Complete Guide into Belay Devices - Differences and Efficient Usage | Ep.6

Belaying devices.

There are so many different
belaying devices

nowadays on the market and in my hands.

And after this video you will be able

to pick any of them.

Not from my hands.

And you will know how it works
and how to use it.

So first of all, a belaying device
is simply a mechanism

which allows to control

the friction between your hand

and the climber.

Alright.

So here I hang and here I have almost

60 kilograms of force pulling
on this strand of the rope.

However for me to hold that

I'm only using about 6 to 7
kilograms of force

on the brake side of the rope.

However if I would start raising

my brake hand up

the force needed to hold that

goes to 9 kilograms of force...

10...

12...

15...

So my max was around 25 kilograms of force

with two hands in this position.

That means that in this position
at this angle

I can not even hold my own weight
with two hands.

There is no even talking about one hand.

So now let's see how much
assistance I will get

if my rope strands are completely
parallel to each other.

So I will start pulling up

as hard as i can.

And so the answer is almost nothing.

Now to explain how that works

since there is so many
different belaying devices

I'm gonna group all of them
into different categories.

First one is tubular style devices.

That many mistakenly call them reverso.

Which is only this device -
Petzl Reverso.

Or ATC which is this Black Diamond ATC.

While Mammut calls this
Alpine Belaying Device. Simple.

So with tubes the more
I move my brake hand down

the more it squeezes the rope between
the carabiner and belaying device.

And also tubes have
a little groove in front of them.

Which even further pinches on the rope.

Plus as I pull down on the rope
it tilts the device

which creates extra angles
and extra friction.

So as we saw in my previous experiment

if my hand is at the
level of the belaying device or higher

the device creates very little friction.

So if the climber would fall

while my hand is
in this position or higher

there is a high chance
that my hand would simply

get sucked into the belaying device.

I got my hand pinched...

And then maybe i will hurt my hand

And let go off the rope.

So if you want to see how my hand is

getting sucked into belaying device

I already made a video about that.

Also worth mentioning is that
rope thickness or diameter

has a huge effect on how easily

the rope will go through belaying device.

And every belaying device has a

recommended range of rope thicknesses

which you can find
somewhere in the manuals

or sometimes on the device itself.

And this brings us to advantages

of tubular style devices.

First of all they work better with
wider range of rope diameters.

All the way from super thick gym ropes

to ultra skinny twin ropes.

On contrast if you would take a GriGri

it says that it's optimized to work

from 8.9 to 10.5 millimeters ropes.

But from my experience

anything from 10 millimeters and above

doesn't work that well anymore.

Yeah, there is this older GriGri
which works better with thicker ropes.

But that one doesn't work well
with thin ropes.

Next, tubes are super lightweight.

And they allow you to belay with two ropes

either double ropes or twin ropes.

And if you don't know
what's a double or twin rope

you should watch
my master class on the ropes.

Also with tubes you can make a soft catch

without moving yourself.

By allowing the rope
to slip through the device.

And in general tubes don't catch as hard

because there is always
a little bit of slippage

which reduces the peak forces.

Which might be very beneficial
for trad climbers.

Since it reduces the chance

that the pieces of the gear will fall out.

And finally tubes have
this loop at the top.

And that allows you
to set this device in a guide mode

in which you can even belay
two following climbers

coming up on top rope simultaneously

simon... simultaneously.

and all of that are the reasons

why tubes are still very commonly used

in traditional or alpine
or multi-pitch scenarios.

However none of that is really useful

if you're just doing
single pitch sport climbing.

And the biggest disadvantage of tubes

is of course that they don't lock

meaning if you would let go the rope.

Which by the way brings us

to the main rule of belaying.

If you are in need of number two

and you have a choice to poop your pants

or to let go the brake side of the rope -

you poop your pants!

Meaning in no circumstances
you're allowed to lose control

of the brake side of the rope.

And that's by the way also equally true

for assisted building devices
but we are gonna talk next.

So assisted devices
have an ability to lock

in case the climber falls.

Which obviously adds a lot of safety.

