You Suck at Belaying

I described 2 cases in my 20 years of climbing where I'm aware of incidents that had a reasonable probability of being related to the hard catch/spike situation, and I could give more details if I thought it'd be helpful. In the case of the woman with the two hairline-fractured heels from bringing her feet up to protect herself as she spiked into the wall on a reasonably steep gym route, it is actually pretty straightforward what happened there, not a lot of nuance to it. The sideways-falling hip fracture case is maybe a bit more complicated, but we talked about it afterwards with the climber and belayer back at the time and at least I came away from those conversations thinking it was a really tough one to make any judgement about but probably could have been avoided by a softer catch. To the outright non-believers, I myself am completely fine with the uncertainty that they may not have been avoidable with a softer catch, but also having experienced very hard collisions with walls that most definitely came from hard catches myself, I like to try to avoid hard catches, regardless of whether I can break an ankle stepping off a curb or not. That one is a weird counter-argument, Emil! I would like to hit the wall with less force rather than more. Josh Squire, bummer about your injury, and I believe you :) Pete S, sorry you decked! Obviously, keeping the climber off the ground comes first.

When attempting to respond to Bryan S's original Q about whether there are really a bunch of injured people out there from hard catches, I omitted another example of another woman I know who broke an ankle in a lead fall more recently because I don't think a soft or hard catch was likely the issue there, so this isn't just a litany of all the lead-fall injuries I know of. You all can keep debating whether hard catches can or cannot cause broken bones or from spiky sport climbing falls in certain situations, and I will keep seeking out partners who recognize how painful it is to be slammed into the wall, and like to try to help avoid that, especially when weight differential is part of the issue.

I think these videos are awesome and I think they've been debated endlessly already on MP but,

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_0GGsBgPic4

If you do watch be sure to watch all the way to the end of this one before just watching the first few minutes and saying "SEE?!". And the previous video in this series is really great too.

Princess Puppy Lovrwrote:

There is a lack of personal accountability in this thread. Those wanting soft catches have you considered gaining some weight? 

I'm still waiting for the slabby soft catch example, maybe you just nailed it? If a tiny person needs a soft catch on the slab they just have to rack up with cast iron weights or get fat, your pick.

Mark Pilatewrote:

Seems the situation can be easily solved for those worried about being “spiked”.  Surprised no one has mentioned using a “sad sack”.  This is a device invented by trad climbers for their whiny GriGri using sport climbing friends who need every catch to be a soft catch for their spiritual health.  the sad sack is simply a lightweight tarp or duffel that is stuffed with gear, water, rocks, whatever to be the perfect calibrated weight to give the climber in question the soft catch of their dreams.  Easy to adjust more or less weight as needed.   Just set the sad sack on the ground in front of the belayer and clip to the rope. let the rope run freely through its Biner, but when your “lightweight” climber falls, the rope comes taut and has to lift the sad sack into the air, thus dampening the whip in a controlled manner tuned for the individual climber - just like their sleep number.

Only drawback is that the trad climber now has to deal with two sad sacks, but shucks, that’s just another day in the wild for a good trad climber. 

So if I'm picturing this correctly in my head while the climber is climbing the rope runs from the belay device down to a biner clipped to a weighted sack, then back up to the first bolt/piece.

And when the climber falls the sack (stuffed with a bunch of rocks/gear/other heavy hard stuff) is then lifted up by the rope which is getting increasingly more vertical by the moment until the rope is running straight from the belay device to the first bolt with the sack full of heavy hard stuff now swinging from it at the lowest point...

As a dude I'm starting to see why it's called a sad sack.  You can get the same results as a belayer by just walking around the crag with your grigri still clipped to the belay loop

Joe Prescottwrote:

Do you thing it was due solely to a hard catch? Do you have any specific data point that a hard catch was used to catch this this fall? Do you think that a softer catch would have completely mitigated all injury, or would you have only needed 6 screws instead of 7?

