
>
>
>


Goshen

5-Jun-2017
4:01:13 PM

>How do you deal with these situations?

Exactly as you describe you should ;-) But that wasn't your example.

I have been in situations where you can't see / hear the belayer and you want to be lowered from the anchor. You simply hold the other (lead end of the) rope and feed/pull yourself down a bit until they get the idea or you can communicate. After all, if they can't see you, they might have thought you were stuck somewhere, or just needed some slack.

Even 'jumping onto' the rope here doesn't help things, they might just think you'd fallen. Would you be impressed if they started lowering you from the last bolt on the 3rd Pitch of world party, thinking you were at the anchors and ready to come down?

One Day Hero

5-Jun-2017
4:19:28 PM

On 5/06/2017 Goshen wrote:
>>How do you deal with these situations?
>
>Exactly as you describe you should ;-) But that wasn't your example.

I know. There are obviously different strategies for different situations, but not taking your climber off belay is something I was taught on day 1 and have used everywhere in every situation. It never hinders, but a ton of situations are massively less clusterfuchy if you can trust that your belayer has you on no matter what.

>I have been in situations where you can't see / hear the belayer and you
>want to be lowered from the anchor. You simply hold the other (lead end
>of the) rope and feed/pull yourself down a bit until they get the idea
>or you can communicate.

How did you know you were still on belay?

>After all, if they can't see you, they might have
>thought you were stuck somewhere, or just needed some slack.

If the climber is pulling rope, you feed rope. Sometimes that means unwanted lowering of a dogging leader, but that's better than the other way round (which is a leader desperately trying to clip, and no rope coming out).
>
>Even 'jumping onto' the rope here doesn't help things, they might just
>think you'd fallen. Would you be impressed if they started lowering you
>from the last bolt on the 3rd Pitch of world party, thinking you were at
>the anchors and ready to come down?

Annoying, but not dangerous. Once communication is gone, you can't have both full safety and full convenience. Think through the permutations. What you want is a belayer who defaults to safety over convenience.


Goshen

5-Jun-2017
5:25:08 PM

>How did you know you were still on belay?

Because I trust my belayer not to take me off mid route or unless told to!! Which is your point all along - but I was backing the other side of the story, because of the examples of climbing with completely unknown people, etc etc.

Also - and this is not a minor point - the very act of holding onto the other side 'lead' rope, on a long pitch with a bit of drag, is that if the belayer HAS in fact done a runner, you can control your own decent for a while. However, I don't want to labour on it - nowhere is this actually recommended, and I can only remember bothering to do it on very rare occasions - but still, in the circumstances it just made sense.

Martym

5-Jun-2017
6:02:48 PM

On 1/06/2017 Chockstone Moderator wrote:
>On 31/05/2017 dalai wrote:
>>On 30/05/2017 Martym wrote:
>>
>>>Mods you should Nuke this thread.
>>
>>As mentioned above, as long as people can be civil it is opening an interesting
>>discussion of procedures / calls used by the climbing community.
>>
>>I as one of the mods will not Nuke this thread. Can't speak for the others
>>though as they may feel differently.
>
>I conferred with Dalai about your proposal (before he posted his reply),
>and we are in agreement so I won't be nuking it either, though there are
>several other Moderators, some of whom haven't logged on for a while and
>as such may be out of the recent developments loop.

I was merely quoting ODH who said that in about the 10th reply to the original post. I didn't actually think you'd consider it. However I'm still sad that it has deteriorated.

He seems to have changed his mind though:

On 5/06/2017 One Day Hero wrote:
>This is where we needed to get to 3 pages ago. I find it really interesting
>(and disturbing) to read the answers so far. Better to know about it though.

One Day Hero

5-Jun-2017
7:04:17 PM

On 5/06/2017 Martym wrote:
>He seems to have changed his mind though:

Well, that's because I have learned that there are 'experienced climbers' walking among us who will likely do a fuching number on you. Or, at the very least, experienced climbers who won't condemn a useless moron who abandons the belay without notice and gets their climber hurt.


JMK

5-Jun-2017
7:37:47 PM

Re odh scenario I apportion 100% fault to the belayer. the climber should be able to just bomb on to the rope as the unexpected happens.

In saying that I, as an increasingly cautious person would check first that my belayer has me. This is akin to taking off at traffic lights that have turned green . You should be safe and any person running a red light and hitting you would be 100% at fault. This would not help you however as you would still be dead so maybe check, if feasibl, for a speeding car.

thus default should be keep climber on belay and climber trust that is the case, but perhaps check if feasible if you are on belay, before bombing onto the rope as being dead would suck.

Note the key words feasible and default

rightarmbad

5-Jun-2017
11:48:02 PM

Being well over 6 foot and bigger than average, I always grab the belayers side of the rope as they begin to lower me.
Many people get quite a shock at how much force is required to hold and lower a heavier climber.
Especially if they are using Gri Gri's.
I have done this since being dropped several meters twice by very experienced belayers that simply had never had to lower somebody much heavier than themselves.

patto

6-Jun-2017
6:42:44 AM

On 5/06/2017 rightarmbad wrote:
>Being well over 6 foot and bigger than average, I always grab the belayers
>side of the rope as they begin to lower me.
>Many people get quite a shock at how much force is required to hold and
>lower a heavier climber.
>Especially if they are using Gri Gri's.
>I have done this since being dropped several meters twice by very experienced
>belayers that simply had never had to lower somebody much heavier than
>themselves.

It is sad that you cannot trust your belayers and feel you have to do this. Though you are certainly not the only one who does this. (I've done this with inexperienced belayers)

Just shows that experience isn't always a good measure of ability.

It really isn't that hard to start off locked off with high tension and grip and reduce until the climber lowers at a reasonable speed.

(The Grigri doesn't help with this process but any 'experienced' belayer should know this.)

There are 127 messages in this topic.