Trango Vergo - the GriGri slayer?

If we learn nothing else, the simple take away is, a lot of climbers are emo and don't know how to have a debate without getting butthurt. The Vergo is not a beginner's device, but it also has major perks over the GriGri. This is coming from someone who still thinks Petzl should win a Nobel Peace Prize for the thousands of lives theyve saved with the release of the Grigri, lots of whom may be trolling this thread.

SICgripswrote:

if you move your hand away from your body/belay loop, it causes the two halves to pivot in relation to each other and lock on the rope. You WILL short rope the leader - guaranteed! However, with awareness and some practice it’s not an issue.

I found this to be a feature, not a bug.  If you are holding the Vergo as instructed and move your hand away from your body/belay loop, the device locks.  You can whip your hand away from your harness while holding the Vergo and hold the rope with your 3-5th fingers and jump if needed and have a very reliable performance from the Vergo.

I think a major part of the Vergo/Cinch failures is that this is the opposite motion of the Brake Under Slide technique taught.  If you put your hand low by your hip, I feel like the device could potentially not lock.

Jon Rhoderickwrote:

If you put your hand low by your hip, I feel like the device could potentially not lock.

That's not true. Your feelings are not valid. 

SICgripswrote:

From my experience, the major failure point is the same as most any belay device: grabbing the rope above the device or holding the device in a wrong manner.

I’ve also used the Vergo for TR Solo for a number of years (always with a Microtrax or RollnLock backup) and have never had an issue with it locking. This is somewhat equivalent to belaying with no-hands, though different in that there is the weight of the free rope below the climber.

YMMV

Just wanted to say thanks to SICgrips for your detailed blog on using the Vergo for TR solo... it works really well. 

Matthew Jaggerswrote:

That's not true. Your feelings are not valid. 

What is valid is that anything that stops the Vergo from being pulled away from the harness will stop it from locking, whether it be your hand or a solo TR device above it. 

I have two of 'em.  One for inside, one for outside.  Love them, best belay device I've ever had.  Never had so much as an inch of slip with any of mine or my partners'- and I've climbed single pitch, multi, whatever with them.  Great for everything.  Even rope soloing.  I have successfully converted so many people from GriGri to Vergo, Trango should offer me a sponsorship.  Seriously, like 20 people and counting.  The funny thing is, when people ask about it, and I give them a quick down and dirty, they're like "weird, never heard of it before".

Jon Rhoderickwrote:

What is valid is that anything that stops the Vergo from being pulled away from the harness will stop it from locking, whether it be your hand or a solo TR device above it. 

Nope.

Don Frijoles wrote:

Popularity of a device, by itself, means nothing. However when a device is very popular and has far fewer reported incidents than a less popular device, that is useful data. Gri gri usage is easily 10x that of all these niche devices combined. If the gri-gri had the same issues as the cinch, we'd be hearing about it all the time.

I'm all for innovation, but for to be the guinea pig on a new belay device, there would have to be a really compelling benefit. The gri gri is super good enough and a new device isn't likely to be better enough to take the chance of becoming one of the statistics that eventually prove that the innovation didn't hit the mark.

1. The Vergo is not the Cinch. I know they're similar, but they're not the same. 

2. The benefit is that it feeds much better without having to hold it open. Since people have been dropped due to their belayer holding the grigri open, at least one quite popular failure mode can be eliminated by switching to the vergo. You're right though that there could be unknown failure modes with it. Hell, there could still be unknown failure modes with the grigri yet to be discovered too. I guess we all have to pick our poison. 

3. How do you think the grigri that you enjoy now got it's popularity in the first place? People had to make a change from what they were used to. 

Plenty of people have been dropped using a grigri since then, and plenty more will be. Still, I don't think the Vergo "slays" the grigri, but I do think it could be an improvement for those willing to learn to use it correctly. If safety was the only consideration (as opposed to convenience for belaying hang-doggers), I think the Revo would probably be the slayer in that category. 

Jim Tittwrote:

The last 3 posts should be read very carefully, particularly by the OP.

The original method of using the Cinch was challenged by the DAV due to the unexplained failures but the then owner of Trango refused to change the instructions (because the company would then be liable for any accidents) but immediately the company was sold  the upside-down method was introduced.

At that time I was commisioned to investigate it's braking charecteristics in relation to a similar proposed device. We ran about 200 drop tests on the Cinch up to 30m drops and did some high-speed videos of what happens internally to make sense of what happens.

The drop testing told us that in slow-speed falls ( short drops) the device gave the hardest stop of any device we ever tested but in longer falls it's performance dropped dramatically whereas the GriGri is the opposite.

The reason lies in an effect called frictional hysterises, when the fibres of the rope are pressed together rub against each other and before they start to move they resist this for a brief period (this is the hysterises) and the rope resists being squashed, this produces a noticeable bulge in the rope as it goes into the compression point.

Because of the cam design of the GriGri this bulge occurs on top of the cam and actually forces it closed and the cam design (by design or luck) is such that the braking force remains consistant. In the Cinch/Vergo design this bulge in the rope resists the cam in pinching the rope and the faster the rope travels through the device the greater the effect.

