New technology for lead climbing auto-belay

This looks pretty cool. It also looks terrifying to use.

rockandice.com/video-galler…

Nice find, definitely looks interesting and I agree about the terrifying part.

If the rope tangles or knots before entering the device you're out of luck...

Well it's about time something like this came along. Totally solves the problem of awkward, inane conversations with a real live belayer.

Thank you Epic!

Would not touch it, so many things that could go wrong.

I just wonder about how to attach it to the bottom of a climb -- can I tie it to a tree? Does it have to be oriented correctly? How do I make sure? Most of the cliffs I lead at don't have convenient bolt-attachment points for such a device.

David Gibbs wrote:I just wonder about how to attach it to the bottom of a climb -- can I tie it to a tree? Does it have to be oriented correctly? How do I make sure? Most of the cliffs I lead at don't have convenient bolt-attachment points for such a device.

Easy, just put bolted anchors at the base of every single pitch route!

I have problems with the whole battery thing. What happens when either the remote or device battery dies.

off battery does not reduce the safety, device will stop the fall in any case. unresolved is automatic tightening of rope, the worst case is 2m free fall, but this is also the case in the "traditional" belaying (hope that device is not meant to be used on rock wall but on gym wall only, where the distance between anchors are max 1m on critical sections).

it is not clear from the video if the device allows automatic descend or just remote controlled descend or any at all. another question is dynamic belaying, and the device is suspiciously small to deal with high frequency of hard falls in gym (lead climbers often fall)

I doubt that in industry will allow such a protection for lone worker, it is much more dangerous and unpredictable environment than gym climbing.

anyway, for me it is a good product concept!

If my partner uses a gri gri, perhaps they could have one of these as a back up on the brake strand...

ViperScale wrote:Would not touch it, so many things that could go wrong.

Sure, but it is relatively simple as far as engineering problems go.

Other things that could go wrong in big ways in your modern life:
- ABS brakes
- Commercial airliner avionics
- Detonation mechanism on one of the many hydrogen bombs around the world

Yet these things work so well that we don't really think about. I don't see any reason why this device should be inherently any different.

Keep in mind that it doesn't need to be flawless to be acceptably safe (for me), just less flawed then your belayer.

I'll stick with my trusted Silent Partner.

emorekul wrote:If the rope tangles or knots before entering the device you're out of luck...

The nice thing about using a Silent Partner self-belay device is that if you have a tangle with the rope and/or the device, it's all there in arm's reach for the climber to untangle it.

The nice thing about this new Epic device is that you don't have to haul the weight of the device and so much of your rope's weight up with you while climbing.

Presumably the artificial-tower maintenance workers shown in the Epic video do not have to haul the weight of the device very far to base of the tower (presumably they arrive on a motor vehicle). And if something jams in the device down at the bottom of the tower, they just pull out their mobile phone and call for help, meanwhile clipping into some ladder rung or other fixture on the tower while waiting for rescue.

Myself I'll stick with my Silent Partner.

Ken

P.S. There's a video of Catherine Destivelle soloing a multi-pitch climb, where the supposed "premise" of her stunt is that she started climbing on autobelay from a device anchored at the bottom of the route -- but then after she had already climbed up like a hundred feet off the ground, her rope jammed in the device, so she (supposedly) had no choice but untie from her rope and finish the long route solo - (You're expected to believe that the camera operator could not be bothered to walk over to the device and unjam the rope).
youtube.com/watch?v=qPFoo8C…

kenr wrote: Ken P.S. There's a video of Catherine Destivelle soloing a multi-pitch climb, where the supposed "premise" of her stunt is that she started climbing on autobelay from a device anchored at the bottom of the route -- but then after she had already climbed up like a hundred feet off the ground, her rope jammed in the device, so she (supposedly) had no choice but untie from her rope and finish the long route solo - (You're expected to believe that the camera operator could not be bothered to walk over to the device and unjam the rope).

It may have been a static camera but maybe it wasn't

Squeak wrote: It may have been a static camera but maybe it wasn't

The camera was moving. Also, the Devil's Tower has no walk-off which would leave a free soloer SOL. Clearly the stunt was rigged.

20 kN wrote: The camera was moving. Also, the Devil's Tower has no walk-off which would leave a free soloer SOL. Clearly the stunt was rigged.

Oh yeah, whenever I use a grigri as an autobelay, I always rig it at the bottom of the climb on a single non-locking QD. Surprising that the film makers got an actual climber to agree to such a ridiculous premise...

20 kN wrote:Devil's Tower has no walk-off which would leave a free soloer SOL.

Not entirely true... When Derek Hersey was there he downclimbed Soler to get off

Seems a little odd that anyone would rig a grigri at the bottom to autobelay yourself. prob harder to feed rope... but....