Another Accident due to mis-use of the Gri-gri

that guy named seb wrote: Nose i a day i would have to simul climb :P, tying the device off wouldn't allow me to react immediately if the leader needed slack.

You dont know how to take apart anchors while holding the brake strand lightly?

Or doing other important tasks such as taking butt shots?

I suggest you learn and practice

And not try to insist that its not any less unsafe to belay "hands free"

;)

Bill Lawry wrote:I've made that bargain before within an experienced threesome regarding ATC Guides in guide mode - all agreed to the day before the longest climb I've ever done on a day that included 13+ miles of hiking - much off trail. There were other moral compromises too. Good memories. But not normal.

Do you not like guide mode of somthing? it's gods gift to long multipitch!!

We liked it just fine on that day

:-)

bearbreeder wrote: You dont know how to take apart anchors while holding the brake strand lightly?

Easier said than done when it's a hanging belay on nuts and hexes!

that guy named seb wrote: Easier said than done when it's a hanging belay on nuts and hexes!

Practice more ...

A competent climber should be able to do most tasks while holding the brake strand lightly

Thats what they did before grigris and still do when they dont use grigris

If you dont its just lazyness

But it seems the "modern" climber is a hands free type of guy or gal

;)

bearbreeder wrote: Practice more ... A competent climber should be able to do most tasks while holding the brake strand lightly Thats what they did before grigris and still do when they dont use grigris If you dont its just lazyness But it seems the "modern" climber is a hands free type of guy or gal ;)

Considering manual devices requires the break strand to be in a very specific place that's not very safe of you, i have seen many beginners hold the break strand up too much and the belayer hits the ground thankfully not at any speed so nobody is hurt, would suck for this to happen on a multi pitch.
Well i'm glad to see the "modern" climber isn't dogmatic and going on the same guide lines as devices that a completely useless without a break hand.

that guy named seb wrote: Considering manual devices requires the break strand to be in a very specific place that's not very safe of you, i have seen many beginners hold the break strand up too much and the belayer hits the ground thankfully not at any speed so nobody is hurt, would suck for this to happen on a multi pitch.

Well im hitting the post limit

Considering yr making excuses for taking yr hand off the brake constantly of the rope thats not very safe of you

Perhaps you dont know the proper "hold the brake strand lightly" tecnique ....

Reach a few feet down the strand and wrap the rope rope once or twice around yr wrist/palm ... And then hold onto the strand lightly

Theres enough "slack" to feed out a few feet if yr climber needs it

And at worst he falls a few more feet

In a big whipper you might break ur wrist but yr climber will be alive

Hell with two wraps around the wrist you could probably go "hands free"

With a grigri or smart its a no brainer

Now instead of whining on da intrawebz about how "safe" hands free grigris are ...

Go and practice these BASIC skills

I suggest holding the brake strand lightly while taking a dump and using toilet paper ... This teaches the proper dexterity

;)

Edit update with FOTOS !!!

Hold rope

Twirl hand

Single wrap ... Hold on lightly

bearbreeder wrote: I suggest holding the brake strand lightly while taking a dump and using toilet paper ... This teaches the proper dexterity ;)

bear,

Easy killer... you are going to have the poor guy get himself all messy this way. :)

20 kN wrote: Complacency can find anyone if they let it. John Long and Lynn Hill got injured as a result of failing to double check their knots. Both assumed their knots were tied correctly instead of actually verifying. Todd Skinner knowingly used a damaged harness and died as a result. The list of experienced climbers who have been injured or caused injury as a result of making a mistake "only a noob would make" is a mile long.

This is absolutely true. Several of the recent accidents and near-accidents I'm personally familiar with have been when the belayer is a well-known, "name" climber.

Using a famous climber as an example of a good belayer is bogus. We/they all make mistakes, and complacency is a sneaky bastard.

As far as that photo of Alex belaying with a huge loop on the ground, how do we know the climber isn't in-direct and threading the anchor? Doh.

John Byrnes wrote: ...when the belayer is a well-known,...

ture and if you want to see some bad habbits watch a climbing vidoe. They are full of pros doing thigs the wrong way. I've seen the pros, on video, hands free over and over with gri gri, hands in pockets lead belay with gri gri, hands free guide mode while doing other BS. Death is an equal opportunity hater.