For example if you would
knock a rock while you're climbing

and that rock would
fall on your belayer's head...

And that's why we wear a helmet!

So first of all your belayer would
really like to have a helmet.

But you as a climber
would really love that

there would be one of these
assisted devices down there.

And in fact my own skin
was once saved by this guy.

When I did a little fall

and my belayer did not notice

that there was a rock next to her leg.

And while she was flying forward,

her leg got stuck, and she spun around,

and hit her back to the wall.

And let both of the hands go.

So this guy is basically a reason why
I'm still here.

And making these videos.

Now super important that number two rule

is also applicable for these guys.

After all they are called assisted

so don't treat them as fully automatic.

Because there are cases
where they will not lock.

Apart from safety this locking is also

super useful in long belays

If your climber is hanging
on the rope a lot

and projecting some hard moves.

So if we compare this to the tube

even in the most mechanically
advantaged position

you will still need to hold on the rope.

And in very long belays
this will get tiring.

While with assisted devices
it's pretty chill.

You are literally just
sitting in your harness.

OK, so the first group of
assisted belaying devices

is called assisted tubers.

That's because they look like tubes

and they work similarly to regular tubes

where we squeeze the rope

between the carabiner and the device.

Except that they have a shape

that shifts the carabiner in position

where it squeezes on the rope so hard

that it completely locks it off.

A little disadvantage of assisted tubes

is that once in locked position

you cannot quickly
feed slack to the climber.

You need a special action
to unlock the device

before you can feed the rope

For example with Click Up

it even clicks

and now I cannot do anything.

I literally need to unclick it.

And now I can continue belaying.

Now one really important thing

that not many know about assisted tubers

That they suffer from the same problem

as regular tubes

meaning that
if your hand is in up position

the device will not lock.

As you can see it's not locking

And if the climber would take a fall

the rope would just slide from my hand

and burn it. Oh, it's already burning.

However unlike regular tubes

Where you can get your hands sucked

even at very big angles

most assisted tubers

will only fail at the angles

that are very extremely high up.

And some actually don't fail at all.

I'm actually gonna make a separate video

where I was experimenting

at which angles which devices lock.

So stay tuned for that.

I can't put everything
into one video because

I need you to subscribe.

But independently of which
belaying device you're using

just develop a habit of keeping
your brake hand down.

Also good to know for people
who climb with two ropes

is that there are assisted tubers

that work with two ropes.

In case you go on a multi-pitch

and you want extra safety
you have some options.

All right let's move on to
cam assisted devices.

I'm sure everybody knows GriGri.

But there are more devices like

Trango Vergo and Birdie and others.

And the way they work is

that they have a camming
mechanism inside

which pinches on the rope.

Now in the case of GriGri

the cam is spring-loaded
meaning that as soon as

there is no more load
on the climber's end of the rope

the cam will disengage.

And you can belay normally.

While in the case of Vergo

it doesn't have a spring.

And you need to position the device

in a certain way

to be able to feed the slack.

All right back to GriGri.

If you press on GriGri's cam

but you ignore the rule number two

and you don't hold
the break side of the rope

this can happen...

Also if you ignore rule number two

and your GriGri gets trapped
in the first piece of gear

this can happen

Many of you asked

if this problem of
trapping in the first bolt

where it disengages the cam

is also applicable for assisted tubers.

So with most assisted devices

the answer is unlikely.

Since there is no cam that i could press

to disengage this locking.

Only if i would press on this end

it kind of slips a bit but still

stays locked.

This Click Up

doesn't even lock
if i don't hold the rope.

Amazing. Number two rule. Hold the rope.

Yeah.

There's no way I can unlock this

in this manner.

So no assisted tubers
don't have this risk.

Now this is a little future me

after I was editing this part
that you just seen.

And I saw this I realized that

I was using a wrong carabiner.

Turns out Click Ups need
their own specific carabiners

And that's a reason why
you should read the manual.

So that's the carabiner
you should use for a Click Up.

Let's see if it locks.

No difference.

So number two rule.

And read the manual

because some of
the assisted delaying devices

require you a specific belaying carabiner.

