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WTF is fourth class, and how/should you protect it?
Old lady H wrote: Brake action on an ATC should never change. The belayer should only ever be pulled up and into the anchor in the event of a fall from the leader. Always clip the leader's rope into the anchor via the "shelf" or whatever they call that "second master point" these days. If the leader falls and creates a FF2, the belayer brakes as normal. If clipping the shelf creates to much annoyance or rope drag, unclip it only after several solid pieces of pro are put in by the leader, but I'd keep it if the pitch starts as a traverse. Leader's rope should already be through the shelf, as it is how you brought them up the previous pitch. |
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Oh boy. Now why'd you have to go and open that can of worms? I don't recommend bringing up clipping the anchors in a beginner thread, as it's much more complicated than "do this all the time and you'll be safe." In many situations, it makes matters worse. |
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Grades 1, 2, 3, and 4 are artitacts of the original Sierra club grading system, which entirely misunderstood the nature of climbing and so created a grading system based not on an attempt at objective difficulty rating, but rather on the equipment "required" for the climb. So Class 1 was walking with no equipment requirements, Class 2 was still hiking but on rougher, less stable terrain requiring "proper" boots for safety, Class 3 was "scrambling" with the "frequent use of hands" and ropes would be carried but used infrequently, mostly for novices. Class 4 was climbing for which ropes and belays were "required for safety", with the occasional use of pitons for anchors. (This should have said "required for the safety of the second," because Class 4 leading was entirely unprotected. Put another way, Class 4 leads are Class 4 X.) Class 5 climbing required pitons above the belayer to protect the leader. All this seemed to work until the early 1950's at Tahquitz, where "piton-protected climbing" was subdivided, according to difficulty, into 5.0 to 5.9. The fact that what is 5.6 for one climber might, in terms of equipment, be Class 3 for another climber didn't seem to trouble the early architects of this absurd system. And then when Class 5 was subdivided into difficulty categories, no one bothered to reconsider what Classes 1 through 4 meant, if anything, in the context of difficulty. It is easy to make Class 1 ordinary hiking and Class 2 scree and boulder hopping and other rough off-trail situations, but Class 3 and 4 were never clearly distinguished, even in the now-discarded equipment criteria, and so they have come to mean whatever people think they should mean, which is hardly a recipe for consistency or even meaning. In the early sixties, Leigh Ortenburger worked hard but in vain to achieve a national climbing classification system---see http://www.supertopo.com/climbers-forum/1039859/Climb-Ratings-Birth-of-NCCS-Leigh-Ortenberger-Summit-1963. By collapsing the lower grades into fewer categories but aligning with the decimal system at 5.7 and above, he had a more intelligent approach, which like various other intelligent approaches to things, fell victim to resistance to change. And so we are absurdly stuck, because "difficult" rock climbing starts at Class 5, requiring us to somehow populate four classes below that with distinguishing definitions, even though there really aren't four sensiblly different difficulty levels of climbing below 5.0. If we could manage to get away from things like "exposure," and the severity of likely injuries from a fall, which have nothing to do with difficulty, then Classes 3 and 4 could be taken to represent "easy scrambling" and "hard scrambling," giving two difficulty levels below 5.0. The distinction is pretty fine but perhaps possible to make. In the Gunks we might call the Uberfall Class 3 and Radcliffe Class 4. Both of them are climbed up and down unroped (as are far harder climbs of course!), but I think most people can detect that Radcliffe is harder. In the Tetons, the East Face of Buck Mountain would be Class 3 and the East Face of Teewinot would be Class 4. Meanwhile, back at the crag, no one really knows what Class 3 and 4 mean, so it is only prudent to assume exposed hard scrambling if you only have the grade and don't already know what you'll encounter. |
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Oh, as for belays, I and other people said the devices work the same regardless of orientation, and this is true for harness belays. But if you are using a guide plate on the anchor for belaying the second on a traverse, it is likely to fail if the rope to the second runs horizontally out from the belay stance to a protection point, so that a fall by the second produces a horizontal load on the belay. And yes, as Ted says, clipping the leader's rope to any part of the belay anchor is a judgement call that has to be made fresh for each belay---there is no hard and fast rule that will be the safest approach to every possible situation. |
rgold wrote: All the more reason to avoid using an ATC in guide mode, except for maybe when doing what its name refers to--guiding 2 clients or seconds up a climb, simul-belaying. A topic for another thread, but I would encourage folks on multi-pitch to belay with a re-direct off your harness for many reasons. I don't think it's out of scope for beginners. Great history lesson on Class ratings, rgold. |
Old lady H wrote: The belay device itself doesn´t know which direction it is facing or where the climber is, it only reacts to the rope strands being parallel (no braking) or in opposite directions (braking). So you should have learnt that you automatically pull the braking strand away from the loaded strand, not up or down. Fortunately the forces involved in traverse falls are normally very low anyway, the danger is not dropping the climber but what they hit on their way across the rock. Rope protecting "easy" traversing it´s standard to not bother to belay in the conventional sense but to use an Italian hitch direct off a sling/piece of gear or whatever. |
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None of this would matter if everyone learned to lead at the gym and took repeated falls there before ever heading outside. |
Old lady H wrote: I do not claim to have tested this extensively but when I have used an ATC in low angle situations I have never encountered any troubles other than excessive rope drag and being pulled down toward the ground. Also you mention differing ATC function when used upside down, and I am curious, why would this be so? I have always been under the impression that if an ATC is loaded correctly and the the brake strand is held correctly relative to the device it will function properly. This is as completely honest question asked out of curiosity, not me doubting or questioning your logic, so I hope this doesn't come across as bashful. Thanks and good luck with your route! |
