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General Climbing Discussion

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Lead belay advice 1-Jun-2009 At 1:54:40 PM pickles

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I'm 70kg and not a particularly good climber so I have taken my fair share of falls. My belayer is 48kg.

Most of the time (90+%) my belayer doesn't tie herself down when belaying but she is reasonably expeirenced these days, however we used to anchor her down a lot more when we started out. From experience (being the fatty on the end of the rope), there are a few factors to consider I think such as:

- Friction in the system. It makes a fair difference to how much force there is on the belayer when the wall is vertical vs say overhanging or traverse.

- Whether of not the belayer jumps up vs being pulled up on impact. Jumping up stops the climber slam into the wall if well timed. Works okay when you are similar weights but I would not recommend when there is a significant weight differential

- Grigri vs atc. A good debate at the best of times, however in my experience I tend to find that because the grigri locks harder than an atc (which slips a little) it creates more of a jerk when it locks which shoots the belayer into the air a bit quicker. (similar to jumping) Once you are moving it takes longer to slow down (ie biger fall). It's something to consider more than taking the approach of always or never using a grigri.

- Prob most importantly is the climb. There is nothing wrong with a large soft fall and light belayers have a talent when it comes to this, however the purpose of a soft fall is a soft landing so if your too close to the ground or something on a climb then anchor in.

I have taken a few largish falls which have resulted to me being a little too close to the ground than I would have liked and my belayer was somewhere up above me. In most cases it was because we got one of the factors above wrong.

Take it on a climb by climb basis. anchor in, dont anchor in, anchor in until they get x metres off the ground then unclip. They all have their place but I dont think that doing 1 of these ALL the time is the best way to go.

Please take my 2c with a sprinkle of salt as there are plenty of people out there who are more experienced than me. Also there is a belay technique for belaying lighties too to avoid them slamming into the wall etc and I would suggest you be a little bit more selective of who belays you than others may need to be.