belay loops??

I guess I am missing the point of this thread. Do we need redundancy in everything? Who said that redundancy is the end all, final word for climbing gear? I use the belay loop for belaying because that's what it was designed for. I'm ok with it.

It seems to me that the Skinner accident was more due to excessive wear than to an issue of redundancy. When your belay loop shows signs of wear, replace the harness because it has worn out.

In Europe, they see fit to lower off one anchor bolt from sport climbs. And they basically invented sport climbing over there. Now that I think about it, they allow you to do many things over there that liability precludes us from in the US. When did we as climbers become so over-cautious? I know many of you tradsters from yesteryear actually tied in with a few loops of webbing and a water knot. Did you worry about triaxial loading and cross loading of your steel biners?

A chain is as strong as its weakest link. In a factor-2 fall, ropes are not supposed to apply more than 12 kN to the climber's body. Therefore, having components in the belay chain that withstand much more than 12 kN is not very useful. That's why belay loops must hold (at least) 15 kN.

Harness manufacturers usually exceed the minimum 15 kN requirement by a significant amount. At that point, even though the belay loop is an extra link in the chain, and therefore makes it weaker, the probability that it will break is very small--as long as the loop is in good conditions.

The breaking strength is only one aspect of a harness component. Resistance to wear is another. Belay loops do not withstand friction with nylon as well as the tie-in points, which are designed specifically for that. Therefore one should not tie into the belay loop. It only serves to accelerate wear of the harness.

Furthermore, putting the belay loop to its intended use reduces clutter.

The cross-loading issue is not so easy to analyze. I don't have great faith in the biner's ability to re-orient itself, especially if to do so, the sleeve has to slide past a taut rope that presses against it.

Neither way of tying in is perfect; as it has been pointed out already, one should be vigilant. I like the DMM Belay Master. I may get one.

So, up until a year or so ago, I didn't fancy or use the belay loop. I've been using it the past year, but *more frequently* seem to cross load my belay biner at any given moment, than I would have with clipping in directly to the swami and leg loops.

I'm always having to straighten it out. Has anyone else (besides Tim) noticed the same?

I'm tempted to go back to my old ways, and remove one additional link from the system, despite the fact I recognize the benefits of the belay loop.

When I first learned to climb, I was taught to thread the locking biner through the harness tie in points directly. When I started climbing at the gym in Tucson, they prefered that I use the belay loop, so I have used it ever since.

If the difference between the belay loop and the direct harness tie in causes death, then there is something wrong in the protection system. If a biner breaks because it is triaxally loaded due to not using the belay loop, then that is a defective biner. Unless of coarse, it's a factor 2 fall on a static line!

I think the most important thing is to inspect your gear and use the method that you are the most comfortable with, as that will probably lessen your chances of making a mistake.

They key is attentive belaying! no matter what method you use, just pay attention to everything in the system at all times, there is no substitute to attentive belaying!

Maybe a rubber band or piece of string could be used to keep the thin end of the biner on the webbing loop if it is truly a problem for anyone. With one hand on the climbing rope and one on the brake end, then this is really not an issue as you can just hold the biner upright by pulling up on the climbing end.

Now my question is: Why is it okay to triaxially load a piece of webbing or rope, but not a metal biner? The biner technically has a higher strength rating, true? And how bad could the triaxial load actually be if your harness tie in points are close together and mostly overlapping?

Joseph Stover wrote:Now my question is: Why is it okay to triaxially load a piece of webbing or rope, but not a metal biner? The biner technically has a higher strength rating, true? And how bad could the triaxial load actually be if your harness tie in points are close together and mostly overlapping?

A biner is about as strong as webbing in the main direction when closed (> 20 kN), but substantially weaker in the transverse direction (> 7 kN).
Seven kN isn't that great of a force if you think of it. If you hang from a taut rope with your weight on your feet and all of the sudden transfer your weight to the rope (say, your feet slip), the force on the rope peaks at twice your weight, that is, in the vicinity of 2 kN. This is for a factor-0 fall.

A piece of webbing is supple; hence, you cannot cross-load it the way you cross-load a biner.

Think of the American Death Triangle. If the angle is wide enough, it works as a force multiplier. It is difficult, though, to put a belay loop in such a configuration. As you point out, the tie-in points tend to come close together and the angle is not wide enough to be dangerous.

