LRS: Freebell backup device

Kickstarter out now.
KickStarter Link

Ive been watching this guys post about the design process on this and updates along the journey. KS out now for those that maybe interested in backing the backup.

Also interested to hear the peanut galleries thoughts.

KS blew up overnight, so it's certainly going to go ahead.  I'm on the list, naturally.  I'm not 100% sure it will be the panacea we all hope for, as it will have to be held far enough away from the primary device to not slam into it.  But it's worth a try!

evan freemanwrote:

 I'm not 100% sure it will be the panacea we all hope for, as it will have to be held far enough away from the primary device to not slam into it.  But it's worth a try!

It's going to depend on the device. For those of us with Silent Partners, this is the Holy Grail. Goodbye backups knots forever.

Mike Larsonwrote:

It's going to depend on the device. For those of us with Silent Partners, this is the Holy Grail. Goodbye backups knots forever.

Will work amazing with inline devices like the Taz, Sulu, and Vergo as well. 

I can’t really imagine a device it wouldnt pair well with. While it may be a lot bigger than PCDs for cache mgmt, that drawback is easily offset by the fact you don’t need three devices (or knots and/or friction hitches).

A straight-through (or dogleg) version would be nice for those who backpack their line.

Unnecessary...

Healyjewrote:

Unnecessary...

As someone who has tried your rig and is terrified by it, I think safety in general is considered unnecessary to you. To each their own. 

Just pledged! There are only 5 spots left, so if you want one you better hurry up!

Ricky Harlinewrote:

As someone who has tried your rig and is terrified by it, I think safety in general is considered unnecessary to you. To each their own. 

As someone with twenty-one years and 5000+ trad pitches in on the Eddy I’d say we have different concepts of safety. If you were terrified then I’m guessing you weren’t using my exact rig or didn’t understand iit. Have taken a litany of falls on it and will be using it to do a fiftieth anniversary rope solo of the Bastille Crack this year, my first rope solo in ‘75.

Healy doesn't take dissenting opinon on his set up well as the record shows of the years of him defending his set up when peoples point out potential issues and failures.
You got a set up that works for ya. Cool, its also cool that others question the safety of the system, cause ya know, 1:1,000,000 things do occur, we all just hope its not to the the deck.

The pedant in me has one small gripe, the eddy cam out in 2005, so you could not be using it for 21 years unless maybe you got that inside track back in 2004 ahead of release =) but next year get your boy Eddy a drink, seems like he's earned it.

Healyjewrote:

As someone with twenty-one years and 5000+ trad pitches in on the Eddy I’d say we have different concepts of safety. If you were terrified then I’m guessing you weren’t using my exact rig or didn’t understand iit. Have taken a litany of falls on it and will be using it to do a fiftieth anniversary rope solo of the Bastille Crack this year, my first rope solo in ‘75.

No, I used your exact setup and understand it well. I understand that it works well for you and I'm not trying to convince you that you should use any other setup. 

Some people are terrified of the Revo for no good reason. Your rig just gives me the heebie jeebies, especially with it's complete failure to catch high clips unless you manually flip the cam. 

Lemme see if I get this straight: let's say I'm climbing a somewhat hard for me crack, and I want to place high. I put the piece in, pull out some slack, and until I manually flip the cam on the Eddy I'm going for a ride to the end of my rope if I fall, yes? I fall all the time and I rarely know when I'm going to or not. Ergo this is not a suitable setup for me. The Eddy requires a lot of control from the climber which is absent in this shitty example of a free climber. 

Mr Rogerswrote:

Kickstarter out now.
KickStarter Link

Ive been watching this guys post about the design process on this and updates along the journey. KS out now for those that maybe interested in backing the backup.

Also interested to hear the peanut galleries thoughts.

Where has he been posting about development?

Slow Grownwrote:

Where has he been posting about development?

He detailed the whole idea, prototyping, and testing on the Facebook LRS group. Very open source.

Dang looks pretty neat to have a cache loop/ back up all in one.  

evan freemanwrote:

KS blew up overnight, so it's certainly going to go ahead.  I'm on the list, naturally.  I'm not 100% sure it will be the panacea we all hope for, as it will have to be held far enough away from the primary device to not slam into it.  But it's worth a try!

As I patiently await delivery I’ve been wondering this exact point.  There’s absolutely no way you’re going to rig this that you  (can) guarentee it won’t slam into your primary device should it fail to lock.  At which point one or the other or both hopefully locks up.  To that end the testing they did (dropping a weight with the free end of the rope running through the freebell). did not seem  particularly applicable to real world use.  

Maybe a Metolius harness where gear loops are rated to 10kn and the rear haul loop is rated to 16kn. Clipped to gear loops and backed up to rear haul loop?  Sounds painful as hell but better than dieing.

Curious if anyone has thought this through more than I have.

There’s absolutely no way you’re going to rig this that you can’t (can?) guarentee it won’t slam into your primary device should it fail to lock.  At which point one or the other or both hopefully locks up.   Clipped to gear loops and backed up to rear haul loop?  

People who've experimented with Fuse, ASAP, and other devices typically put them on their hip with either a tied full strength loop to the waist belt or with slings backed up either to the belay loop or all the way around the waist.  I agree that falling on such a setup seems painful at the very least.  I also hate having the dead end of my rope pulling from my hip.

My own recent upside down fall experience suggests that even if the device just catches a little it will trigger the main device, which will end up taking the load.  USD falls are the only thing I really worry about--some people fantasize that their primary device will just evaporate or something, but that's never happened.  However, in the conceivable case that the main device just does nothing, I do hope the Freebell will stay locked even after it slams into the bottom of the main device.  

I'll try hard to rig mine so that it hangs from the belay loop, the way I have my MT set up now.  I've tested this in simulated USD falls with backup knots below the MT, and of course it hits my main device but the knots hold.  One guy had a setup where he routed the rope through a quick link on his leg loop, and I can conceive of doing something like that for the Freebell.  Anything to not have it on the side!

Interesting point about having all the slack rope hanging off your hip. Traditionally I’ve just used a single back up knot clipped to a short girth hitched sling through the master points.  Frequently had to hang on gear to retie but was never particularly focused on red point.

Like you primarily concerned about main device not catching (a SP).  Apparently, hownot2 is receiving a copy.  Hopefully they test it in a more realistic and worst case scenario.

I think this depends heavily on what primary device you're using. For those of us with a Silent Partner, if the SP fails to catch, the Freebell will collide with the SP. But even if the Freebell were also to fail to catch because of the collision, the huge increase in friction over such a short distance would almost certainly cause the clove on the SP to cinch (this assumes neither the SP or Freebell explodes, which I consider so remote a possibility that it's not worth considering).

Grigris et al. aren't Silent Partners though in terms of robustness, especially since upside down falls are the primary concern (and far, far more likely than a Silent Partner failure). I think routing the rope through a quicklink on the leg loop is probably the best option in this case, and may be one I use with my SP as well. There's going to be some field testing that's needs to be done.

Anyone have info on when these will be available?  

Kevin Strickerwrote:

Anyone have info on when these will be available?  

I think they are shipping now. He's got quite a few to go through. I'm trying to be patient! :-)

Do you have a link?