Bear,
you have a mail slot in yur bathroom door???
pure genius!! magazines mailed direct..

I reckon the only question all this leaves is: which finger clicks the shutter ... ?

rgold wrote:It has been known for at least seven years that Gri gri's can fail to lock if the fall is "slow," as in a climber sagging onto a "take." (See, for example, thebmc.co.uk/gri-gri-unmask…). There has to be a certain level or rope acceleration to get the cam to engage, and if that doesn't happen the rope can run. Once the rope is running, the cam may or may not engage. If the feeding hand is suitably locked on the rope as JB describes it could reduce the acceleration enough to interfere with or prevent locking, a possibility that Petzl acknowledges in the video and Rock and Ice explains in the linked Gri gri technique article. Petzl also says ( petzl.com/en/Sport/Belaying…), "Another bad belayer reflex is to grip the climber side of the rope. In this case, the belayer burns his hand with the rope and worse, prevents the GRIGRI's cam from rotating, which then cannot brake the rope. Here also, the climber falls to the ground." So there is a real problem that should be understood and compensated for. I get where JB is coming from with the modified feeding hand grip. It is really hard for any belayer to catch a fall without fully gripping with their feeding hand as well as the braking hand---I think its a reflex you'd have to somehow untrain, and is even harder to do if you are being lifted by the fall. Think about what you end up doing with your feeding hand the next time you catch some falls. Still, I think it unlikely that many belayers will take consistently follow this advice. High-friction situations make this type of Gri gri failure more likely, as would a fully extended feeding hand which couldn't itself be accelerated by the rope. In fact I suspect that a very high feeding hand gripping the rope hard is probably the cause of this type of locking failure, and this probably happens if the belayer is either trying really hard to pump out slack or take in slack and the fall happens at the moment of full extension.

Rgold and JB are 100% right although it doesn't have to be a slow fall. I have direct experience almost letting a friend deck at ORG. He fell maybe 50 ft. I had rope burns on both hands and I guarantee you the rope was loaded into the grigri properly. Since that time i've spent months watching myself and others belay with a grigri and I now know what the issue was on that day. Two things had to happen, at least for me. I had my left hand on the climber side with my feed hand way up the rope because Paul had pulled up a handful and was trying to clip the draw when he suddenly fell. Plus I had the rope flaked out neatly TWO TO THREE FEET AWAY ON MY RIGHT SIDE. When he fell my left hand engaged the rope first which caused the grigri to stay open. The next few moments were a blur with me trying to grab the rope, missing it, burning the inside of my left hand and the outside of my right hand, finally getting him stopped 15ft from the ground. I believe a loop of rope on the ground caught on something and jerked the grigri closed. I capped that TWO to THREE feet because it's important. That rope fed smoothly through the grigri for fifty feet and the grigri never stopped the fall until something intervened.

As I said in the thread I started about that day, it was totally my fault, but there is a bigger message here. If this can happen to experienced climbers it can happen to you. All it will take is a moment of inattention or a small mistake and WE all have them.

Like John and a few others, I'm tired of hearing about grigri accidents but I'm just as tired of reading the "it's the belayers fault" comments. Of course it's the belayers fault but the grigri has weaknesses and it's understanding that weakness that will keep us safe.

Brad

rockvoyager wrote:Like John and a few others, I'm tired of hearing about grigri accidents but I'm just as tired of reading the "it's the belayers fault" comments. Of course it's the belayers fault but the grigri has weaknesses and it's understanding that weakness that will keep us safe. Brad

Brad,

The reason for that - technically, with no judgment - it's a climber's responsibility to understand the strengths and weaknesses of any gear they use.

That said, the fact that a vast majority of climbers don't, and only discover those weaknesses in incidents like yours is a fundamental problem in climbing today. One reason for that is the demographic has far outstripped the ability of the sport to appropriately train its participants, even if it was [commercially] so inclined, which it is not.

Another reason is the fundamental redefining of what 'climbing' is in regard to gym/sport climbing with hanging now a prominent feature of what is done and the near universal adoption of devices designed more to accommodate the hanging than the belaying. The problem there is that people spend more time holding people while they are hanging then falling and get used to the 'reliability' of the device in that hanging role which then builds a false confidence in the device while the duration of the hanging breeds inattentiveness.