Joseph Stover wrote:If a biner breaks because it is triaxally loaded due to not using the belay loop, then that is a defective biner.

As mentioned above, biners are designed to be much weaker when triaxially loaded than biaxially loaded. When they perform as such, that does not make them defective; quite the opposite. You are mistaken if you think you can load a biner triaxially with the same force as it is designed to withstand biaxially.

Joseph Stover wrote:Now my question is: Why is it okay to triaxially load a piece of webbing or rope, but not a metal biner? The biner technically has a higher strength rating, true?

The short answer is because webbing is flexible and the biner is brittle. Webbing will reshape so that loads are distributed more evenly along the webbing's major axis (along the length of the webbing), whereas biners can not reshape in this manner. That leads to a higher percentage of the load being taken on the biner's minor axis (across the cross-section), which is weaker.

Joseph Stover wrote:And how bad could the triaxial load actually be if your harness tie in points are close together and mostly overlapping?

Pretty bad. Picture an HMS-shaped biner, with your two tie-in points at the bend near the hinge. It's easily possible to have the tie-in points overlapping with a 60 degree angle between the two. This will load the biner triaxially and could break it.

Use the belay loop as specified by the manufacturer. Back it up with another loop of webbing if you're uncomfortable. Load a carabiner in the weak direction at your own risk.

A note on terminology. This is my understanding:

In solid mechanics, triaxial loading occurs when stresses are applied along all three coordinate axes.

A properly employed biner is not biaxially loaded, because the stress is only along one axis.

A case of triaxial loading would be something like this. A biner connects two slings attached to two anchors and forming a wide angle. A rope pulls the biner down in the direction perpendicular to the line connecting the anchors. The biner is over an edge. If you take the x axis to be along the biner's spine, the y axis to be along the biner's transversal direction, and the z axis to be orthogonal to the plane of the biner, you have stresses in all three directions.

Joseph Stover wrote:Maybe a rubber band or piece of string could be used to keep the thin end of the biner on the webbing loop if it is truly a problem for anyone.

Sorry for being so obsessed: Belay Master

EDIT: I think the whole issue here is less one of safety, and more of comfort; i.e., how comfortable do you feel belaying/abseiling from the belay loop vs. the tie-in. And for all you wannabe hard-folks out there, comfort is not to be underestimated, whether it's psychological or physical. Manufacturer's recommend the belay loop, but there are no recorded cases of an accident occurring as a result of using the tie-in, at least to my knowledge, and obviously there are lots of people who use the tie-in. That's a LOT of hours of belaying with no accidents. I think the Belay Master used on the belay loop is more "comfortable" and safer than using a regular locker on either the tie-in or the belay loop because there's no chance for cross-loading and it's virtually impossible for it to become accidentally unlocked. It handles very nicely as well. BTW, no, I don't work for DMM...

I second brenta, and can't figure out why people keep calling this triaxial loading. None of the forces appear to be TRIaxial loading.

It may be a matter of semantics, but triaxial loading sounds right to me because there are three separate force vectors acting on the biner. Although each one is on the same plane, they each pull in an independent direction, each on its own axis.

brenta wrote:A note on terminology. This is my understanding: In solid mechanics, triaxial loading occurs when stresses are applied along all three coordinate axes. A properly employed biner is not biaxially loaded, because the stress is only along one axis. A case of triaxial loading would be something like this. A biner connects two slings attached to two anchors and forming a wide angle. A rope pulls the biner down in the direction perpendicular to the line connecting the anchors. The biner is over an edge. If you take the x axis to be along the biner's spine, the y axis to be along the biner's transversal direction, and the z axis to be orthogonal to the plane of the biner, you have stresses in all three directions.

Yeah, I knew the terminology was incorrect, but I figured I'd just go with what everyone seemed to be asking without correcting the vocabulary. The previous questions are equating "triaxial loading" with what's really two-dimensional, or biaxial loading. Sorry for muddying the water with incorrect terminology.

For the record, biners should be loaded along one axis, which is along the spine, to achieve the higher strength rating. When you introduce another load on the biner in a different direction, you add a force component along the axis that runs perpendicular to the spine, and you weaken the biner significantly. It would be damn near impossible to avoid this situation when you connect both harness tie-in points and a loaded rope to one biner.

