for the safety of the so. az climbing community...proper gri gri technique

i remember what a friend of mine told me recently about climbing partners and safety issues. he said that if he found that a partner of his was not practicing proper safety techniques, he always paid very close attention to how they reacted when he corrected them.

if they were fairly new to climbing, they would generally say thanks for the tip and i'll be sure to do it correctly in the future.

more experienced climbers, however, were sometimes not as receptive to correction and would occasionally object, giving him the old "i've been climbing for X years and i've never had any accidents".

whenever someone pulled this one, my buddy put them on his mental "do not climb with" list.

the guy who almost dropped me had been climbing for 15 years and had never dropped anyone either, but it only takes one fuckup to kill someone.

(as a side note, since the incident he has become the safest belayer in southern arizona and i would certainly trust him with my life.)

Jon Ruland wrote: respectfully, a sample size of 1 isn't large enough to draw any kind of conclusion. good thing your wife was using a grigri.

I have never heard of anyone else crediting a gri gri with preventing an injury or death... but it did save me some pain and suffering. Even so, I am ambivalent about using them.

Coeus wrote: I'm pretty sure that if you don't touch anything in a fall situation and have your hands in your pockets, the gri gri will lock. I haven't seen anything happen, or heard of anything happening that would suggest that Jon's rule #2 is true. Has anyone seen anything to the contrary? I bring this up mostly because I feel that some people hold fast to old information like "never let go of the brake hand." While I feel that this is a good habit, it isn't exactly the whole truth for gri gris.

Don't let Coeus belay me. Check.

Paul Davidson wrote:WiledHoser: If you insist: you are wrong. Feel better now ?

thanks Paul.

J. Albers wrote: Don't let Coeus belay me. Check.

Do you have evidence that suggests that not touching the ropes or the device would cause the gri gri to fail?

Otherwise I am suggesting this very type of response is the result of what I refer to as "old school climber superstition."

Case in point, a friend of mine took a lead fall, his wife was anchored to a tree, belaying. She knocked her helmeted head into the tree during the fall and became unconscious. She was clearly not in control of the break strand, or any other part of the system for that matter. My friend is still here because of the fact that the gri gri locked up without any help from the belayer.

Coeus wrote: Do you have evidence that suggests that not touching the ropes or the device would cause the gri gri to fail? Otherwise I am suggesting this very type of response is the result of what I refer to as "old school climber superstition." Case in point, a friend of mine took a lead fall, his wife was anchored to a tree, belaying. She knocked her helmeted head into the tree during the fall and became unconscious. She was clearly not in control of the break strand, or any other part of the system for that matter. My friend is still here because of the fact that the gri gri locked up without any help from the belayer.

good thing your friend's wife was using a grigri!

a friend of mine was being belayed by a guy with a grigri who didn't have his hand on the brake strand. he had a bolt in his face when he fell, and he passed 4 bolts before the thing caught. afterward his buddy said he looked down and the rope was just zipping through the device.

you can belay however you want if your friends are ok with it, but personally i won't let anyone who doesn't practice proper technique belay me. this includes keeping a hand on the brake strand at all times, as recommended by petzl.

Jon Ruland wrote: didn't have his hand on the brake strand.

what was the other hand doing?

Jon Ruland wrote: you can belay however you want if your friends are ok with it

I don't take my hands off of the break strand while belaying. However, I am arguing from this persepective because I feel that there are some myths about gri gri use that get perpetuated by those who don't fully understand how they work. If a gri gri doesn't cam up, good luck having any success catching a leader fall, these things don't work like ATC's when the cam fails. So I think having your hand of the break strand is just paying lip service to "proper belay technique."

I still haven't heard any convincing arguments counter to my intital statement.

or maybe stop using smaller diameter ropes with the gri-gri and wait for the gri-gri 2 to come out. most accidents happen on the lowering end, smaller diameter ropes can slide through so fast, especially if they're dry-treated.

Coeus wrote:because I feel that there are some myths about gri gri use that get perpetuated by those who don't fully understand how they work.

Hmmm people who don't fully understand how they work... like the people at Petzl who MADE the device and say that you MUST KEEP YOUR HAND ON THE BRAKE STRAND AT ALL TIMES???

Coeus wrote: If a gri gri doesn't cam up, good luck having any success catching a leader fall, these things don't work like ATC's when the cam fails. So I think having your hand of the break strand is just paying lip service to "proper belay technique." I still haven't heard any convincing arguments counter to my intital statement.

I don't agree at all. There is plenty of "bend" in the rope running through gri gri such that if the cam didn't load, you could still lock it off with your brake hand.

