Another Accident due to mis-use of the Gri-gri

Aleks Zebastian wrote:Climbing friend, May your internet wang slapping continue well beyond 100 pages!!!

climbing friend Aleks,
Would you please write my wedding vows? Thanks graciously,
That is all.

Also, I only drive cars without airbags because they encourage laziness and bad driving technique.

Also also, the lack of airbags prevents factors outside my control (other drivers, weather, rock fall, other natural human error, wild deer) from affecting my safety, didn't y'all know?

Happy climbing,

talking

special

idiots

lace that bitch up

bearbreeder wrote:folks since im already breeding 25+ pages of beahs ... lets make it 30 !!! with your help YES WE CAN !!! this just got posted a few hours ago .... I went climbing today with an individual i had never climbed with. We arranged the climb via the local climbing website. Everything went fine until I lead a route above mt grade. I told him I was doubtful I could lead it. I was almost at the third bolt when I slowly started to lose my grip. I took a fairly soft fall and all of a sudden I kept falling from about 15 feet up. He was using a GriGri 2 and said he was paying out slack and "wasn't ready for my fall". I landed right on my butt and thankfully hit soft dirt and no big rocks. I was lucky to walk away with no injuries and am lucky it was only 3 bolts up an 80', 12 bolt route. I hope to use this as a reminder that a Gri Gri or any auto locking device is no substitute for a bad belayer. He freaked out, kept the cam down rather than grabbing the brake. I know this has happened to many other people, stay safe out there reddit.com/r/climbing/comme…

Hey, that was me, the dropped climber. After thinking it through my belayer was either feeding slack with the cam depressed (not sure why, I wasn't clipping, I was clinging to a hold at shoulder level) and froze up when I fell, or he took his hand off the brake strand while also depressing the cam. I'm just glad it was only a few bolts up. From now on I will be much more careful of who belays me, and what device they are using.

I've got no dog in this fight. I don't own a Grigri and very rarely use one, since I usually climb with double ropes. I mostly use an Alpine Up, which is an assisted locker, and a DMM Pivot, which is an ATC-type device, so in spite of a personal history going back to bowlines around the waist and hip belays, I have nothing against modern technology.

I have no access to believable statistics and so have no ability to compare the frequency of various types of belaying accidents. There is no question that there has been an absolute explosion of dropped climbers, but I have no idea whether that is an artifact of the explosion of the climbing population or something beyond that involving contemporary attitudes about the reliability of technological solutions.

Every belay device from the venerable hip belay on has failure modes. If the belay fails, it is always possible to make it the belayer's fault as a matter of definition.

In the present day, the ATC has become an old technique, still employed by many (perhaps most) but competing with an ever larger host of assisted-belay devices. The ATC has a very small number of very well-understood failure modes. You can't have the load and breaking strand parallel and expect to get any braking force multiplication. (This means that the device has to be handled differently if there is a potential factor-2 fall directly onto the belay.) If your brake hand is too close to the device at the moment of a fall, it might get pulled in and the skin pinched unless you are gloved (which I think is appropriate with all devices). And most important but least considered, the device may not supply enough friction for very high-impact falls, depending on rope diameter, the amount of wear on the sheath, and the nature of any dry treatment.

Because of the known nature of the failure modes and the small number of them, an ATC in experienced hands is probably as safe a device as it is possible have from the operational standpoint. If you add potential rockfall to the mix, i.e. consider belayer-incapacitating events, then the operational safety judgement has to be moderated.

The assisted-locking devices have features that could be called safety features, in that the devices rely less on belayer attention and strength than does an ATC, and so are a hedge against human fallibility. With a fully-engaged belayer, they are almost as safe operationally as an ATC in experienced hands, but not quite.

The main difference, which goes all the way back to the first post here and underpins the immoderate flaming which continues to flare and ebb in the thread, is that other than the deliberate disabling of the assisting mechanisms for pumping slack to the leader, lowering, and rappelling, the failure modes of the assisted locking devices are neither well-understood nor universally known, and may not yet be fully enumerated. The result that even fully attentive experienced belayers may be (and have been) unprepared for one of these rare but possible failures. In the sense that general belaying experience does not confer competence with any particular assisted-locking device, these devices are arguably operationally less safe than an ATC, a distinction that might be eradicated in cases where rockfall is a substantial threat.

