Locker for TR

A guide in J-tree saw me tie a figure 8 on a bight and clip it with a biner. His comment
"What, is your life not worth the extra 30 seconds it takes to tie in safely?"
¢.02

Muscrat wrote:A guide in J-tree saw me tie a figure 8 on a bight and clip it with a biner. His comment "What, is your life not worth the extra 30 seconds it takes to tie in safely?" ¢.02

A guide said it, therefor it must be true.

David Gibbs wrote: A guide said it, therefor it must be true.

It matters not who said it, if it is, and it is, true. Why focus on who said it. If i said i martian said it, or a n00b, or dog forbid a girl, would you point it out? The important point is the OP asked an important question, one that does not come up often enough. I can only suppose the reason it is done in the gym is that there is not an employee to check every time someone ties in.
SO i will change my post to "A goddess saw me..."
HA!
(snarf snarf)

Muscrat said, " A guide in J-tree saw me tie a figure 8 on a bight and clip it with a biner. His comment
"What, is your life not worth the extra 30 seconds it takes to tie in safely?"
¢.02"

dagibbs said "A guide said it, therefor it must be true."

Muscrat wrote: It matters not who said it, if it is, and it is, true. Why focus on who said it. If i said i martian said it, or a n00b, or dog forbid a girl, would you point it out? The important point is the OP asked an important question, one that does not come up often enough. I can only suppose the reason it is done in the gym is that there is not an employee to check every time someone ties in. SO i will change my post to "A goddess saw me..." HA! (snarf snarf)

You are correct, I was wrong to just attack your appeal-to-authority argument, I should also have dealt with the invalidity of the statement itself. Thanks for bringing that to my attention.

The argument:
It takes (only) an extra thirty seconds to tie-in "safely", which I would read as a figure-8 follow-through through the appropriate places on the harness.
It is life-threatening to use the carabiner method.

I'm going to assume the carabiner used was, in fact, a locking carabiner. (As this is in the context of the OP talking about using two locking carabiners.)

So, what are our comparative risk points?

We've got a figure-8 knot at the climber's end in both cases.
We have an extra locking carabiner used at the climber's end. (Or two).

Assumption: we're talking a top-rope situation. (Again, based on the original post about TRing kids.)

The extra risk is that:
1. the carabiner might break. Unlikely. Even if we cross-load it, a TR fall won't exceed the cross-load breaking strength of our carabiner. And we are already trusting a single carabiner to not break on the belay side of the rope.
2. The carabiner might come undone. We're using a locking carabiner. Or, as the OP says, two locking carabiners.

What risks are mitigated by the carabiner choice?

Well, this sort of clip-in is generally used in situations where a group of people are TRing a climb on a group outing, or with kids. In both cases, this is a high-distraction situation. The most common tie-in failure seems to be someone getting distracted and not completing their tie-in (e.g. John Long, Lynn Hill). Given this is a high distraction situation (especially with kids around, as in the OP), the far shorter action period of clipping in will mitigate the risk of an improper or incomplete tie-in. Also, a clip-in is easier to inspect than a tie-in.

In this situation, as suggested by the OP, and in similar large-group situations, I think that a clip-in choice will actually be overall safer than having each person tie-in.

Also, in this situation, the tie-in duration will often be longer than 30 seconds since the people doing it are often less practiced.

Finally, not an issue with kids generally, but with a group of newbies TRing stuff, the longer delay is often the untying of a welded figure 8. Using a clip-in, means untying that figure-8 need only be dealt with once, at the end of the day, rather than after each climber. So, it will likely save much more than 30 seconds an iteration.

But, really, I think the biggest win is that it is a quick, simple, operation which is important in a high-distraction environment.

My two cents - In this situation, two locking carabiners is fine. Carry on.

You have to be out of your mind to let Locker around children.

If what you are offering is something more like a carnival ride, sure, two lockers, they aren't going to die. But if what you are doing is introducing the kids to climbing, then get off of the lazy ass and teach them the knots and all of the other protocol for making sure the belayer and themselves are safe. (I am sorry for the directness, but this does make me on the angry side. Don't cheat them.)

I have worked with many of the kids, and EVERYONE OF THEM (including five year olds) tie their own figure-eight or they don't climb. They also check that my harness is buckled correctly and that my belay device is loaded correctly and my locker is locked. It is not to very hard to teach them this. I have done it many, many times.

Wow. Should have known ...

To be clear my kids know how to tie themselves in and double check almost everything. This question was regarding taking my kids and some of their friends who have never climbed. Anyway. I ended tieing everyone in for the trip.

Thanks for the responses.