Some of you keep insisting that we stop being know-it-alls, and take the advice of the manufacturers. Here is a safety note from Tom Jones, at Black Diamond:

From: Tom Jones at Black Diamond - There has been a lot of chat recently about the use and limitations of harness belay loops. I would like to lay out the thoughts behind and uses for belay loops as we have found through use and testing.

History

Belay loops were invented about 10 years ago to solve the problem of having no obvious place to clip into a harness for belaying and rappelling. Some bright guy thought of making a stout webbing runner, that the structural parts of the harness would pass through, that would then stick out in front and be easy to use. The idea caught on because many people found it convenient. Some harnesses do not allow for the use of a belay loop due to geometric constraints.

Design Constraints

A harness is designed to catch falls either as the faller or as the belayer. The maximum loads felt by a faller are suspected to be at most 15 kN ( 3372 lbs ). This is the load at which other parts of the system start breaking, such as the rope at the tie in knot, the top biner through the protection, and the faller's body being broken by the forces of de-acceleration. Thankfully, very few falls reach forces anywhere near this high, but we can view it as an upper limit.

Can this force be felt by a belayer too ? You bet. The worst case fall is where the leader does not get any pieces in, then pitches off and falls directly on the belay. Climbers are usually smart enough to clip the lead rope into a draw on the anchors, so that the belayer experiences an upward force, but this is not always the case. The leader could fall directly on the belayer with no intervening pieces so the belay loop system must be able to hold that 3372 lbs of force.

This brings up why it is important to clip your belay device into both your belay loop and the loop of the rope on multi pitch climbs. The lead rope should be your primary anchor - your primary link from your harness to the anchor - because it is dynamic and flexible. Your belay biner should connect directly to the rope tie in loop so that the forces of the belay can link directly to the anchor. Otherwise, the forces from a severe fall would run from your belay biner to the belay loop, to the harness, to the rope loop to the anchor. This would tend to rip the harness apart and the results are very unpredictable. It is much better to have the forces transfer as directly as possible to the strong point in the system - your fully equalized, three bomber pieces anchor. Wear and Tear

So if the belay loop is so strong, why don't I tie into it? Because you would wear it out very fast. The established tie in points on harnesses are usually covered with a durable cloth or webbing to take the brunt of the abrasion from the rope being tied in. Falls, hanging and hangdogging tend to move the rope slightly, under load, against the harness, and this results in a lot of abrasive wear. If you subjected the belay loop to this wear, it's unprotected webbing would wear out pretty quickly.

In belaying, the situation is a little different. The belay biner has a lot less friction so it slides to the top of the loop right away. There is very little webbing on webbing sliding. Belay loops do fuzz up a little from the forces of the biner, but not very fast. It helps that belay forces are usually much less than falling forces.

No Belay Loop Harnesses

Many harnesses do not have a belay loop, usually because of geometric constraints. Is it safe to belay off a carabiner clipped through both the waistbelt and leg loop?

On first look, you might think this is a classic case of triaxial loading of a carabiner - a definite no-no. At some modest load, however, the belayer's body will change position and the harness webbing will stretch so that the bottom of the belay carabiner gets loaded correctly. The load required to do this is pretty low, probably lower than the 6 kN side loading strength of a weak 'biner.

The greater danger is that the carabiner will get stuck on something or that the gate will get stuck open by webbing or a piece of clothing. We have all experienced the locking sleeve getting stuck on something while belaying, and this could be dangerous. I got my finger pinched once when I was straightening out my belay biner at the point of impact. Ouch!

I have seen returns from where the locking belay biner was not fully closed when loaded. I think they got stuck in the climber's clothing, but the climber insists that the gate was closed and locked. Maybe the first instance of a gate pin tunneling out the end of the biner.

Without a belay loop, it is VERY IMPORTANT to have the belay forces transfer directly to the anchor, on a multi-pitch climb. I usually belay off my tie in loop, essentially using that as a belay loop.

Summary

The belay loop is designed for rappelling and belaying only. Use it if you find it convenient. If you tie the rope directly into it, you will wear it out very quickly. On multi-pitch climbs, it is important to have the forces of the belay link directly through to the anchor, usually by clipping the belay biner into both the belay loop and the tie in loop of the webbing.

Understanding the forces involved in climbing is helpful in climbing safely. Understanding the limitations of your gear is essential.

As I have said several times now: It is perfectly acceptable to belay from your tie-in points. The more important factor is to understand the limitations of your equipment and to make your decisions based on experience, product knowledge, and common sense.

