Is belaying a leader without gloves an accident waiting to happen?

In his two posts, rgold has pretty much spoken definitively on this subject. In particular, he has clearly explained why, just because you may have successfully caught a severe fall in the past without gloves, does not imply that you can't be faced with a worse fall in the future that you will not be able to control without wearing gloves.

It is truly unfortunate that his posts have apparently been completely ignored, except by one person who failed to comprehend the lesson.

Jay

I wear a Vaseline-filled glove on my brake hand to keep it soft for my wife.

Steve Lynn wrote:I wear a Vaseline-filled glove on my brake hand to keep it soft for my wife.

Ahhh, a Steinbeck fan.
You know what happened in the end to the guy who said that, right? he got his hand crushed (by Lenny, not a rope).

I'm not a vaseline or glove fan. I always say: "...she likes it rough."

Jay Tanzman wrote:In his two posts, rgold has pretty much spoken definitively on this subject. ... It is truly unfortunate that his posts have apparently been completely ignored, except by one person who failed to comprehend the lesson.

Wow.
And here I thought I'd rather have a belayer that know to singshot and suspend the belay stance, how to handle the rope, etc.. rather than make up for the lack of that care or knowledge with a glove.
But I guess you are the expert.

jay, his posts haven't been so much ignored as they have been refuted. i agree with tony, having a belayer who has their shit together is a lot more important than having some dillweed with a glove.

rgold wrote:I've pretty much said what I think needs to be said on the subject, but I'll add this one additional bit of information to think about. Various studies (see, for example, references in Jim Tit's superb article linked above) make it clear that even the strongest grippers (and here we are speaking of absolute strength, not strength-to-weight ratio) using medium-diameter ropes will probably not be able to hold, without slippage, more than about 2.5 kN (about 560 lbf) peak impact load with an ATC-type device. Anyone who doubts this might want to try a single-strand rappel with three additional climbers also hanging from the device. (Please only try this right off the ground!) Given the amount of times we hear about needing a second biner to make controllable an ordinary double-strand rappel for a single climber, it isn't hard to guess the outcome of such an experiment. The testimony of various posters refers to thousands of falls held without slippage certainly illustrates how often system friction limits the load experienced by the belayer. But there is also absolutely no question about the potential for higher loads in real field situations---2.5 kN is well below what is possible. A few people will experience such loads (as I have). I think that those who do will be far better off if gloved.

I definitely agree that there is cause for concern, in theory. Is anyone aware of an accident where not wearing gloves was the primary cause in loss of control of the belay or severe hand injury?

The only examples I can think of involve people who grabbed the climbers side of a rope, an unsecured rope, or other improper belay techniques.

Is it possible that there is some other mechanism that absorbs the energy in a real world scenario? Or, is this such a low probability event that it is hard to know how real the issues are?

Well, the biggest question to address then is how to keep the impact force below 2.5kN, isn't it? And how to hold the rope?
IE: My rope-hold really doesn't rely on grip or friction, since I 'lock' the rope over my hand, as Perin B. recalled from other threads and my partners over time have probably all noted (and some have commented on). Furthermore, if I am the suspended mass below a clipped anchor sling-shotted, then 2.5kn, representing 250+kg F is going to move me, not strictly apply more force to the rope. Thusly it is limiting the load to less than 2.5kN for at least some pre-arranged distance of travel- not to mention the friction and force limiting effects of a 180deg bend in the rope just above me and the energy dissipated in moving through that interface as well as limiting/distributing the peak force.

But then again I feel that it is truly unfortunate that many of the pro-glove contingent has apparently completely ignored those points... including at least one person who failed to comprehend the lesson. (Tongue in cheek, so to speak)

Perin is a complete exception to that (in case anyone takes this as a jab on him, which it certainly is not) who was able to see and point out the data on both sides.

I've been pulled 3 or 4 feet off the ground (I weigh 185 lbs, yeah he was a big dude) catching a lead fall with a regular ATC - very little slippage, no gloves, no rope burn.

shumin - that's interesting that one of the reasons you wear the gloves is to keep your hands from drying out - i am actually on the flip side of the coin, in that my hands get pretty sweaty when wearing the glove.

there have been several considerable refutations of rgolds theory that a person can't handle a brutal belay without gloves. tony mentions 2 FF2's that he has belayed. i've belayed a couple that were pretty close (2 that were redirected, one that was straight down onto my harness) and we managed to not drop our partners. i still maintain that wearing a glove isn't the silver bullet.

i realize the point made about a person not being able to hold more than 2.5kN without slippage, but as tony points out there are a lot of other factors that can, and will, come into play to limit the load (movement of the body), or deal with it if it is above the limit (some rope moving through belay device).

if i were to use a glove regularly, i would probably use a mechanic's glove as they allow good dexterity and have a high friction grip. t he drawback would be that they would probably not hold up well to repeated lowering. the metolius gloves just plain suck, there really isn't any other way to describe them.

Matt Thorum wrote:Is anyone aware of an accident where not wearing gloves was the primary?

You just don't see it out there in the field.

I can't recall an accident where a belayer said that a glove would have saved their partner. Anyone?

What I do recall, is a belayer who lost control of a belay in a really bad fall, while wearing gloves, and the climber died. Not that gloves had anything to do with it, though. Sad deal.

There are gobs and gobs of belay related accidents out there. Not having gloves never seems to be an assignable cause.

jcurl wrote: The physics isn't right. You would be lifted but there is no reason why the rope tension wouldn't rise faster than you.

The physics are just fine. I think perhaps you misunderstood my intention/message.