Chase Yarbrough wrote: Hmmm people who don't fully understand how they work... like the people at Petzl who MADE the device and say that you MUST KEEP YOUR HAND ON THE BRAKE STRAND AT ALL TIMES???

I have always chalked this up to CYA measures. I would imagine the desire to avoid lawsuits would cause something like this.

Chase I would also suggest that YELLING ALWAYS WORKS TO GET PEOPLE TO CHANGE THEIR MINDS....intellingent discourse has no place in rock climbing forums apparently.

Albers - upon further reflection I think you might be right about the bend in the rope, I can think of many times having the lever all the way open yet still able to control the rate of descent.

Yet my question remains unanswered, does anyone know of a scenario where not touching anything has caused the Gri Gri to fail?
I haven't.

Coeus wrote: I Yet my question remains unanswered, does anyone know of a scenario where not touching anything has caused the Gri Gri to fail? I haven't.

I have been trying to recall such a situation, but I am drawing a blank. How about we reverse the question....

What good reason is there NOT to keep your brake hand on the rope?

...no, slothfulness is not a good reason. Neither is opening a beer.

J. Albers wrote: I don't agree at all. There is plenty of "bend" in the rope running through gri gri such that if the cam didn't load, you could still lock it off with your brake hand.

Wait a minute.... think about that. Your statement implies that you could thread a grigri backwards and still catch a fall. I don't think so.

John, I'm ashamed to say that I successfully caught a toprope fall just last weekend with a backward-threaded grigri. I would not recommend it, nor would I recommend catching a leader fall that way. It's also a bitch to take up slack, or simply hold a fallen climber. And forget about it holding if your brake hand isn't on the rope.

jbaker wrote: Wait a minute.... think about that. Your statement implies that you could thread a grigri backwards and still catch a fall. I don't think so.

Yes, I am positive that I could catch a fall with the gri gri threaded backwards. A couple of months ago, one of my partners witnessed just such an event. My buddy watched and listened as some dude was belaying his partner who was 60 feet up and said something like (you need to add a hippy, granola eating twang to the quote below to envision this correctly...)

Belayer: "Ahhh man, your the hand!!"

So, as the bone head figured out firsthand, you can indeed lock off and lower someone with the gri gri threaded backward.

Edit: Larry, I am not implying that you are a bonehead for threading your grig backwards...just the dread locked dude above that I mentioned.

J. Albers wrote: I have been trying to recall such a situation, but I am drawing a blank. How about we reverse the question.... What good reason is there NOT to keep your brake hand on the rope? ...no, slothfulness is not a good reason. Neither is opening a beer.

You are right, not many good reasons..only one that comes to mind is putting on a raincoat during a belay session on a long route when the weather goes bad, but even then there are ways to keep a hand on or throw on a back up knot for good measure.

jbaker wrote: Wait a minute.... think about that. Your statement implies that you could thread a grigri backwards and still catch a fall. I don't think so.

I have a friend who shattered both ankles from this very sitution.

Albers - I am actually shocked to know that a catch with a gri gri threaded backward worked.

Now I feel like we are getting somewhere in this discussion. This has dispelled a myth for me. I wouldn't want to count on a grigri threaded backwards to catch me, but in the right hands it could.

Larry wrote:John, I'm ashamed to say that I successfully caught a toprope fall just last weekend with a backward-threaded grigri. I would not recommend it, nor would I recommend catching a leader fall that way. It's also a bitch to take up slack, or simply hold a fallen climber. And forget about it holding if your brake hand isn't on the rope.

Larry... I've done it too. A TOPROPE fall that is. But it felt dicey. A LEADER fall ??... asking for big trouble I'd say.

Coeus wrote: Yet my question remains unanswered, does anyone know of a scenario where not touching anything has caused the Gri Gri to fail? I haven't.

there's often no way to tell exactly what causes gear to fail but in the example above, my buddy's belayer was just standing there with both hands at his sides when the rope slipped through the device, enough for him to pass 4 bolts before it locked. we will never know what would have happened had he been holding the rope, so it's impossible to say if "not touching" anything is what caused it to fail.

all i know is that every time i've heard of a grigri accident with any reasonable amount of information about the point of failure, the belayer has not been holding the brake strand. this may not be for any other reason than that if they're holding the rope they're not holding the cam down, but that's still reason enough for me.

J. Albers wrote: What good reason is there NOT to keep your brake hand on the rope? ...no, slothfulness is not a good reason. Neither is opening a beer.

Aid soloing.