If only Matthew was belaying you,...

I was not the climber nor the belayer. Eye witness accounts plus the climber’s testimony concluded that it was a hard catch. There is absolutely no disputing it. That was the mechanism of injury. Now, with that said, there are ALWAYS other variables in play that may make a hard catch and an injury more likely. For example, how much rope is out, the attention of the belayer, the timing of the belayer, the angle of the climb, friction in the system, was there a previous fall and did the rope get a chance to rest, etc. etc. 

Bottom line is…as the belayer, your job is to give an appropriate catch. Often, that means a soft catch. Sometimes you need to make it harder. Sometimes all you need to do brake. Good belaying takes years to cultivate. I’ve been climbing 20 years and still continue to critique my own belaying. 

Amy Jordanwrote:

I described 2 cases in my 20 years of climbing where I'm aware of incidents that had a reasonable probability of being related to the hard catch/spike situation, and I could give more details if I thought it'd be helpful. In the case of the woman with the two hairline-fractured heels from bringing her feet up to protect herself as she spiked into the wall on a reasonably steep gym route, it is actually pretty straightforward what happened there, not a lot of nuance to it. The sideways-falling hip fracture case is maybe a bit more complicated, but we talked about it afterwards with the climber and belayer back at the time and at least I came away from those conversations thinking it was a really tough one to make any judgement about but probably could have been avoided by a softer catch. To the outright non-believers, I myself am completely fine with the uncertainty that they may not have been avoidable with a softer catch, but also having experienced very hard collisions with walls that most definitely came from hard catches myself, I like to try to avoid hard catches, regardless of whether I can break an ankle stepping off a curb or not. That one is a weird counter-argument, Emil! I would like to hit the wall with less force rather than more. Josh Squire, bummer about your injury, and I believe you :) Pete S, sorry you decked! Obviously, keeping the climber off the ground comes first.

When attempting to respond to Bryan S's original Q about whether there are really a bunch of injured people out there from hard catches, I omitted another example of another woman I know who broke an ankle in a lead fall more recently because I don't think a soft or hard catch was likely the issue there, so this isn't just a litany of all the lead-fall injuries I know of. You all can keep debating whether hard catches can or cannot cause broken bones or from spiky sport climbing falls in certain situations, and I will keep seeking out partners who recognize how painful it is to be slammed into the wall, and like to try to help avoid that, especially when weight differential is part of the issue.

I think these videos are awesome and I think they've been debated endlessly already on MP but,

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_0GGsBgPic4

If you do watch be sure to watch all the way to the end of this one before just watching the first few minutes and saying "SEE?!". And the previous video in this series is really great too.

Amy I don't think you get the point I was making. I was agreeing with Hope that people blame tend to blame injuries on a hard catch even when there was no hard catch. If it was impossible to break an ankle without a hard impact that would be an argument against Hopes comment. The stepping off the curb statement was pointing out that we have a lot of data that shows that a hard impact is not in fact required.

THIS THREAD ACCORDING TO GOTEZ

OP be like ...

OLH be like ...

Soft catch deniers be like ...

Heather from the East Coast be like ...

MP armchair quantum physics brigade be like ...

OP doubles down, be like ...

PTPL and Chode Rider wardriving in the Taco Bell parking lot be like ...

Shawn Snyder's Google alert for his own name goes off (which he had set up by a script kiddie from a coding bootcamp in exchange for a couple ratty 60m's and eight Omega Pacific quickdraws), SS be like ...

Anecdotal televangelists testifying on stage about being cured of leukemia, osteoporosis and the omicron variant after receiving a soft catch be like ...

onX overlords be like ...

Training for getting soft catches, I'ma be like ...

Coming soon to a gym near you.

I wonder how soft it catches? 

Fritz wins the internet today. Well done!

Lena chitawrote:

Coming soon to a gym near you.

I wonder how soft it catches? 

