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

csproul wrote: Test it out and let us know. So far three separate people on this thread alone have tested a backwards threaded Grigri or one with the cam held closed and found it inadequate. Let us know if you find something different.

ummmmm, i WATCHED a guy catch a pretty big lead fall with his gri gri threaded backwards....

per rgold "... Surely as an administrator on this site you have some responsibility to help climbers avoid tragedies, even if the circumstances causing them are rare and unknown to you in your personal practice. Isn't it time to live up to that??

i don't see how me recommending that a belayer apply a firm grip to the brake side is irresponsible...

Jim Titt wrote: The force needed to engage the cam is just over 49N or 5kg, you sure you can´t hold that? The force you need to apply to the braking strand to achieve lock-up is even more miserable, about 2.5N or 0.25kg (about 4m of rope is always enough when I use mine for top-rope soloing.

Yes, but if you grab the climber's end of the rope (w/o actually interfering the cam), apparently the force needed to engage the cam will increase exponentially because Grigri hates Americans.

Belaying behavior that makes me a lot more concerned than using a Gri Gri:

chatting with friends

handling the rope really casually (i.e. not acting as if a fall might happen)

throwing out tons of extra slack

I'm sure I could think of more. I've witnessed all of the above at the climbing gym.

Belayers who have a big loop of slack in the system regardless of the situation and regardless of what I ask them to do are belayers I eventually gravitate away from.

Gently overhanging stuff with tons of room to fall = no problem.

Pulling a hard bulge over a slab= no fucking way.

Working a hard move I haven't got wired on super steep stuff and I'm gonna have to boink 25 feet instead of 10 feet = not unsafe but I'm not gonna be too happy.

Christian wrote:Belayers who have a big loop of slack in the system regardless of the situation and regardless of what I ask them to do are belayers I eventually gravitate away from. Gently overhanging stuff with tons of room to fall = no problem. Pulling a hard bulge over a slab= no fucking way. Working a hard move I haven't got wired on super steep stuff and I'm gonna have to boink 25 feet instead of 10 feet = not unsafe but I'm not gonna be too happy.

+1 I realize that this is off topic (which never happens on MP) but a big loop of slack is one of the biggest problems I frequently see. I see climbers 15 feet off the ground and the belayer is 10 feet back from the cliff with 8 feet of slack in the rope. When asked why their response is to give the leader a soft catch. Yeah it is going to be soft alright. The belayer won't feel a thing. The soft catch thing is over emphasized and more than not misapplied.

Jake Jones wrote: To those arguing whether or not gripping the climber's side of the rope causes the cam to not engage properly- is everyone, probably hundreds of people, who witnessed this behavior of the device caused by this action just hallucinating? Dumb? Just plain wrong? I doubt it.

Hundreds is small potatoes: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudde…
Correlation is NOT causation

Morgan Patterson wrote: HAHAHA!!! Thanks Jim... u just made my mornin'! Stupid 'mericans...

My pleasure! However behind every humurous comment there is an element of truth, given the choice of a stringy, unwashed long-haired chain-smoking continental and some of the up-tight, paranoic over-gripping noobs the American gyms seem to produce the choice is easy. That belay card on their chalk bag belt gives me no confidence whatsoever.

Jake Jones wrote:But to dismiss all these eyewitness accounts from people, many of whom are very experienced and DO use the device correctly, as just hogwash IS ignorance personified.

If there is a reasonable scientific explanation, then yes (Jim had mentioned the possibility of a low hand on climber's side that physically interferes with the cam action, I suspect another would be the brake side hand rises as the climber's side gets pulled up by the rope, thereby severely compromising applied brake force). Otherwise, there are precedents where large number of otherwise intelligent people do very stupid things and blame the machine. Btw, aren't you still convinced the Cinch is a fine belay device, despite many experienced climbers think otherwise? Because it'll be about 1000 times more dangerous than a Grigri in a similar situation.

FWIW, the OP kind of rubs me in the wrong way in mentioning "pro" climbers in rifle to bolster his point, since one of them dropped a climber (with a Grigri) there last season.

Jim, I think it fair to characterize what has turned into a lengthy debate (with, of course, the usual ad hominen attacks) as follows. I hope I am being fair to both sides:

• I believe there is general acceptance that overgripping with the feeding hand can cause the cam not to engage. The big kerfluffle is about whether this presumably momentary disengaging could lead to total loss of control of the belay if the braking hand is properly placed and activated.
• On the one hand we have folks who are saying that with the braking correctly positioned and ready, this momentary disengagement will be corrected and held, and that a loss of control represents a simple failure to use the brake hand correctly.
• On the other hand we have people who are saying that doesn't seem to be what has happened in every case, and there appears to be a potential for the belay to fail from overgripping the feeding hand even if the brake hand is properly deployed, especially in cases of new thin ropes and substantial weight mismatch between leader and belayer. A problem with this position is that there doesn't seem to be any good explanation for how it could happen unless the cam either stays disengaged in spite of appropriate braking behavior or takes more than, say, two seconds to engage.

Meanwhile, no one---except possibly Bisharat, who claims first-hand observations---has actually seen in detail what has happened in one of these failures. So, as really the only authoritative voice in this thread, I'm interested in whether you think there is any set of conditions that could produce the type of failure we've been speaking of, even if the belayer's braking hand behavior is appropriate.

I guess, specifically, the question of interest is not the braking force usually required to activate the cam, but whether something different happens if the initial condition is the rope running through the device at speed. Is it possible that it will then be harder---I think it would have to be much harder in order to validate the second group's assumptions---to activate braking in that case in the under two second window?

