Releasing from Loaded Guide Mode: Reliable Techniques?

Check out the latest guide tip in this issue of Climbing--it gives a detailed account of the "LSD lower," the technique by Andy Hansen described. It is also detailed in The Mountain Guide Manual, released by Falcon Guides, this month...

The LSD is simple, fast, and safe...much bettter than the described technique in the BD and Petzl literature...

With the LSD method (D.1)and when lowering, are we just letting belay device ride up against the biner being used to redirect the load strand?

hey bill! yeah--rig the thing up in the gym or on the ground and check it out---it's smooth and controlled--how the device and "defeat carabiner" hang depends a bit on their relative sizes. in the photo below the device hangs on a smaller carabiner than the "defeat" carabiner (orange locker in this shot)....you can experiment with different sizes, but we did so last week and it didn't dramatically change the friction/control. 

just remember to tie a catastrophe knot and clip it to your harness's belay loop (with a locker!) before starting/building the LSD--that way if anything goes haywire at first, you have a full-on backup. use your third-hand autoblock above the catastrophe knot---you'll have awesome control and you'll be focused on just doing the lower, rather than unweighting the blocking carabiner AND lowering as is shown in the BD/Petzl literature. once your third-hand grabs reliably, you drop the catastrophe knot, and lower away. nice thing is, too, if the rope somehow jumped out of the "defeat" carabiner, the plaquette goes back into lock mode...

98% of the time, your second will be able to unweight momentarily to let you clip his strand into the carabiner you hang in front of the device. i'll attach a couple photos from our book, The Mountain Guide Manual--the book has a thorough description of the process, too--and the Climbing article should be pretty clear if we did our job! hit me with questions/etc....but i think this is way, way better than the BD/Petzl method. easy and fast, too, once you've done it once or twice....hope you get some pitches this weekend---RC

RC: 

That photo has been useful. Thanks.

Tried it earlier today hanging from the group shelter at the campground here ... which led to the question. :-)

Sounds like the answer is yes - which seems ok with the usual caveats.  Good to hear about the check of the different length biners there too.

Looking forward to playing with it some more in a couple weeks. Suspect two could be lowered at once though, yes, with care.

Bill

coppolillo wrote:

98% of the time, your second will be able to unweight momentarily to let you clip his strand into the carabiner you hang in front of the device. 

What do you do the 2% of the time that you can't get momentary unweighting?

rgold wrote:

What do you do the 2% of the time that you can't get momentary unweighting?

For the 2% of the time, one does all the steps ... which includes a temporary load transfer to the anchor. 

Otherwise, the load transfer to the anchor is avoided by the climber his/herself unweighting the rope.

Bill Lawry wrote:

For the 2% of the time, one does all the steps ... which includes a temporary load transfer to the anchor. 

Otherwise, the load transfer to the anchor is avoided by the climber his/herself unweighting the rope.

Or you can avoid the load transfer by using the standard method of pulling back on the release hole (without the climber having to unweight the rope)

Another temp-load-transfer variation would be to anchor up higher the locker that has the bight of the rope, and then lower with MMO off the harness.

In other words, use the temporary load transfer as part of E.

rgold wrote:

What do you do the 2% of the time that you can't get momentary unweighting?

Use the knife.

These load transfers can be pretty trivial, often ended by 'A' (cycle the locker) or, say, unraveling a mariner's hitch.

Hi Nate--indeed, page 79 gives you that image and description of the LSD--give it a look. Hit me with any questions. There's also a bit more about it in the rescue chapter--and THANKS for buying the book! 

In the rescue section, page 282, we give a complete breakdown of the "Temporary Ledge." rgold, this is one solution to the scenario in which the climber can't unweight the rope--it's quick, easy, safe--thinking you could pull it off in under a minute once you've decided to do it. 

Note, too, the temp ledge allows you to hang a locking carabiner in front of the device, as if you're going to build an LSD lower. Clip a catastrophe knot to your harness, add your third-hand to the brake strand, then clip the climber's strand into the defeat carabiner---but instead of releasing the temporary ledge, you unclip the plaquette from the masterpoint--but do NOT disassemble the device; rather, simply slide it down the rope and clip the plaquette to your belay loop in rappel mode---now you're in a counterbalance rappel in about 75 seconds...all the while backed up with a catastrophe knot clipped to yourself and the rope clipped thru a locker on the anchor's masterpoint. Great technique if you need to rescue a second who's in trouble (stuck body part in a crack, injury, medical problem, etc.)...

FrankPS---yes, you could just "release" the device by levering it via the small hole on it---but my experience has been it tends to "pop" and release itself abruptly--this is one of the failure modes that has surprised people...if it's backed up with a catastrophe knot and third-hand, no chance of dropping the second, but it does make for a moment of stress! 