Ya but does it know how to take? 

M Mwrote:

Ya but does it know how to take? 

Onsight or die 

Lena chitawrote:

Coming soon to a gym near you.

I wonder how soft it catches? 

I don’t like it.  It eliminates the ability for me to blame my belayer.  

Josh Squirewrote:

 I’ve been climbing 20 years and still continue to critique my own belaying. 

This! Just do this!   

Lena chitawrote:

Coming soon to a gym near you.

I wonder how soft it catches? 

Looks like a perfect catch everytime! I'd be excited for people to finally get used to perfect catches, so they have a gold standard to reference. Soon enough, with these robobelays around, if youre not a good belayer who can give a good catch, your only options for partners will be in the gym trading catches with this thing!  

This is the main reason for this thread... to reach an expectation community wide where everyone can count on a good belay outdoors, and I guess indoors too, and to where the large number of traumatized climbers who are afraid of falling goes down drastically, so they can then climb to their potential without all the anxiety. And also so proj bros start taking their belay duties seriously, and they're not indifferent about slamming their friends into the wall over and over. I couldn't even watch after the first few. The dude in question had zero concern for his climber. Zero. More bored than ive ever seen anyone on a belay, just ready to go back over to the 'real' climbs.

Watching people get slammed over and over, to me shows that the person being slammed simply doesn't even know that a good catch is possible. Otherwise, they wouldnt accept bad catches as a normal part of their climbing day. ANY bad catch in our group, which is super rare, from me or anyone else, gets talked over to try to figure out what went wrong.

Occasionally there are factors out of the control of the belayer, like a rope getting pinned under a draw, which ive seen, or so much friction from the rope running over features that nothing can be done but just 'trying' to move up at that right time, but the majority of the time, it's simple user error, with a mis-timed move going up with the fall. Talking it over, and willing to be hyper critical of everyone's belay should be normal, so that everyone comes back next week, injury free, pysched, and unafraid to go for it.

Josh Squire has a great take on the last page. And as usual, Fritz wins!

Matthew Jaggerswrote:

Looks like a perfect catch everytime! I'd be excited for people to finally get used to perfect catches, so they have a gold standard to reference. Soon enough, with these robobelays around, if youre not a good belayer who can give a good catch, your only options for partners will be in the gym trading catches with this thing!  

This is the main reason for this thread... to reach an expectation community wide where everyone can count on a good belay outdoors, and I guess indoors too, and to where the large number of traumatized climbers who are afraid of falling goes down drastically, so they can then climb to their potential without all the anxiety. And also so proj bros start taking their belay duties seriously, and they're not indifferent about slamming their friends into the wall over and over. I couldn't even watch after the first few. The dude in question had zero concern for his climber. Zero. More bored than ive ever seen anyone on a belay, just ready to go back over to the 'real' climbs.

Watching people get slammed over and over, to me shows that the person being slammed simply doesn't even know that a good catch is possible. Otherwise, they wouldnt accept bad catches as a normal part of their climbing day. ANY bad catch in our group, which is super rare, from me or anyone else, gets talked over to try to figure out what went wrong.

Occasionally there are factors out of the control of the belayer, like a rope getting pinned under a draw, which ive seen, or so much friction from the rope running over features that nothing can be done but just 'trying' to move up at that right time, but the majority of the time, it's simple user error, with a mis-timed move going up with the fall. Talking it over, and willing to be hyper critical of everyone's belay should be normal, so that everyone comes back next week, injury free, pysched, and unafraid to go for it.

Josh Squire has a great take on the last page. And as usual, Fritz wins!

Unfortunately you are preaching to the choir here on MP. Everyone here needs to step up, intervene, and educate in person at the crag in order to move the needle.

Bill Wwrote:

Unfortunately you are preaching to the choir here on MP. Everyone here needs to step up, intervene, and educate in person at the crag in order to move the needle.