There is usually more than one right way to do things, and many wrong ways. It is up to the individual, before tying in, to understand and assess his or her best and safest options, and, more importantly, to understand the potential consequences of neglecting to do so. If you find two safe ways to rig something, and one of them feels more secure to you, then go with that one, because feeling insecure about equipment inhibits your ability to focus on the more important tasks at hand.

In a fall, would a biner through the leg & waist loops be detrimental toward arresting that fall?

As I see it the harness loops will group together and the biner & loops will orient to the spine. What would be more a problem is belaying directly off your anchor then also clipping into your harness. I could see higher probability of a crossload here.

What might be a problem by using only the harness loops is having them open the gate and then losing the biner circle strength, also Kevin pointed out the rope could ride the gate to open and damage the rope & also lose the biner circle.

Carabiners can break when cross-loaded, or when loaded with the gate opened, I've had it happen several times now and watched the lab tests, it does happen.

Also mentioned from Gadd's input was friction close to the harness - "heat sink" & probability of catching clothes & hair in the device. With cow-tailing a rap this pretty much takes that away, so I don't always use my belay loop, but I do for lead belaying.

good post Ken; sorry, I was writing some thought when you posted. They look somewhat similar.

Beer? anyone??? Anyone here like beer?

can't stand the stuff. especially that dark stuff, Guiness & Murphys, uugggghhh, please no. In the words of the almighty Shrek: "Can't we just settle this over a pint?"

I use my belay loop. A lot of my partners still clip to their tie-in points. I never say anything because, as we see here, rarely will you change people's minds about their chosen method.

Someone pointed out that they are more comfortable belaying one way vs. another due to time logged in that set-up. It's true that the body creates strong patterns of motor memory for regularly-performed movements. So perhaps asking my belayer to switch on the fly (if they would actually do so!) might mean I would get a less competent belay right then! (I'm only theorizing.)

On another note, for those who feel their biners are unlikely to get cross-loaded when clipped through the tie-in points: I have personally witnessed cross-loading occur on the gate during belaying with this method. Because I was standing by the belayer, I quickly noted to them their orientation. So I believe it's a good idea to keep an eye on your set-up no matter which method you use.

As someone else also said, the best insurance is an attentive belayer.

Eyes Of Green wrote:So perhaps asking my belayer to switch on the fly (if they would actually do so!) might mean I would get a less competent belay right then! (I'm only theorizing.)

I recently watched a climbing video called "Uncommon Ground", in which Henry Barber is seen belaying someone one on a hip belay. If I'm not mistaken, he was also wearing a swami, made out of 2" webbing. The video is recent, so maybe he was doing it out of nostalgia or for effect. The red swami, with long tails, has been his signature harness for decades. In any event, I have been in this sport long enough to know that Henry has used that method to belay many a partner, and I'm sure that he has caught some good size falls that way, as well. My point is that, short of having heart failure while belaying, I doubt that there is much chance that he would drop someone on a hip belay. He knows the method intimately. I would trust a hip belay from Henry, any day, over a Gri Gri belay from a stranger.

Asking someone to change their belay method, because you prefer another, is likely to put some very competent climbers off, and rightfully so. Rather than trying to change people's habits, especially when those habits have served them well, you might be better off to select your partners based on proven experience and track records of safety, and then trust in their abilities.

Eyes Of Green wrote:As someone else also said, the best insurance is an attentive belayer.

This is absolutely the bottom line. "Attentive belayer" should imply knowledgeable belayer.

I am curious about how biners react to loading the minor axis. Does it matter if the load is on the large versus the middle(on the gate) or small end?

Joseph Stover wrote: This is absolutely the bottom line. "Attentive belayer" should imply knowledgeable belayer.

It's good to find something most can agree on.

Joseph Stover wrote: I am curious about how biners react to loading the minor axis. Does it matter if the load is on the large versus the middle(on the gate) or small end?

The weakness along the minor axis is a consequence of the lever arm being longer and the gate hinge being weaker than the rest of the biner. The sleeve of a locker does not add much to the strength: It just prevents accidental opening. The worst place to load a biner is therefore on the gate. Also note that in D-shaped biners the asymmetry pushes the rope next to the spine and minimizes the lever arm. That's why D-shaped biners are typically stronger than ovals of similar construction.