Safe Lowering with ATC

The hand over hand lowering technique looks good. However the other technique that claims "always keep one hand holding the rope" shows the rope sliding through the stationary hand. If the stationary hand was to grip the rope, lowering would be very jerky. Both hands must move for smooth lowering, without the rope sliding through a hand.

A further danger with the rope slipping through a stationary left hand is that it is a small step to allow the rope to slip through both hands. A majority of climbers I see in gyms allow the rope to slip through both hands. No wonder there are so many belay accidents outdoors.

Syd wrote:The hand over hand lowering technique looks good. However the other technique that claims "always keep one hand holding the rope" shows the rope sliding through the stationary hand. If the stationary hand was to grip the rope, lowering would be very jerky. Both hands must move for smooth lowering, without the rope sliding through a hand. A further danger with the rope slipping through a stationary left hand is that it is a small step to allow the rope to slip through both hands. A majority of climbers I see in gyms allow the rope to slip through both hands. No wonder there are so many belay accidents outdoors.

let me get this straight

youre going off on MP against a lowering technique thats recommended by petzl

the folks who make the reverso and are one of the most safety conscious manufacturers around ... and have decades of experience using, testing and manufacturing belay devices

i myself lower with the "sliding" technique shown by petzl or a variation of it ... hell thats how i rap as well

better call me UNSAFE UNSAFE UNSAFE

my way to skin a cat is as good as anyone elses ... except on MP where it aint tasty

;)

To clarify, bearbreeder. Petzl recommend "always keep one hand holding the rope". The first approach in video shows one way to do this. The second approach in the video does not show what Petzl recommend!

Syd wrote:To clarify, bearbreeder. Petzl recommend "always keep one hand holding the rope". The first approach in video shows one way to do this. The second approach in the video does not show what Petzl recommend!

bull shiet

they recommend 2 ways of lowering

- hand over hand

- holding the rope with the lower hand and sliding the rope through and towards the other hand

BOTH methods shown by them are recommended as appropriate

watch the video again

darn MPers who insist only their doggay dim sum recipes are tasty and that everyone elses, including professional dog cooking chefs, will give folks food poisoining

;)

bearbreeder wrote: bull shiet they recommend 2 ways of lowering - hand over hand - holding the rope with the lower hand and sliding the rope through and towards the other hand BOTH methods shown by them are recommended as appropriate watch the video again darn MPers who insist only their doggay dim sum recipes are tasty and that everyone elses, including professional dog cooking chefs, will give folks food poisoining ;)

bull shiet

Listen to 7:20 of the video.

Syd wrote: bull shiet Listen to 7:20 of the video.

youre deliberately making stuff up to suit your own agenda

"you have the option of TWO lowering techniques" ...

"the second technique consist of letting the rope slide gently between both hands, one hand should always have a firm grip on the rope"

the videos shows EXACTLY (your rant from the original post)

She was told to keep the left hand still and feed rope to it with a moving right hand. (Rope moving right to left.)


BOTH techniques are recommended as appropriate by petzl, its quite CLEAR when they tell you in the video something is "dangerous"

you simply cant admit that youre wrong and that yr freaking out about nothing ... the "unsafe" method you are ranting about is recommended by PETZL

gotta luuuuv it when some MPers comes on and rants about "unsafe" practices that a major manufacturer of belay devices recommends as appropriate and tries to "re-interprets" the video as saying that recommended method is really "unsafe"

LOL

;)

Climbers get dropped because the belayer screws up. I see no reason to believe that one of the appropriate hand techniques rather than another will prevent this. In particular, there are ways to fumble the hand-over-hand technique that can be catastrophic too.

Personally, I just about never use hand-over-hand lowering. I think only when, for some reason, the person I'm lowering needs to be positioned precisely for some task. And with apologies for doing it wrong, the rest of the time I just also have both hands on the rope below the device as in the Petzl video. But I typically wrap the thumb of my left hand around the belay loop, thereby bending the rope around the device in a sharper bend then you get otherwise, and so increasing the available friction. I let the rope slip through both hands with the right hand as the controller as in the Petzl video.

Unlike some of the folks here, I haven't done extensive surveys to inform my opinion about why toprope dropping incidents occur. But I recently saw a pretty near miss in the gym, in which a very slight young woman, clearly a beginner with all rented gear, was really struggling to lower a beefier boyfriend and almost lost him. He descended, shall we say, rapidly but not catastrophically so. There wasn't anything the matter with her technique, the problem was that the gym had handed her an old-style ATC tube (with no teeth), she was belaying on a new relatively thin gym rope, and her grip strength was not up to the task.

Went up to the main desk, got her an ATC-XP, also told the pair about doubling the belay carabiner, and all went well after that. Had she dropped him, perhaps the experts would have come out of the woodwork to proclaim her hand technique improper, but in reality it had nothing to do with hand technique.

If I had to guess why people get dropped in the gym, I'd hypothesize that belayer distraction is the main contributing cause. But mind you, that's just a guess.

rgold wrote:In particular, there are ways to fumble the hand-over-hand technique that can be catastrophic too. Personally, I just about never use hand-over-hand lowering. (snip) I recently saw a pretty near miss in the gym, in which a very slight young woman, clearly a beginner with all rented gear, was really struggling to lower a beefier boyfriend and almost lost him. He descended, shall we say, rapidly but not catastrophically so. There wasn't anything the matter with her technique, the problem was that the gym had handed her an old-style ATC tube (with no teeth), she was belaying on a new relatively thin gym rope, and her grip strength was not up to the task.

I strongly agree with what you're saying here about both of these methods.

The hand-over-hand method can, and does, fail catastrophically because the belayer, for whatever reason (haste, lack of focus, etc), lets go with one hand before grasping with the other. I've been lowered this way and it scares the shit out of me.

But the main problem with both methods is that the brake-rope must be brought forward to an approximately 90 degree position for the ropes to slide. This is an unstable threshold position where very small changes in angle cause large changes in the friction provided by the device. This makes it hard to control even by experienced belayers.

Additionally the friction that WAS being provided by the device must now be provided by the belayer's hand. Suddenly, grip-strength becomes imperative.

The method I described previously (go read it again) avoids both pitfalls for three main reasons:

1) In contrast with other methods the angle of brake-rope never leaves the "locked" range (approx. 140 degrees) where the friction provided by the device is maximum.

2) It is much easier to control. There's no narrow threshold. Try it.

3) The friction is provided by the device, not your hands. I hold my brake-hand in a "tube" position with the rope inside. I don't grasp the rope. It does not provide friction (although there is some) but controls the angle of the rope.

So I don't care if this is not in the video. If you think it's bullshit, fine, go forth and belay, but I don't want to hear your (uninformed) opinions.

However, if you have a keen and curious mind, try it for an evening in the gym. Then I'll be interested in what you have to say.

Oh, for the "Petzl knows all, sees all" crowd...

Just remember that the new, Petzl approved, method for feeding slack with a Gri-gri was developed independently by belayers, and then shown to Petzl, who found it good and approved it.