Seems worthy of reposting from front page - for a reasonable root cause as to why this thing is a dangerous POS.

https://youtube.com/shorts/8bDtQ9W9Y58?feature=share

I did a quick test this evening. I used a ~30 lb sand bag as a dummy. An accomplice hoisted it up to the second bolt while it was 'belayed' thru the first bolt on a separate strand. I intentionally held the device by the pivot in a horizontal orientation but did not use any brake grip at all. If we dropped it while I was facing the climb, it locked. If I was standing near to the wall, it always locked. If I turned so that my left hip faced the wall, it didn't lock. It was worse if I was further away from the wall since the rope exited more laterally than up. 

The left/right orientation of the belayer matters if you have a sloppy belay grip. Even turned that direction, if I gripped the rope it would slam into the plate and lock it and the device would get wrenched out of my hand. I think this explains how a lot of the mysterious drops may have happened. Even with a good habit of not inhibiting the plate, a moment of open grip distraction while turned to the right can give the rope a clear path to just whistle. It's repeatable - try it. 

I do like and use the device, but awareness of the rope's exit path is part of belaying with it. 

Awesome Gregger Man. This is great information to the climbing community, especially those who use the device and are unaware of this potential "failure" mode.
Weaknesses of devices should be spread loud and proud. Its still a good device, but one should know the caveats.

This is good to be aware of and makes complete sense because that is the feed position for quickly pulling rope for a lead climber. 

Pretty much the equivilent for this GG failure with no hands on the rope

This has unfolded nicely. Thanks for all the replies and personal experiences. I do find it hard to believe if you have the device in any position and it can freely rotate that it would not work as intended.

RRRwrote:

This has unfolded nicely. Thanks for all the replies and personal experiences. I do find it hard to believe if you have the device in any position and it can freely rotate that it would not work as intended.

 To be clear- the left/right thing really isn't a failure mode per se: it's a potential trap for lazy belayers, tho.

It does work as intended in any position as long as you keep some form of a brake grip. The easy feeding while pulling to the left is a subtle but important thing to be aware of for belayers that hold the device in place without wrapping at least the pinkie finger around the brake strand. Standing directly to the right of the bolt while facing the wall can set up the same lack of an automatic catch if you are tilting the device upwards while not maintaining a brake grip.

I like the responsiveness of the device and I continue to use it as my primary sport climbing device.

Don Frijoles wrote:

Yeah, but number of converts does not equate to the safety of the device.

Very true, but then again, nothing equates to the safety of the device because, wait for it: NO DEVICE IS "SAFE".  Especially if there isn't a hand on the brake strand.  It is up to the user of the device to know how it works, and its failure modes.  Every device has at least one.  Sorry if people you know are marching headlong into inadvertent suicide because they are incompetent and can't be bothered to read a device pamphlet in order to save their own lives.  It ain't the device, it's the user.  This is true 100% of the time.  There's no way anyone is going to convince me that it's the device that is at fault when I've caught whippers going on a decade and a half in almost every scenario one can think of with this device.  FF2 onto the anchor while on a mulitpitch route?  CHECK.  Blown second clip?  CHECK.  Ripped gear?  CHECK.  Monster whipper because of an overconfident climber on an R rated route?  Check.  Climbing 13 years and been using Cinches and Vergos exclusively.  I'll say it again for those in the back:  I'm not that smart, as is clearly evidenced by my comment posting record.  If I can give competent belays for a decade plus, catch literally thousands of whippers in a multitude of scenarios with not so much as a goddamned stubbed toe, it's not the device. No device is safe.  Only the users of devices can be safe, and you do that by using the device like the manufacturer suggests in those little pamphlets.  You let me know when you find one of those things that DOESN'T strongly advise that belayers keep a grip on the brake strand of the rope.  Anything short of that is a hopeless search for information on why some people are dumber than others, which devolves into irrelevant pedantic drivel like we see in this thread.

New life goal: Belay like you’re Jake Jones. 

Don Frijoles wrote:

We've already been through this. They are not "equivocal"

To defeat the assisted belay on a grigri you have to 

1. Deliberately do the thing that the manufacturer specifically says will defeat the assisted belay

To defeat the assisted belay on a vergo, you have to:

1. Turn your body in a natural position that is very common during normal belaying OR
2. Hold the rope next to your hip when attempting to brake, which is the standard braking motion when belaying OR
3. Move your thumb slightly off the magic button OR
4. Any other yet-to-be-explained quirks based on the extraordinarily high number of incidents reported

Vergo is an assisted belaying device, except for all the times it functions as an assisted falling device.

These are all theories and conjecture that you're presenting as fact. It has not been my experience that doing any of this leads to the defeat of the assisted brake.

Don Frijoles wrote:

Dude, there's a video in this thread, multiple credible reports, and an investigation report by a professional that designs belay devices for a living. The investigation was prompted by a "large number of unexplained failures."

But it hasn't happened to you, so therefore all that other data is BS.

The video I posted is not an example of defeating the assisted brake- it's an example of stopping an automatic, no-brake-hand lock that some lazy belayers assume is always there to fill in for their poor technique.

Gregger Manwrote:

The video I posted is not an example of defeating the assisted brake

Assisted brake would imply there's some sort of "unassisted brake". In reality a Cinch/Vergo failing to lock is not much better than just grabbing the climber side of the rope.

But if you have no brake hand on the rope, what is being assisted?  It has one moving part- allow it to move freely and keep a hand on the rope and it works.