I don't know if it's just marketing

or the shape of the carabiner
is slightly different.

Just use what the manufacturers recommend.

And finally there is this guy.

It's a Revo from Wild Country.

It's an inertia based mechanism.

Which will lock once the climber starts

falling faster than 4 meters per second.

So if i pull slowly it doesn't lock.

I need to pull really fast
in order for it to lock.

So my goal of this video

is not to compare all
of the delaying devices

on the market and
tell you which one to buy.

Sorry for that.

Every device have its own
pros and cons, haters and lovers.

Full internet of that.

However if you would want such comparison

let me know in the comments and maybe

I will make a separate video on that.

OK now I have a tip for you

that will make your life
a little bit easier

and maybe will even save your ass

on a multi-pitch one day.

Humans,

we have two hands normally

and handling more than
two objects in two hands

is not ideal.

What I often see that people
take their belaying device,

their carabiner, the rope...

That's already three objects by the way.

And they try to connect everything

in space

like so...

Ready to belay.

So doing this

will greatly increase the chance

that one day you will drop something.

You will be trying to connect something

and then suddenly whoops...

Your belaying device flies down.

If you're not on a multi-pitch

if you're standing on the ground

that's not a big deal.

However if you drop your belaying device

on a multi-pitch

you are in big trouble.

So this is what you do to avoid that.

Normally your belaying device

will live with your carabiner

somewhere on the harness.

So step one.

You take both of them
together as one unit.

So I'm carrying only one unit.

And you immediately connect it
to belaying loop.

So you cannot drop anything right now,

everything is safe.

Step two. You take a bite of rope

and you insert into your belaying device.

Keep in mind of
the orientation of the rope

which end has to go to the climber

which end is your break hand.

If you're not sure

every belaying device has an image

on the side of it.

Which will remind you that.

And next. Open your carabiner

and hook your rope together

with the belaying device.

So at no point there was a chance for me

to drop anything.

And once you're done belaying

you simply reverse the process.

Where you open the carabiner,

you unhook the rope.

But you hook the belaying device.

And then you simply can
just pull out the rope.

And your belaying device stays
on your harness with the carabiner.

If you want to put it somewhere else
you put it somewhere else.

And the same works with assisted tubers.

So step one.

Connect your belaying device
to your harness,

take a bite of rope,

put that bite of rope
into belaying device,

open the carabiner and hook the rope
and belaying device together.

Now in case of the GriGri
it's slightly different.

So as always step one

clip your belaying device
to your belay loop.

So you cannot drop anything.

Now if you're not on a multi-pitch

and dropping your GriGri
is not a big deal

you simply take off your grigri,

open it in this cool way,

insert the rope, and clip it back. Simple.

Now if you are on a multi-pitch

there is a technique.

So this is what you do.

You open your carabiner

and hook only half of the GriGri together.

Then you can open the GriGri.

And it's connected to your carabiner.

You cannot drop it.

You insert the rope.

You close it.

And then you open your carabiner again

and hook the grigri back.

So this is as safe as you can do
with the grigri

on a multi-pitch.

