-
Belaying devices.
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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.
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Alright.
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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.
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And so the answer is almost nothing.
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Now to explain how that works
-
since there is so many
different belaying devices
-
I'm gonna group all of them
into different categories.
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First one is tubular style devices.
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That many mistakenly call them reverso.
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Which is only this device -
Petzl Reverso.
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Or ATC which is this Black Diamond ATC.
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While Mammut calls this
Alpine Belaying Device. Simple.
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So with tubes the more
I move my brake hand down
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the more it squeezes the rope between
the carabiner and belaying device.
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And also tubes have
a little groove in front of them.
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Which even further pinches on the rope.
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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
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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...
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And then maybe i will hurt my hand
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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
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has a huge effect on how easily
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the rope will go through belaying device.
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And every belaying device has a
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recommended range of rope thicknesses
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which you can find
somewhere in the manuals
-
or sometimes on the device itself.
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And this brings us to advantages
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of tubular style devices.
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First of all they work better with
wider range of rope diameters.
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All the way from super thick gym ropes
-
to ultra skinny twin ropes.
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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.
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Next, tubes are super lightweight.
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And they allow you to belay with two ropes
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either double ropes or twin ropes.
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And if you don't know
what's a double or twin rope
-
you should watch
my master class on the ropes.
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Also with tubes you can make a soft catch
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without moving yourself.
-
By allowing the rope
to slip through the device.
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And in general tubes don't catch as hard
-
because there is always
a little bit of slippage
-
which reduces the peak forces.
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Which might be very beneficial
for trad climbers.
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Since it reduces the chance
-
that the pieces of the gear will fall out.
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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
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meaning if you would let go the rope.
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Which by the way brings us
-
to the main rule of belaying.
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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.
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So assisted devices
have an ability to lock
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in case the climber falls.
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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...
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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.
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When I did a little fall
-
and my belayer did not notice
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that there was a rock next to her leg.
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And while she was flying forward,
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her leg got stuck, and she spun around,
-
and hit her back to the wall.
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And let both of the hands go.
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So this guy is basically a reason why
I'm still here.
-
And making these videos.
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Now super important that number two rule
-
is also applicable for these guys.
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After all they are called assisted
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so don't treat them as fully automatic.
-
Because there are cases
where they will not lock.
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Apart from safety this locking is also
-
super useful in long belays
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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.
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Except that they have a shape
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that shifts the carabiner in position
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where it squeezes on the rope so hard
-
that it completely locks it off.
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A little disadvantage of assisted tubes
-
is that once in locked position
-
you cannot quickly
feed slack to the climber.
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You need a special action
to unlock the device
-
before you can feed the rope
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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.
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Now one really important thing
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that not many know about assisted tubers
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That they suffer from the same problem
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as regular tubes
-
meaning that
if your hand is in up position
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the device will not lock.
-
As you can see it's not locking
-
And if the climber would take a fall
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the rope would just slide from my hand
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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
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will only fail at the angles
-
that are very extremely high up.
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And some actually don't fail at all.
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I'm actually gonna make a separate video
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where I was experimenting
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at which angles which devices lock.
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So stay tuned for that.
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I can't put everything
into one video because
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I need you to subscribe.
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But independently of which
belaying device you're using
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just develop a habit of keeping
your brake hand down.
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Also good to know for people
who climb with two ropes
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is that there are assisted tubers
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that work with two ropes.
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In case you go on a multi-pitch
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and you want extra safety
you have some options.
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All right let's move on to
cam assisted devices.
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I'm sure everybody knows GriGri.
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But there are more devices like
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Trango Vergo and Birdie and others.
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And the way they work is
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that they have a camming
mechanism inside
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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
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the cam will disengage.
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And you can belay normally.
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While in the case of Vergo
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it doesn't have a spring.
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And you need to position the device
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in a certain way
-
to be able to feed the slack.
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All right back to GriGri.
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If you press on GriGri's cam
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but you ignore the rule number two
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and you don't hold
the break side of the rope
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this can happen...
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Also if you ignore rule number two
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and your GriGri gets trapped
in the first piece of gear
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this can happen
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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.
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Only if i would press on this end
-
it kind of slips a bit but still
-
stays locked.
-
This Click Up
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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.
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Let's see if it locks.
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No difference.
-
So number two rule.
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And read the manual
-
because some of
the assisted delaying devices
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require you a specific belaying carabiner.
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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.
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It's a Revo from Wild Country.
-
It's an inertia based mechanism.
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Which will lock once the climber starts
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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.
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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.
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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...
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That's already three objects by the way.
-
And they try to connect everything
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in space
-
like so...
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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 billing 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 billing device
-
on a multi-pitch
-
you are in big trouble so this is what
-
you do to avoid that normally your blade
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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 the laying
-
loop
-
so you cannot drop anything right now
-
everything is safe step two you take a
-
bite of rope and you insert into your
-
blank 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 blank device has an image
-
on the side of it which will remind you
-
that and next
-
open your carabiner and hook your rope
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together
-
with the belaying device
-
so at no point there was a chance of for
-
me to drop anything and once you're done
-
playing 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
-
blank device to your harness take a bite
-
of rope put that bite of rope into the
-
laying device
-
open the carabiner and hook the rope and
-
playing device together
-
now in case of the grigri it's slightly
-
different so as always step one clip
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your blank device to your belay loop so
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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 flip 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 degree
-
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 page 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
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hand is close you will be limited by
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that hand how fast you can give slack
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and then you will need to
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do more actions so left hand close right
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hand far anticipate and you can give a
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lot of slack quickly and if things go
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wrong you can take all of that slack
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quickly back now when you need to lower
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the climber you take both of the hands
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on the brake side of the rope and you
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use one hand to feed the rope to the
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other hand
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that's one way or if you're comfortable
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you can let the rope slide through both
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of your hands
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the risk here is however if you go too
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fast the rope will go so fast through
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both of your hands that it can burn both
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of them and then you will probably drop
-
your climber so simply don't go fast
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there is absolutely no point of lowering
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a climber fast there is nothing cool
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about that it heats your equipment way
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more wears down your equipment it's
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expensive and go in a controlled manner
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and if you're not sure you can always
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feed the rope like so and in case your
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climber takes a fall
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just hold on the brake side of the rope
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even if you have number two in your
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pants hold it never let go and as soon
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as your climber will regain the ground
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and unload the rope most of the blank
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devices will unlock themselves and
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you're ready to continue delaying while
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with some devices like click up
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once it locks you need a special action
-
to unlock it to continue blaming so as i
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already said it's a good idea to look
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into the manual of your blank device to
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know all these little nuances that there
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might be now if you are teaching
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beginners or you are a beginner yourself
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practice using belaying device on the
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ground without a climber and only once
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you're completely comfortable and you're
-
ready to go and actually play somebody
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then make sure to have somebody
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experienced backing up holding on the
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break side of the rope and giving you
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guidance assistance on your technique
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this is really important i actually once
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saved a climber when inexperienced
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belayer was using a grigri i was backing
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up the rope
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and actually i was the one who caught
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the fall and the full story if you're
-
interested is in this video about grigri
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and of course don't take this video as a
-
complete guide into delaying there is
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way more things you need to know from
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proper slack management to soft catches
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to belayer movement to good
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communication with your climber and all
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of that is coming in the future episodes
-
of belay master class
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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