Belay tips

Hey gals, looking for any advice here. I have been climbing for about 7 years now and lead climbing/belaying for over 5 of those years. I’ve always been a safety conscious and really proud of my belaying until I met my now husband. We’ve been climbing together for 4 years now and I still have issues shorting him while lead belaying. We have worked through several issues like rope coils (flaking the rope more consistently and untangling/flipping rope out while I belay), not giving slack out fast enough, etc. But it seems like every time we work through one issue, another pops up. Are there any trainings or advice you’d give in this situation? My husband has reduced the amount he’s climbing and climbing at his limit because he’s not confident in my belaying, so I am really looking for anything. 

When I am belaying someone much taller than me, their longer arms can pull up more rope than I'm able to feed with a single armful of slack, which can result in shortroping. There are two strategies I use to combat this, depending on the situation 

1. Move your body. Stand a few feet away from the wall or to the side of the bolt (nothing crazy, just 2-3 feet). When they reach for the rope, run directly under the bolt while you pull out slack so that the movement of your body and the armful of slack work together to give enough rope for their longer arms to pull rope and clip. The drawback of this is that it won't work if you are clipped into something, such as an anchor on a multipitch or a very short tether to a sandbag that you tied into for a weight difference.

2. Quickly pull two armfuls of slack. When I see that they are reaching for the rope, I pull two armfuls in quick succession, with the second pull of slack ideally finishing right when they put the the rope through the carabiner so there is never more slack than needed. The drawback of this is that if they drop the rope for any reason, you need to be ready to run backwards or quickly pull in two armfuls of slack again. You have to be super quick too, BAMBAM, two full pulls to their single pull. 

Make sure you are using a belay device that easily feeds slack too. Some are better than others. It could be worth trying out different devices, but that is a secondary concern to technique. 

Has he worked on climbing to the bolt and clipping at his waist rather than needing giant armfuls of slack?

Have you invested in a neox? 

Climb Onwrote:

Has he worked on climbing to the bolt and clipping at his waist rather than needing giant armfuls of slack?

Have you invested in a neox? 

This. Training myself to climb clear to the bolt made indoor leading much easier for me. Grabbing an armful of slack and reaching up overhead to clip wastes energy and throws the leader off balance, increasing the odds of a fall. If you do the arithmetic, grabbing extra slack and reaching overhead to clip increases the length of any fall you take while clipping.

I have belayed leaders who have had the habit of very rapidly grabbing the rope and pulling it up to clip, often catching me off guard so I end up briefly short roping them until I could finally adjust to their clipping “style”. Could that be part of the issue? Apart from that, P Degner et al have some great suggestions. 

Agree with the above insights, including that the problem might not be you, but rather his clipping style. 
Haven't worked with the Neox, but could be a useful solution. I enjoy the WC Revo as it's much harder to short rope someone too.

If you are belaying with a grigri and a biner thru the belay loop, and it locks up when you try to give slack, it can be a positional issue that is somewhat ergonomically specific to shorter armed people (like some woman). I’ve seen it happening to women outside more than once and helped them correct the issue. There’s an easy fix for this that involves looping the locker thru your lower loop and then your belay loop, which loosely holds the locker in an upright position and keeps the grigri from flopping down. Just this positional change often prevents the lockup when trying to pull slack.  I have a picture of how this works somewhere on MP but it would take me forever to find it.   I’m not at home in the US for the next 2 weeks or I’d take a video demoing this for you.   This is my bookmark to get back to this when I get home.

How I noticed this is that I used a grigri before belay loops were invented, and you always looped your locker thru lower and upper harness points  and I never had a grigri lock up issue.  then at some point I got a harness with belay loop and started using only that. Started getting feeding lockups all the time.  So I figured out the positional problem that was happening. 

But I agree it is often clipping style that causes this. 

Something rarely talked about in lead climbing - this may even be heresy -  is that it's arguably 50-50 fault when the leader gets short roped. Instead we have leaders practically begging to catch their belayers out with short roping, instead of changing their clipping style. The blame shouldn't all be on the belayer. If the leader violently yanks up slack, with no verbal warning, they increase the odds of getting short roped. Even if you clip at your waist you can get short roped because a gri-gri will lock up, as it should, when it receives even a 1 inch yank.

If you don't want to get short roped, practice pulling up the rope smoothly at first, and only accelerate once it's clear your belayer has started yarding out slack. Unless you are absolutely at your limit on a clip and milliseconds are truly critical, you don't need to yank the rope as fast as humanly possible. If that is the situation (and somrtyimes it is), at least yell "clipping."

PS - one simple solution might be defaulting to always having 2 or 3 extra feet of slack in the system than you are comfortable with. That cushion will let you start giving slack before the gri gri gets locked up. Worst case, your husband falls 4 to 6 feet farther, which is usually OK unless a ledge or the ground is in play.

The comments about clipping style are not wrong, a leader should generally clip at their waist and it may be worth bringing this up. However, the leader ultimately gets to decide that risk for themselves, and the belayer needs to provide adequate slack no matter when the leader decides to clip. 

P Degnerwrote:

Make sure you are using a belay device that easily feeds slack too. Some are better than others. It could be worth trying out different devices, but that is a secondary concern to technique. 

In my experience, Trango Vergo is the fastest feeding device that I've tried. I have bum left shoulder, feeding slack with GG-like ABDs is not pleasant. Neox is better than GG, but still slower than Vergo.