And obviously once you're done

it's just simply reversing the process of

doing

this and doing that

okay so i hope that by now i gave you

enough examples how not to use belaying

devices and now i'm gonna show you

proper techniques the good part is that

no matter what blank device you use good

belaying techniques don't change there

are slight differences that i'm gonna

mention but for majority it's the same

all right

so i hope that by now number two rule is

strongly embedded into you however if

for some reason you really need to go

hands-free you can tie a backup knot

at your brake and like so

and this is totally fine

in case something happens and the rope

would slip all the way

the grigri will lock

however in the case of tube it's

slightly different if you would just

simply

tie a knot here

and the climber would fall there is a

chance that this knot will get

jammed in your blank device so hard that

you will have trouble to

unjam it let's use a slightly different

carabiner so it's easier for you to see

what's happening so

in the case of tube you take a bite of

rope and then you take another bite of

rope and put through the first one

and you make it tight

and make sure that this loop is long

enough

like so

this will hold but this is not enough to

make it

extra safe you tie in

back up knot here so now i can go

hands-free and in case my climber takes

a fall this will hold him and if i want

to release all of that

hold the brake side of the rope

and tie the top

back up knot

and start pulling the rope

until you have a little loop left

at this point inform your climber that

he might

feel a little bump

and tug

fast

like so if you do this correctly your

climber will not go down at all now if

you're not familiar with slip slap slap

this

technique

good you can safely ignore my next

sentence however if you're using that

technique i would strongly advise you to

reconsider because in the case of the

fall your hand might get sucked into the

bellying device faster than you might

think so as a good rule of thumb keep

your break hand always down and do any

hand swapping or sliding there so now a

little disclaimer i'm gonna show you

three different techniques of taking

slack and depending on where you are on

the planet some of them might be not

considered as acceptable so stick with

me i'm gonna explain because i went

really deep in this rabbit hole so all

the techniques start the same your left

hand reaches up and pulls down on the

rope while at the same time your break

hand pushes forward and locks it down

and now at this point you need to bring

your right hand

up the rope and there are three

different ways to do so the first one

it's more popular in europe and it's

called hand over hand or v to the knee

so you simply take your left hand and go

over

your right hand and then right hand goes

over your left hand that's why it's

called hand over hand so you take

hand over hand you take

hand over hand so i find myself using

this technique when the climber wants me

to take really hard as he's moving up

the rope because you're always pulling

down on the rope you can

it kind of feels like climbing up the

rope

very comfortable

so the problem with this technique is

that when people get really good and can

do it really fast

they start letting go the brig and

before the left hand goes into the

locking position so we do this we take

this let go already

and then go into locking position if the

climber would fall in the moment where

you let go this and you don't lock the

hand down you probably know what would

happen so obviously a simple solution

lock

and then in the locking position do any

hand swapping and another thing you need

to be aware of that sometimes if the

climber drops a bunch of slack your

blank device falls down and here you

need to be careful to not take your left

hand over the belaying device otherwise

if you do so and the climber falls your

hand

gets into this awkward position so

instead you reach under your blank

device and you grab the rope and now if

the climber would fall everything would

be fine all right next technique is

called p-bus which is more commonly used

in america which means pull break so

basically the same stuff as before

but now instead of taking over the hand

you take under

and slide so pull brake under slide

pull brake

under slide so the benefit of this

technique is your strong hand never

leaves the rope a little drawback of

this technique is when you have weight

on the rope and you're trying to take

hard

now sliding up this hand

is not as comfortable as in

hand over hand technique

so at some point as you will be

practicing your p-bus technique you will

realize that you don't actually need to

bring your left hand down there in order

to bring your big hand up you can simply

slide it up

and this is a third technique which is

called a tunnel technique and since your

left hand never leaves this rope

it's the most efficient technique

because you can always switch between

taking slack and giving slack instantly

so no matter in which moment of taking

slack i am i can always give slack

and contrary any other technique where

my left hand leaves

now it needs to go back in order for me

to give slack so it's an extra action

also tunnel technique is the best for

taking small amounts of slack

if i would try to take a small amount of

slack continuously with any other

technique it's

a lot of hand

movements

while the tunnel technique it's very

relaxed

and that's why it's the most efficient

technique however you might know or

maybe you don't this technique is

actually not considered acceptable in

some parts of the planet

with the argument that during the moment

where you slide the hand up

you don't have a firm grip on the brake

hand and during the fall maybe you will

not be able to catch the fall to which

here is my arguments

first of all if you use any assisted

belaying device you don't even need any

hard grip on the brake side of the rope

any light tug will make the device lock

