ATC Guide mode from harness

Might be a stupid question, but while delaying my second the other day using guide mode from the anchor, I got to thinking. Does anybody put their ATC on guide mode on their harness when delaying from the bottom in order to act as more of an assisted braking device? I tried it out belaying someone and it worked really well just not sure if theres a reason people don't do this. 

• The main issue I see would be being able to lower and give slack.  And its tough to finesse the friction when you defeat that auto lock.  I've seen people on YouTube use it off the harness in guide mode to ascend a rope which looks pretty slick, but yeah that's why I wouldn't.

I've heard of folks (european guides, if my memory is working) using atc in guide mode for lead rope soloing.

But it's a pain in the ass to lower in that configuration, and it can ba dangerious if you don't know what you're doing.  So it's not worth doing.

I mean, yeah, it'll lock right the hell up if you set it up to do that, but it's not a useful setup.  Get a grigri or some other kind of ABD if that's what you want.

Brandon.S wrote:

• The main issue I see would be being able to lower and give slack.  And its tough to finesse the friction when you defeat that auto lock.  I've seen people on YouTube use it off the harness in guide mode to ascend a rope which looks pretty slick, but yeah that's why I wouldn't.

using it to ascend 100% works and is a really slick trick if you happen to accidentally miss a rap station.

Matt Kelly wrote: Might be a stupid question, but while delaying my second the other day using guide mode from the anchor, I got to thinking. Does anybody put their ATC on guide mode on their harness when delaying from the bottom in order to act as more of an assisted braking device? I tried it out belaying someone and it worked really well just not sure if theres a reason people don't do this. 

Yes, this works and can be a great way to go if you chain a second biner to the rope bearing one and lock it to your belay loop or use a locker draw for the same purpose. The idea is that when your climber gets to the top or wants to be lowered they un weight for a half second and you unclip the guide mode biner thus transitioning the setup to a normal (but somewhat extended) atc setup for the lower. 

Daniel Kay wrote:

using it to ascend 100% works and is a really slick trick if you happen to accidentally miss a rap station.

Or are having communication issues w/ your partner.

This sounds SO dangerous

Yep, some people do this for belaying someone on TR. A locking quickdraw makes it easy to transition to lowering.  I've heard it called an alpine grigri.  I guess you can use this method if you're too cheap to buy an ABD.

https://www.alpinesavvy.com/blog/use-your-atc-guide-as-an-alpine-grigri?rq=alpine%20grigri