Is there a single sane person who cares about belayers BITD?

OK, don't drop your friends.

Buddy check

Brake hand on the rope

Knot in the end

Keep your climber on belay

BUT I COULDN"T CARE LESS ABOUT DROP TESTS AND HIP BELAYS AND HOW INCREDIBLY PERFECT BELAYERS USED TO BE!

Strange question!

I don't care about it, in a sense that it is not relevant to my climbing.

BUT... if one of my partners is that guy who could hip belay (and I have climbed with guys who were great belayers BITD, and still are), then that belayer get so much more street cred for knowing how to do that!

Lena chita wrote:

Strange question!

healyj, just say'n

Hip belay- wrap rope behind you, hold on. Some subtleties but that's the basics. Hurts to catch someone unless you have padding.

Yeah.  Fuck that learning from the past shit.  That's just dumb.  History is so useless.    While we are at it, lets just move to full on socialism since we forgot that tends towards marxism, communism.  Oops, political drift on a climbing site.  Shoot me.

We are fortunate to have climbers with 30, 40, and 50 years of experience and history contributing here.  Whether you agree or disagree with them on various topics, at least it keeps the topics at the forefront of climber forums, and, may be doing some good to keep up climber awareness of the simple things that can go wrong and get you killed.  

Knowing that many falls have been safely caught with a simple technique and no device whatsoever is evidence that it really is about the climber, having total presence of mind, paying attention, employing skill vs some quasi auto locking device that may (possibly) lend itself towards complacency.  The hip belay is still quite relevant today in many situations, such as trying to save some time moving over easier terrain.  

Thanks Healyj for your contributions.