I used to teach physics at University level and have a reasonably good grasp of the basics. F=MA is very basic. Energy =m*g*h (falling climber) = Area under the F*D curve (belayer + devices) is also pretty basic, but understanding where all that force is going is what is admittedly complex. I'll start by mentioning that force of friction in a flexible member wrapped across an edge, even ignoring deformation, is proportional to tension and to the total angle of contact... which means that friction is multiplied, not added through a system, so in a near ideal system (yeah, you can nit-pick that) you can add a whole lot of stopping power by adding even small amounts upstream in a system and redirecting a rope. In complex systems where the cable deforms (a climbing rope) the smaller the radius of curvature, the more effective this can be... though a rope in tension becomes "harder" and deforms less' but I digress.

If you re-read what I actually said, I never said that the rope tension couldn't rise above my body weight. I only implied that I wouldn't be launched upward at 22m/s^2 for any sustained period of time if the rope is redirected bent 180deg across a narrow radius over my head.
Not that it matters with the rope locked across my palm, but whatever...

this is my opinion on this subject carnagecorp.com/pub/picture…

slim wrote:jay, his posts haven't been so much ignored as they have been refuted.

"I held a factor-2 fall once without a glove" is not a refutation.

Jay

Jay Tanzman wrote: "I held a factor-2 fall once without a glove" is not a refutation. Jay

Nor is holding a NEAR FF2 twice a refutation.
But asking how it is that the person is allowing a FF 2 to happen directly onto an anchor, or for that matter, to happen AT ALL is a VERY good question. Why not go to every possible length to stop the extremes?

Why are people doing debating if a glove will allow them to regain control once they've lost it as if that's an answer to a safety problem rather than preventing it?

Tony B wrote: Why are people doing debating if a glove will allow them to regain control once they've lost it . . . ?

Who's debating that?

Jay

jcurl wrote: The leader fell 20 feet landing on his tailbone. ... Can't help but wonder, though, about her belay technique...

What's really puzzling me is why is she climbing with someone that has a tail

oh, just saw it; they were Canadian

A quote from this article :

"I had the privilege (!) of demonstrating how to hold a 30-meter free fall without intermediate runners by means of the MB technique. I was wearing a glove, which was necessary to let the rope slide in my hand about 15 m!"

Great article, Brenta.

These passages stick out in my mind:

UIAA wrote:Particular attention was put on teaching the climbers that slippage of the rope is inevitable, if friction of the rope against the rock doesn't help.

UIAA wrote:At the beginning, we had to devote most of our efforts to convincing the climbers that in the large majority of real cases the friction between the rope and rock is determinant in holding the falling climber; consequently, testing belay [sic] at the tower was essential to appreciate what can really happen in a bad (though unlikely) case, i.e. when there is no friction.

To paraphrase rgold: The vast majority of climbers will never be called upon to hold a truly severe fall. If you are one of the unlucky few who is so called, it's better to be prepared.

To which Tony B might add: Do all in your power to assure that you won't be one of those called upon.

Perin Blanchard wrote:Great article, Brenta. These passages stick out in my mind: To paraphrase rgold: The vast majority of climbers will never be called upon to hold a truly severe fall. If you are one of the unlucky few who is so called, it's better to be prepared. To which Tony B might add: Do all in your power to assure that you won't be one of those called upon.

Tony's attitude is more like: there are certain procedures that you can follow that will guarantee that you will never be called upon to hold a truly severe fall. Unfortunately, that's false. And if you aren't prepared to catch the worst case scenario fall, then, as far as I'm concerned, you shouldn't be climbing.

Jay

I know, from a longer personal experience than most people in this discussion, of a number of bad cases of rope burns from belaying, some of them extremely bad. In most (but not all) the belayer did not lose control and no accident report ever appeared. The claim that such things do not happen in the field is a declaration of personal awareness, not an established fact.

The so-called "refutations" to my points all consist of personal experiences in which the rope didn't slip, which can only confirm what I already stipulated, that high-energy falls are uncommon. None of these non-refutations address the experimentally established fact that the forces of a fall can exceed what can be held without slippage with an ATC device, or the fact that the manufacturers of these devices state that slippage will occur at high loads, or the fact that many climbers have found themselves struggling to control mere body weight on single-strand rappels.

It was mentioned that slippage can occur in the device without the rope slipping through the hand, as in the CAI belay tests, filmed in high-speed video, that show an "inertial" stage in which the belay hand is drawn to the device. This gives at best two feet of loaded slippage, which may or may not be enough to absorb the remaining fall energy---in most of those tests it was not enough. But if you take a look around at the crag, you'll see that most belayers have their braking hand very close to the device; they'd be lucky to get a few inches of inertial slippage before their hand was up against the device.

It also seems worth confronting the false dichotomies periodically advanced here, all of which say something like "I'd rather have a competent belayer than an idiot with a glove." Well sure, who wouldn't, but that isn't the question. For one thing, gloves are there to protect the belayer from injury, and no one is more likely to get this injury than the competent belayer who isn't going to let go no matter what.

As for the remote but non-zero probability of getting dropped, the question is, would you rather your competent belayer was protected from rope burns or not?

I think it is unfortunate that the title of the thread has a pejorative tone, a tone that immediately puts the vast majority of climbers on the defensive and only contributes to the staking out of extreme positions. Everyone knows you can belay successfully almost all the time without gloves. The decision involved is whether it is worth preparing for a rare possibility that could have serious consequences. It is fine to choose not to be prepared, but it doesn't make sense to define the choice out of existence by claiming that an unlikely event is impossible.