It borders on an intractable problem given the numbers involved with the demographic and the fact those numbers are continually 'pumped' by gyms acting as a commercial engine under the sport. That coupled with the newer social aspects of the sport and media representations of it all play into it being a difficult problem.

Healyje wrote: Another reason is the fundamental redefining of what 'climbing' is in regard to gym/sport climbing with hanging now a prominent feature of what is done and the near universal adoption of devices designed more to accommodate the hanging than the belaying. The problem there is that people spend more time holding people while they are hanging then falling and get used to the 'reliability' of the device in that hanging role which then builds a false confidence in the device while the duration of the hanging breeds inattentiveness.

Healyje

That quote is a great insight. When I first started climbing in the late eighty's you tried hard not to fall, now you're not trying if you don't fall.

I agree with everything you said, particularly the first line. And no, I didn't take offense :-). But I would like to say a couple of things without it sounding like I'm making excuses. I used a grigri that day exactly like the first petzl video showed. And I know because I watched that video prior to using it for lead belaying. After the near "accident" I looked at the petzl video again and found version 2, which was very different.

This grigri issue didn't really come to a head until climbers started making the community aware. It wasn't petzl sharing that knowledge on the frontend. It was climbers having accidents that brought it to our attention on the backend. With all due respect, climbers couldn't know about leeper hangers, alien cams or any other failed climbing gear. Should we leave those things to individual knowledge / assessment?

Old timers get complacent, gym climbers know what they've been taught in the gym, noobs know everything. The truth is, we all make small mistakes, we all have moments of distraction. If the universe lines up wrong those small mistakes turn catastrophic. How many close calls have you had in your 40 + years of climbing?

Brad

rockvoyager wrote:With all due respect, climbers couldn't know about leeper hangers, alien cams or any other failed climbing gear. Should we leave those things to individual knowledge / assessment?

Hmmm. Knowing about defective equipment is one thing; not knowing and fully understanding what the designed characteristics of an operative piece of gear imply is another. But again, the nature of grigris is such that they breed complacency, unwarranted trust and inattentiveness and does so in ways which are exceedingly difficult to counter or even explain to novices.

rockvoyager wrote:Old timers get complacent, gym climbers know what they've been taught in the gym, noobs know everything. The truth is, we all make small mistakes, we all have moments of distraction. If the universe lines up wrong those small mistakes turn catastrophic. How many close calls have you had in your 40 + years of climbing? Brad

Some old timers get complacent, but I would suggest most were complacent prior to becoming old. As for the universe lining up small things, I agree, that's most often the case. I've done a lot of climbing in 40+ years and a bunch of dodgy FAs, so I've encountered a lot of close calls, but they were all on lead with none of them related to belaying. (My worst injuries though were from falling down our front stairs at home and bad dismounts off mid-height tightropes - never climbing,).

rockvoyager wrote:The truth is, we all make small mistakes, we all have moments of distraction.

This is a recurring meme along with 'it could happen to anyone', but dropping was a virtually unknown phenomenon to most old guys until we started hearing about incidents in the late 80's / early 90's. I personally would caution against repeating such phrases as they tend to just reinforce the cycle.

rockvoyager wrote: Rgold and JB are 100% right although it doesn't have to be a slow fall. I have direct experience almost letting a friend deck at ORG. He fell maybe 50 ft. I had rope burns on both hands and I guarantee you the rope was loaded into the grigri properly.

Well done, you weren't belaying properly a GriGri even with out the camming action still works the same as tube devices, if he dropped 50ft and then the device locked you were probably grabbing the climbers side of the rope to hard stopping any kind of mechanical advantage you might have had if belaying properly.

Ahh shit, I am gonna go take more falls on a Gri today than all the hypothesizing wankers have this year.

J Q wrote:Ahh shit, I am gonna go take more falls on a Gri today than all the hypothesizing wankers have this year.

You're right there, I don't let folks belay me with a grigri.

Healyje - my problem with the Grigri is that it's counterintuitive - the instinct during a fall is to clutch at something, not relax & let it happen ... that said, I would not mind someone belaying me with one if that's what s/he was comfortable with ... trouble is nobody wants to be belayed by ATC or other tube device ... guess that's why I mostly rope solo instead ... using a modified Grigri no less (I know, 'yer gunna die' ... )!