FrankPS wrote:

Or you can avoid the load transfer by using the standard method of pulling back on the release hole (without the climber having to unweight the rope)

Having practiced that a number of times, I recently decided for me that it is not something I would recommend.

Sure, it can work.

The "standard method of pulling back on the release hole" is the source of all the dropping problems that have occurred with guide ATC-type plates.  Even with a catastrophe knot backup, dropping a second a foot or two loads up the anchor, might cause or aggravate an injury, and will surely freak out a second who is already in a world of trouble if a longish lower is contemplated.

I'm beginning to think that  when there is enough weight on the device that a sling and body weight are needed to release it,  the kinds of lowering methods described above that either convert to another friction mode of the device or take it out of the system entirely are the only appropriate tactics.

By the way, I've bought The Mountain Guide Manual and think it goes to the top of the list when it comes to a large swath of climbing techniques.  It is well-written, coherent, comprehensive,  and has the most successful illustrative photographs I've seen in any text.  There are things here and there I might wish were done differently, but everyone is going to have a personal take on certain practices.  I  think it has immediately become an essential reference for anyone who climbs---it is not just for guides! (Put another way, I'm saying that most everyone should at least know how the most experienced and competent guides do things, even if they are not themselves going to be guiding.)

From what I've personally experienced, a sudden drop occurs when when the belayer is not:

1. Redirecting the brake strand
2. Using a friction hitch (autoblock) on the brake strand

Performing a weighted lower on an ATC Guide type device is a pain and can suddenly release, but adding the two above components, the possibility of dropping the climber is virtually eliminated.  

That said, I prefer to use my Cinch/Vergo (when it comes back!) for bringing up a second.

And the LSD method looks good. 

rgold wrote:

By the way, I've bought The Mountain Guide Manual and think it goes to the top of the list when it comes to a large swath of climbing techniques.  It is well-written, coherent, comprehensive,  and has the most successful illustrative photographs I've seen in any text.  There are things here and there I might wish were done differently, but everyone is going to have a personal take on certain practices.  I  think it has immediately become an essential reference for anyone who climbs---it is not just for guides! (Put another way, I'm saying that most everyone should at least know how the most experienced and competent guides do things, even if they are not themselves going to be guiding.

I just flipped through a copy of this, and rgold is correct. The best photos I've seen for techniques, and that's saying a lot, as I work in a library! I'm also a visual learner, so this book will be purchased shortly.

The other newish (2017) book I would recommend is "Why we climb", by Chris Noble. It is truly inspiring.

Best, OLH

So I ended up lowering another climber from a DMM Pivot this weekend on a different rope...just as smooth and easy as before.  No friction hitch or redirect needed, felt just like lowering from a Grigri.  Seriously, guys...just get a Pivot.  They're not even expensive (same as ATC Guide/Reverso if not cheaper) and remove all of the cluster from belaying in Guide mode.

Ted, that has been my (very limited) experience, too, although I need to experiment with other diameter ropes/biners and different scenarios. I have found this thread very interesting and educational. However, I have found myself wondering if many of the recommendations to "never lower without a backup" are mostly recommendations left over from the more ON/OFF devices that were the norm before the Pivot came along. That is, they come mainly from folks who have not yet lowered with a Pivot to see and feel the difference. That is part of what I am still trying to decipher by following this discussion.

rgold wrote:

Edit to add: the locker on the bight of rope did not flip. Even so, the belay device was essentially defeated.

Bill Lawry wrote:

The failure occurred at a point after the "guide mode" was defeated but before the device flipped.  Within the slot of the ATC Guide, the brake strand slipped completely past the load strand under body weight with an audible "pop".  This was with an 8.9mm rope.

 (Also the brake strand may have been non-optimally positioned relative to the load strand before the attempt.)

That's a known failure mode of the auto-blocking devices when using one thin rope. It's especially dangerous with devices that doesn't have a keeper cord/loop (Kong Gigi/Camp Ovo), so the blocking biner is free to rotate completely. With the Gigi/Ovo (and the mega/micro jul too), when belaying in guide mode on a single strand of rope, you are supposed to clip the blocking biner around the device as well.

Previous discussion here: https://www.mountainproject.com/forum/topic/111539787/mega-jul-top-belay#ForumMessage-111541358.

aikibujin wrote:

That's a known failure mode of the auto-blocking devices when using one thin rope. It's especially dangerous with devices that doesn't have a keeper cord/loop (Kong Gigi/Camp Ovo), so the blocking biner is free to rotate completely. 

But it should not be implied that the locker must rotate for the strand-swap to compromise the device.

In theory, the failure we saw could happen with two strands.