Kaihaku wrote: The problem is if the belayer has orientated themselves for an upward pull (brake hand below the device) and the leader falls past the belayer then they must change to brake hand above the device. Whether they do this instinctively is a question of how they were trained to belay i.e brake against the direction of load or down and back which is the usual when one learns in the gym. The device itself doesn´t know what is up or down. |
Jim Titt wrote: Thanks, Jim. This is the genesis of asking about a horizontal device. Actually, picturing what you describe above, it seems like it would be even worse. If your hand is palm down, and you normally have it down and back by your hip, suddenly trying to get that rope UP somehow, and in a fatass hurry, seems very close to impossible. My guess is that my hand would simply be jammed into the ATC at that point, and "braking" consists of hanging on....or not, while being violently yanked around and down. Scary. Best, Helen |
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Alex Kowalcyk wrote: So again, no: the short answer is "it depends," and for most multi-pitch scenarios, a Guide-mode belay is significantly safer. I would not recommend belaying off of a redirect for beginners unless they were doing multipitch sport and/or knew that they could count on bolted belays; neither of these apply to Helen's situation. A redirect puts significantly more force on the top piece (close to 2x), which would be incredibly dangerous (and pointless) in a scrambling situation. The worst thing you can do in a beginner's thread is to oversimplify complex issues. |
Old lady H wrote: That´s the reason for recommending using an Italian hitch as would normally be done in the Alps, there´s no real difference in braking wherever your hand is. |
Mike Morin wrote: The definitions are as good or bad as any others, the problem being that everyone is left to invent their own. When the person doing the inventing is a guidebook author, then their inventions are automatically invested with a level of authority, but that doesn't mean the definitions really make sense or are in any way consistent---for example the author is forced to confess discepancies between Calfornia and Colorado, and the distinction between Class 3 and Class 4 depends, among other things, on "how hard" it is to spot handholds, and the climber's flexibility and level of mental engagement seem to be mixed into the difficulty ratings. To his credit, he does get rid of "exposure" as a determining factor in the grade. To put what I've said slightly differently, the problem is that the way the original Sierra Club system evolved left us with four grades of difficulty below 5.0, and rather than thinking about perceivable difficulty distinctions, guidebook authors keep trying to cram things into a four-level system, which is too many levels for the types of climbing involved. Although we may not always fully realize it, so-called objective grading scales are in principle based on a set of reference climbs. This means you can't give genuinely useful verbal descriptions of the difficulty criteria, the climber has to experience the climbs at different levels in order to get a sense of what they mean. The idea is that when you have done enough climbing to be versatile, and have experienced enough of the reference climbs, you'll be able to correlate the difficulty of some new climb with the reference standards. But the confusion over the lower grades has meant that there has been even less tendency for the reference standards to converge than we've seen for fifth-class ratings, which themselves are subject to considerable variation. |
Jim Titt wrote: I hesitate to disagree with a European, given the much greater popularity of the Munter over there, but... I disagree with you. With the Munter, braking is achieved when the brake strand is alongside of the load strand. If it's opposed to it (a la ATC braking) there is very little friction; certainly not enough to catch a FF2 fall. |
ChossKing wrote: Why do you feel it is necessary to state this? You have done so twice now, in the beginners thread. Worse, are the cowards hiding behind your skirts and anonymously thumbs upping you. And. There are people out there who know you in person, or who could be potential partners. Is this truly the message you wish to send all of us? I hope not. Best, Helen, an actual, living being, at least if properly coffeed up. |
Gunkiemike wrote: So an Italian hitch is a Munter? And thanks, Mike. OLH |
Old lady H wrote: Helen, I thought the "Unsubscribing" comment was quite funny. When you post on the Internet, you are vulnerable to all kinds of comments and, try as you may, you can't really stop them. Sure, you can flag comments you don't like, but that is like pushing a boulder uphill. For the record, I did not anonymously give two thumbs up; I gave it two thumbs up out in the open! You have previously stated that you can't afford a guide. And, when you've been advised to read a book, you've stated that you'd rather have a "live" person (on the Internet is "live"?) explain it to you. You work at a climbing gym, so why can't you find an experienced mentor? Even some college students might have some experience they could share with you, in person. Missy says "hi." Edit: As the old saying goes, "Experience is the best teacher. " While not entirely true (if that experience gets you hurt or killed), you need to get some mileage on the rocks with someone more experienced. Many of your questions will be best answered that way. |
rgold wrote: Why "to his credit"? If historically the dividing line between 3rd and 4th class was whether "ropes and belays" were required for safety, surely exposure is a very relevant factor, no? Ignoring the history, and just considering what distinctions are most useful, I would think that since almost any climber can easily do the moves on 3rd and 4th class, pure difficulty isn't what people would be most interested in. The useful information they're probably trying to determine from whether it's class 3 or class 4 is "do I want to climb this without a rope". For me, this decision depends on some combination of exposure, difficulty, and rock quality, so I would want the grading system for scrambling to reflect all of those things. |
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You can fall off 4th class so protect it if you are so inclined |