Thats not true. Based on the responses, id say 51% max of respondents here know how, or even want a soft catch. The guy wanting hard catches on gear placements is really blowing my mind. The most critical soft catches I can remember giving were long, awkward trad falls over .1's and .2's. Without a soft catch on Rebar, a left traversing, awkward finger crack with small gear, you'd get wrecked into the wall, and you could pull pieces for sure. This place ain't my choir, that I know for sure.

I think Nano is a bit fuzzy on what the phrase “preaching to the choir” means.

Is this really all due to the efficiency of the Gri Gri and belay glasses? Which then necessitates a bunch of boinging and thrutching to soften the catch?  
Are people being “slammed” on Reversos and belayers zoned out staring at the floor?

I guarantee with a 9mm rope, my old cracked Reverso2, and my general inattentiveness, you get a catch like butter every time 

Not to even mention the trend in super tight spacing of bolts thus adding tons of friction and making the effective fall factor much higher and harsher  

Another example of 1step forward and two steps back apparently 

Just so my statement isn't misconstrued any further than Jaggers already twisted things, I'd like to clarify-  I definitely do think soft catches are a "thing", and they're definitely more important in scenarios where the belayer outweighs the climber by more than 20-30 lbs.  I also cringe and wince when I see someone get spiked- especially when it’s completely unnecessary and could have been avoided.   

I outweigh my gf by 50 lbs and she outclimbs me by roughly 6 letter grades so: *read* she tries harder than me and falls more often.  I can feel when my catch wasn't optimal, and there is definitely an art to timing a hop while the climber is just weighting the rope at the end of a fall.  Not doing that, or worse, holding your position and not budging, can lead to injury and I'm sure it does from time to time.  Idk why, but this always seemed like common sense and obvious to me.  It's hard to explain things to someone that can't see the obvious things you can.  To those that say that mis-timing a jump and coming down from your "hop" (as a heavier belayer) as the lighter climber is weighting the rope can be worse that just standing there or allowing yourself to be pulled inward a little bit (as opposed to timing a jump) - I agree with that.  If you're inexperienced as a heavier belayer, you may be better off just holding the rope and kind of letting yourself be pulled in a little as opposed to jumping.

Furthermore, I think everyone *should* try to be the best belayer they can be.  I definitely do, and it feels good to have people seek me as a belayer on their project because I have a good reputation of being solid and attentive- and most of them are considerably lighter than me.

I don't know your level of experience or tenure in climbing, but not saying something while you're there and then coming on MP in the forums and spraying about how much it pisses you off to see people injuring each other- what do you actually propose to do about it?  How do you think your post is going to help?  Do you think these heavier belayers and/or climbers ignorant to soft catches are going to be like "wait- IS HE TALKING ABOUT ME?!?!?!?  OMG I HAVE TO CHANGE MY WAYS IMMEDIATELY!!" Do you think the girl you were infatuated with and had to watch slam into the wall is going to pick up on your belated chivalry attempt and PM you for your number because she read this post? (These are tongue in cheek jokes- try not to rage).

I’m not exactly new at this game and I spent literal years trying to gingerly and tactfully approach people in hopes of helping them only to be ignored most of the time- once I had a guy threaten me.  I’d say I probably helped about 2% of the people I approached and it’s not because I wasn’t conscious of my approach manner.  I definitely was.  My initial post was somewhat snarky, I admit, but my message remains that people are going to do what they’re going to do regardless (the vast majority of time) regardless of intervention attempts.  I would say good on you for trying, but you didn’t try.