so this is not an issue immediately now

if you are using a tube i actually went

out and did an experiment on this where

i asked inexperienced belayers to keep

moving the hand up and down while i was

distracting them and the climber was

taking unexpected falls for them

so stay tuned for that it's gonna be

really crazy and really interesting

episode but in general when sliding the

hand up don't make a big tunnel i don't

like that this technique is actually

called a tunnel method

it shouldn't be a tunnel you're barely

opening the hand just barely enough for

it to slide up the rope and if you are a

beginner it's really good idea to start

practicing with pbus technique because

you will be sliding your hand up the

rope a lot

with the backup of your other hand

and you will learn the feeling of the

rope going through your hand so start

with this and once you get really

comfortable with this

not bringing the left hand down and just

doing this will feel very natural by

that point

and just to make sure that i'm not

missing something in regards of safety

of these three techniques i wrote an

email to about 25 different climbing

safety related organizations and

associations and asked them to comment

on these techniques not all of them

replied unfortunately however out of

those who replied none of them said

anything against of any particular

technique so as long as you follow the

basic guidelines of proper belaying you

will be fine maybe with an exception if

you're in the united states and you need

to take a delaying exam then you might

be forced to use the pibas and few more

mistakes that people do when they're

taking slack first of all they take the

slack like this or like this

so unless you are using a assisted

building device and you're guaranteed

that that device will lock at this angle

which i will make a separate video on

that you might be in trouble second

mistake is people hold

both strands of the rope with the left

hand they do something like this

the reason why they do this is to

prevent the belaying device from falling

down there however to fix that you don't

need to hold both strands of the rope

you can just simply hold one strand of

the rope and you will have

exactly the same result

okay that's a lot of talking about

taking slack i just felt that that's the

most important part and the rest will be

much more simple so to give slack you

simply reverse the tunneling technique

where your left hand pulls up while your

right hand assists then the left hand

goes down and you slide the break hand

down and you repeat

and the same technique works with most

of assisted delaying devices while with

some of assisted devices you will need a

special action with assisted tubers it's

common to push them up while you're

giving slack

now in case of the grigri you can either

use that standard way of giving slack or

you can press and greek this cam and

pull the rope

just don't forget the rule number two

the rope stays in the hand all the time

now in case you need to give a lot of

slack quickly like if the climber is

about to clip you take your left hand

close to the laying device and your

break hand far from the laying device

this is important only then you can give

a lot of slack quickly

if your left hand is somewhere up you

will be limited by it how far up you can

raise this hand equally if your brick

hand is close you will be limited by

that hand how fast you can give slack

and then you will need to

do more actions so left hand close right

hand far anticipate and you can give a

lot of slack quickly and if things go

wrong you can take all of that slack

quickly back now when you need to lower

the climber you take both of the hands

on the brake side of the rope and you

use one hand to feed the rope to the

other hand

that's one way or if you're comfortable

you can let the rope slide through both

of your hands

the risk here is however if you go too

fast the rope will go so fast through

both of your hands that it can burn both

of them and then you will probably drop

your climber so simply don't go fast

there is absolutely no point of lowering

a climber fast there is nothing cool

about that it heats your equipment way

more wears down your equipment it's

expensive and go in a controlled manner

and if you're not sure you can always

feed the rope like so and in case your

climber takes a fall

just hold on the brake side of the rope

even if you have number two in your

pants hold it never let go and as soon

as your climber will regain the ground

and unload the rope most of the blank

devices will unlock themselves and

you're ready to continue delaying while

with some devices like click up

once it locks you need a special action

to unlock it to continue blaming so as i

already said it's a good idea to look

into the manual of your blank device to

know all these little nuances that there

might be now if you are teaching

beginners or you are a beginner yourself

practice using belaying device on the

ground without a climber and only once

you're completely comfortable and you're

ready to go and actually play somebody

then make sure to have somebody

experienced backing up holding on the

break side of the rope and giving you

guidance assistance on your technique

this is really important i actually once

saved a climber when inexperienced

belayer was using a grigri i was backing

up the rope

and actually i was the one who caught

the fall and the full story if you're

interested is in this video about grigri

and of course don't take this video as a

complete guide into delaying there is

way more things you need to know from

proper slack management to soft catches

to belayer movement to good

communication with your climber and all

of that is coming in the future episodes

of belay master class

that's a lot of effort to make these

videos to be honest and this video was

brought to you by mamut

and by all the people who are supporting

me by visiting my website so huge thank

you for everyone and see you in the next

episode