Using rope-loop to belay on multi-pitch

Kevin Mokracek wrote:

Why can't people just use their harness the way it was intended instead of making crap more complicated?   Im sure BD, Petzl, Yates etc.. roll their collective eyes when they read posts like this.

1. As far as I know, the method originated with a Black Diamond engineer, who might know something you don't about what harnesses do better or worse with by design.

2. Whether you clip the rope loop or the harness belay loop, you are just clipping a loop.  No crap was complified by the making of this procedure.

3. What is pointlessly complicated is the preposterous gyrations needed to safely lower someone with a guide plate.  An utterly simple bit of crap has been made orders of magnitude more complicated and dangerous.  Clipping the rope loop can't even begin to compete.

Old lady H wrote:

And get squashed by my harness pulled one way, and the ground anchor tether coming tight, when some behemoth launches off the wall.

Also perhaps spun half sideways.

Remove the harness from the action, straighten the line? Sounds like a simple solution.

Ball lobbed to your court, sir. :-)

Respectfully, OLH

Well, with or without belaying off the rope loop, you can figure out where the force is going to fling you (in line between the anchor and the climber) and go there in advance so you don't get flung. If you're in line between the anchor and the climber, you're already where the force of a fall wants you to be, so it won't move you. This is true whether you're attached via the belay loop or via the rope loop. I don't buy that this is a benefit of belaying off the rope loop, it's a benefit of being in a straight line between your anchor and climber, in any configuration that allows that.

The benefit I see to belaying off the rope loop is that it avoids side-loading the tie in points of the harness.

I have the impression that  some of people commenting here have never or rarely belayed a second off their harness, and think that if they do the planets will align and no load will be applied to their tender innards.  The rope loop clip creates that alignment automatically.  It is theoretically possible to get perfect alignment with the belay loop and rope anchor, but in the real world that is rarely if ever achieved, and anyone who has had to hold a hanging second for a while with a harness belay knows about this imperfection in nature very well.  Once the anchor strand and the climber's strand fail to lie in a single straight line, outward loads on the harness will be transmitted to the circumference, which will be prevented from folding in half  only by the kind intervention of your eager-to-help internal organs. 

One of the ironic things about this discussion is that when folks like me criticize the overuse of guide-mode belays, there is typically a chorus of protests, cataloging the endless varieties of pain and suffering induced by the harness belay  (almost all of which can be avoided by snugging the anchor strand and clipping the rope loop).  But the mention here of a cure for all these ills seems to stimulate either a sudden nostalgia for the internal deformations so recently condemned, or else the unrealistic claim that perfect alignment of two strands can be achieved in the field by simple repositioning of the belayer, a fact, that if true, would have negated that chorus of protests about the discomforts of harness belays.

You can't have it both ways guys.

My guess is that most folks---including me---will carry on with whatever they had been doing, and no one will be harmed as a result either way.

rgold wrote:

I have the impression that a some of people have never belayed a second off their harness...

Belaying off the anchor is simply the flip / seconding side of what drove grigri adoption. Neither one is about belaying actual climbing as opposed to belaying hanging. Both are the logical and necessary extension of the wholesale redefinition of what climbing 'is' to be a matter of taking your way up routes.

 Both are the logical and necessary extension of the wholesale redefinition of what climbing 'is' to be a matter of taking your way up routes.

I believe the word you are looking for is "wieniefication" of climbing. BITD I used an eight ring in "guide mode" for such "hauling" jobs BUT you could easily lower if needed. So much for progress. ;) 

Hip belay solves any problem of cross loading.   Just a swami and a hip belay, problem solved.