If you're not willing to address people in person (like I said, do that enough and you'll eventually learn what I have- that it's ineffective and people prefer to struggle through shit on their own because pride, ego, etc), and offer some helpful, constructive criticism, then coming here to spray about it will have exactly zero effect except for garnering yourself some ridicule.  Again, life is short, and sooner or later you'll learn that you can't save everyone- though I can appreciate your heart is in the right place.  Find a solid belayer, and give good catches- the chances of you changing anyone's habits by addressing their deficiencies is slim to none, but if you're psyched on trying, in person is the place, not here- if you have any hope of being effective.  The chances of changing an outcome by posting here is less than zero.  This can be evidenced by the sheer volume of forum threads that have been posted here for well over a decade lamenting the very things that you’re addressing and the fact that yours is just another recent one means that little if anything has changed.  That’s how effective posting in this forum is and expecting it to change behavior, and that's why people are giving you shit.

Bill Wwrote:

Unfortunately you are preaching to the choir here on MP. Everyone here needs to step up, intervene, and educate in person at the crag in order to move the needle.

Like Jake said below, the small percentage of n00bs that can accept criticism on the spot is not enough to make me want to try and help people on the spot(unless someone's life is on the line). Maybe its my resting bitch face? Possibly jaggers trying to help on the WWW is the best platform for this advice, hopefully he gets Heather from the east coasts number.

@Jake, If I cared about people giving me shit, I wouldn't post on here ever. Theres not a single thing anyone could say online that would upset me, including the ridiculousness of me being interested in some rando out of towner just because I didn't want to see her get hurt. 

And here you go, I'll play out your advice. 

Me: Hey guy, I noticed youre giving a sub par catch, and your climber is really coming into the wall there. Would you want me to take over belaying and show you what a good catch looks like, or i could describe it to you so you can practice if she falls again.

Belayer: Go fk yourself, I climb 5.13. Mind your own business. She's fine, look, I haven't blinked once at her hitting the wall. No big deal, see.

Climber: WTF? Whats happening right now? Could these catches be better? Let me down right now, I dont know whats even going on right now! WTF!

That would have been a great end of the day for them!

Matthew Jaggerswrote:

@Jake, If I cared about people giving me shit, I wouldn't quote people on things they never uttered and assault peoples' character making wild negative assumptions about it. Theres not a single thing anyone could say online that would upset me, including the ridiculousness of me being interested in some rando out of towner just because I didn't want to see her get hurt. 

And here you go, I'll play out your advice. 

Me: Hey guy, I noticed youre giving a sub par catch, and your climber is really coming into the wall there. Would you want me to take over belaying and show you what a good catch looks like, or i could describe it to you so you can practice if she falls again.

Belayer: Go fk yourself, I climb 5.13. Mind your own business. She's fine, look, I haven't blinked once at her hitting the wall. No big deal, see.

Climber: WTF? Whats happening right now? Could these catches be better? Let me down right now, I dont know whats even going on right now! WTF!

That would have been a great end of the day for them!

Cool hypothetical story guy.  But mine is better.  You'll go further if you lose the chip on your shoulder.  I'm glad you can see the future.  My point wasn't that in that very situation you could have affected some change.  My point is that you're going to have better luck in person than here. And you definitely do seem to care about people giving you shit, based on your posts dripping with defensive derision and ad hominems/straw men to anyone that gives you the slightest bit of criticism- so I fixed your statement for you ;-)

Actually, re-reading your post, there's also this little thing I noticed:  You seem especially protective of the woman in this scenario, and have displayed some contempt for the man/belayer.  So it seems odd that you would be concerned about "a great day for 'them'" and if you were truly worried about the climber getting injured, why weren't you compelled to address it in person?  What if she went on to climb another pitch with this HORRIBLE BELAYER 5.13 SPORTBRO and actually did get injured?  I mean, that's what this entire thread is about, right?  People not getting injured?  So, let me get this straight:  It's important enough that you felt compelled to rant, it's important enough to do these mindless back-and-forths with complete strangers on the subject (and by subject, I mean female climbers getting hard catches) but somehow not important enough to say something in person, you know, in an attempt to prevent the very thing you're railing against emphatically online?  Hmmmm.  Seems suspect to me, but whatever dude.  Good luck with your ONLINE ONLY campaign haha.