P Degnerwrote:

The comments about clipping style are not wrong, a leader should generally clip at their waist and it may be worth bringing this up. However, the leader ultimately gets to decide that risk for themselves, and the belayer needs to provide adequate slack no matter when the leader decides to clip. 

You’re not wrong here either. Even when a climber does most of their clipping at their waist there will be times when they can’t and those are the times you definitely don’t want to be short roped.

I’d also add to watch your partner very carefully to pick up on the subtle clues that they’re about to reach for the rope to clip. Climb with someone long enough and you know when they’re about to reach for the rope before they actually do. 

mark felberwrote:

This. Training myself to climb clear to the bolt made indoor leading much easier for me. Grabbing an armful of slack and reaching up overhead to clip wastes energy and throws the leader off balance, increasing the odds of a fall. If you do the arithmetic, grabbing extra slack and reaching overhead to clip increases the length of any fall you take while clipping.

This is an aside, but arithmetic shows that fall distance is the same whether clipping overhead or at the waist (the only real difference being rope stretch of additional slack when clipping overhead, which would be marginal). A leader who falls while clipping high will fall to a lower point than one who falls while clipping at the waist, only because the former fell from a lower point in the first place.

I suppose one might argue that there is greater likelihood of pulling excess slack when clipping high, but nothing about it inherently creates a longer fall, just a lower one. I've learned that clipping from the least strenuous holds/position, whether low or high, works best for me.

Belay glasses help a lot.  Avoiding conversation while belaying can be important as well. Flaking is great!  Beyond that it gets pretty specific to your personal devices and techniques.  What device are you typically belaying with?  

I think it’s definitely worth asking your husband what he thinks he can do differently as well. His own poor clipping practices or fear of falling may be root issues here. Hopefully he isn’t blaming you for his personal climbing struggles.

FWIW, there are many excellent belay videos on YouTube, and a private session with a climbing coach at a gym could do a lot to improve technique.  

james jameswrote:

This is an aside, but arithmetic shows that fall distance is the same whether clipping overhead or at the waist (the only real difference being rope stretch of additional slack when clipping overhead, which would be marginal). A leader who falls while clipping high will fall to a lower point than one who falls while clipping at the waist, only because the former fell from a lower point in the first place.

I suppose one might argue that there is greater likelihood of pulling excess slack when clipping high, but nothing about it inherently creates a longer fall, just a lower one. I've learned that clipping from the least strenuous holds/position, whether low or high, works best for me.

I sketched it up for fun.

james jameswrote:

This is an aside, but arithmetic shows that fall distance is the same whether clipping overhead or at the waist (the only real difference being rope stretch of additional slack when clipping overhead, which would be marginal). A leader who falls while clipping high will fall to a lower point than one who falls while clipping at the waist, only because the former fell from a lower point in the first place.

I suppose one might argue that there is greater likelihood of pulling excess slack when clipping high, but nothing about it inherently creates a longer fall, just a lower one. I've learned that clipping from the least strenuous holds/position, whether low or high, works best for me.

If you blow a clip at or beneath a draw, you'll fall twice the distance between the draws, regardless of your location between the draws. But falling from lower means landing lower, and that could be critical if there is something to hit.

There are a bunch of other considerations as well,  such as the probability of falling for a clip from low vs. a clip from high, and the ease or difficulty of pulling up slack.  All things being equal--which they usually are not--clipping from higher up is better, but in the real world, it is case by case.

phylp phylpwrote:

If you are belaying with a grigri and a biner thru the belay loop, and it locks up when you try to give slack, it can be a positional issue that is somewhat ergonomically specific to shorter armed people (like some woman). I’ve seen it happening to women outside more than once and helped them correct the issue. There’s an easy fix for this that involves looping the locker thru your lower loop and then your belay loop, which loosely holds the locker in an upright position and keeps the grigri from flopping down. Just this positional change often prevents the lockup when trying to pull slack.  I have a picture of how this works somewhere on MP but it would take me forever to find it.   I’m not at home in the US for the next 2 weeks or I’d take a video demoing this for you.   This is my bookmark to get back to this when I get home.

How I noticed this is that I used a grigri before belay loops were invented, and you always looped your locker thru lower and upper harness points  and I never had a grigri lock up issue.  then at some point I got a harness with belay loop and started using only that. Started getting feeding lockups all the time.  So I figured out the positional problem that was happening. 

But I agree it is often clipping style that causes this. 

There is a potential issue with this that folks should at least be aware of.  Thirty years ago, when many people were rappelling with figure-eight devices, there were incidents, at least one fatal, when the device levered open its attaching carabiner, which was clipped to the harness hard points and so was prevented from orienting in the load direction..  See https://www.c2safety.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/karabiner_breakings_with_figure8.pdf for the details. Whether a Grigri could do the same thing in a fall situation is a matter of conjecture, but it seems plausible to me that the device could slip over the gate of the attaching carabiner and break it. Yes, modern carabiners have gate-load strengths that should be sufficient; the question is whether the device could perform a levering function rather than imposing just a straight outward pull on the gate.

Personally, I wouldn't do this because I think there are other solutions (although not without their own issues) for addressing the slack-pumping problem in Grigris. I'm referring to the index finger on the flange — thumb-on-the-handle technique recommended by Petzl.

Although I am far from an expert when it comes to modern assisted-belay devices (I'm still climbing almost everything with half ropes), the issue with the Grigri hanging down when clipped to the belay loop might be mitigated by using the Edelrid Pinch, which can attach directly to the belay loop without needing an attaching carabiner.