Being a chain smoking euro bum is no protection against grigri accidents

Do a google search for "accident grigri escalade"

ill post up a french vid that came out a while back about grigri use when im back from climbing today

Grigri drops are by no means a yankee phenomenom

Stone Nude wrote: And yet the posts keep coming...don't take it personally, bear-I have a pet peeve about people posting that they're frustrated and done posting, and, sure enough, after one more beer....bam!

Its MP

No one cares about real life accident reports

Only about whose intrawebz dick is biggah !!!

You can see this on the first few pages of this thread

Reading this and watching the associated video, and actually following it would prevent almost every grigri drop

petzl.com/en/Sport/Belaying…

But it aint as fun as intrawebz arguments, nor can petzl tell me how to belay !!!

Stone Nude wrote:^^^think you missed my point, I'm done with this stupid thread! Posting DONE!

Buh bye

Im off to go climb ... But dun worry im a expert belayer, dun need no stinking advice from petzl !!!

bearbreeder wrote: Its MP No one cares about real life accident reports Only about whose intrawebz dick is biggah !!! You can see this on the first few pages of this thread Reading this and watching the associated video, and actually following it would prevent almost every grigri drop petzl.com/en/Sport/Belaying… But it aint as fun as intrawebz arguments, nor can petzl tell me how to belay !!!

More thread drift:

Anybody else have issues w Petz's new approved technique?

Seems that between the bend back towards the lip and the rope being even gently encircled by my gloved hand, enough friction is created that I just cannot feed as fast for fast clips as with the old approved technique. This is with a 9.8 w no dry treatment and Grigri 2.

Jake Jones wrote: Again, I refer you to my policy of using the device correctly.

I don't doubt you, the issue I have with this is you will have to grab the climber's side while taking in slack, and have to condition yourself to not death grip it should the climber falls while that's happening. So it's not a simple "if you don't do A, then bad juju won't happen".

Regardless, my contention is that in itself isn't an incorrect use of the device (I have used the left hand (in addition to time a jump) to soften the catch when belaying a lighter climber when using a Grigri), but rather the point should be to properly deploying the brake hand and make sure the cam is not being blocked physically. On the other hand, if (especially new) belayers have a tendency to not perform those properly when gripping the climber's end, then I have no problem teaching them not gripping the climber's end, but just don't go around telling everyone else they are wrong & unsafe.

BillS wrote: This is wrong information. It's very easy for even an untrained novice to quickly discover that this is going to vary quite a bit with the rope being used - for starters.

Actually I believe you are wrong, the cam engages with force applied on the brake side by mechanically overcoming the spring tension, that depends little on the friction property of the rope (grease up the rope if you want to try). Friction merely aids the engagement from force applied on the climber's side.

There are much more variability on how much grip strength, rope condition, hand position affect the actual brake force applied, and I bet that's where the real culprit lies.

BillS wrote: In climbing, it's been shown to opens gates, to rip cams and nuts out of otherwise ideal placements - and it appears it could occasionally bypass the locking of a GriGri.

Those are cases of an undampened rope. Put a firm brake hand on it and it's a different story.

As the whole burnt braking hand thing, I'll give one analogy: you can drag your brakes down a hill, burning up all the pad material, and still not stop the car/bike. Or you can apply more brake force and stop in much shorter distance and have a lot less wear.

long time reader, first time poster.

i've been using a grigri for 2 years now. when i was taught now to use it i told to always keep my hand on the break. i've caught numerous falls on them and have never experienced the cam not engaging.

i think it's natural tendency to grab onto the climber strand. we do it when catching with the atc and i see it being done ALL the time with gri gri falls.

you would think that keeping your hand on the brake would engage it and make it safe. but it's not the case.

right or wrong, the OP educated me. when your climber falls, DO NOT grab the climber strand. because if you grab it, you could pull down which COULD disengage or cause the cam to not engage. result is a deck.

very good information. never hurts to be more safe.

climb safe,

john

Tim Lutz wrote:"Use the motherfucker properly, and belay properly, and your device will do what it is designed to do." Are you sure? I think we another 10 pages to be more safer. And charts with cosines n stuff.

+1 The best post on this thread yet!

In case there's any life left in the "a Grigri threaded backwards acts like an ATC" debate, I just did a simple comparison. I rigged each device and ran the rope up through a pulley and down to me. I stood on a bathroom scale so I could see how hard I was weighting the rope. I tied 20 lb to the brake strand.

The backwards Grigri started to slip at about 110 lb. The ATC (BD Atc Guide, Gen 1, the kind without the lightening cut-outs on the sides) held my weight (160 lb) plus quite a bit of bouncing. I couldn't get it to slip. The rope was a fairly smooth 9.8.

Qualitative observation re. the Grigri - most of the friction in the device seemed to be the bend of the rope at the edge of "the flap". Slight changes in Grigri orientation lowered the holding strength.

Whether a backwards Grigri will catch any particular fall is still up for debate, but IMO it is NOT "just like an ATC".

reboot wrote: FWIW, the OP kind of rubs me in the wrong way in mentioning "pro" climbers in rifle to bolster his point, since one of them dropped a climber (with a Grigri) there last season.

I mentioned it to illustrate several points:

1) That even very experienced climbers can still learn something about belaying. And that they admitted it, and were open about it.

2) Since this failure-mechanism is not well-known even by the experts, why would you expect your garden-variety climber to know about it?

3) That this type of failure happens more often than anyone suspects.

Oh, and BTW, you're wrong in most of your posts, simple as that.