Once the sides in the argument take offense and start attacking each other, there is no longer much value in the discussion except for those who are entertained by disharmony and conflict. The fact is that all the devices have their place and are reasonably if not perfectly safe most of the time. But the arcane nature of the failure modes of assisted lockers calls, not only for more rather than less attention, but also for a consistent effort to stay abreast of news about how these devices function and malfunction.

I watched someone get almost dropped.... the Idiot working the Grigi let go of it- finally and the falling dude stopped about 24 inches off of the deck.

Very scary.

I admit that Im a OLD FART and didn't use one intill a few years ago and now I only employ it for a full on, hours long DOG session.

Bottom line.... make SURE the belayer knows what is up with whatever device/ method is used....

Lets Go for an epic 100 pages.

Healyje wrote: . Exactly. But what you're not getting is that grigri use, by its design, promotes and encourages laziness and complacency.

I get that plenty. But the problem is a user problem, not a device problem. The GriGri does not force anyone to be lazy. The instructions Petzl provides on how to use the device is far more complete and detailed than the instructions on how to use most other belay devices. Petzl has several videos and articles on their website demonstrating how to use it. They print, ship and have posted posters in gyms demonstrating how to use it. No other manufacturer has gone to such an extent to educate its users on the proper function of their equipment. Last, there are plenty of people who use the device correctly, which further illustrates the laziness factor.

Now, could we are argue that the device is still at fault because it uses flawed manufacturing which results in users being lazy? Sure, I guess we could, but do you really think belayers are dropping people because Petzl's engineers dont know what they are doing, or do you think it's because the belayers dont know what they are doing?

rgold wrote:I've got no dog in this fight. I have no access to believable statistics and so have no ability to compare the frequency of various types of belaying accidents. There is no question that there has been an absolute explosion of dropped climbers, but I have no idea whether that is an artifact of the explosion of the climbing population or something beyond that involving contemporary attitudes about the reliability of technological solutions.

OK, you have no dog in this fight yet I just had to erase(dont want a TLDR post) a few hundred words you wrote about this fight you have no dog in. just sayin.

You say you have no access to actual stats yet you say there is an absolute EXPLOSION of dropped climbers. Could this be from bearbreeder constantly posting the same accidents over and over again on a daily basis or could this be from just the fact of the internet allowing us to know what happened at some podunk crag on the other side of the country that we never would have heard about BITD?

I will say IMO that any gym who makes people use any certain device is not a gym worth giving money to.

Travis Provin wrote: Hey, that was me, the dropped climber. After thinking it through my belayer was either feeding slack with the cam depressed (not sure why, I wasn't clipping, I was clinging to a hold at shoulder level) and froze up when I fell, or he took his hand off the brake strand while also depressing the cam. I'm just glad it was only a few bolts up. From now on I will be much more careful of who belays me, and what device they are using.

Glad yr OK

Thats the problem with folks ... Even experienced folks ... Who use these devices

many if not most do not follow petzls instructions

A single glance around the gym or crag will show you that many grigri users belay almost exclusively with the "fast feed" method and park their hand in the "fast feed" position

In fact i will say outright that once a 10mm+ rope on a grigri 2 gets a bit thicker, fuzzier and stiffer eveyone belays like that

Theres a reason why petzl doesnt recommend this

I got belayed on my old grigri which is in "permanant loan" today ... Not dead yet to the dissapointment of some MPers no doubt

;)

Tank top climbing in WON GOH WAH in december

rgold wrote:I've got no dog in this fight. I don't own a Grigri and very rarely use one, since I usually climb with double ropes. I mostly use an Alpine Up, which is an assisted locker, and a DMM Pivot, which is an ATC-type device, so in spite of a personal history going back to bowlines around the waist and hip belays, I have nothing against modern technology. I have no access to believable statistics and so have no ability to compare the frequency of various types of belaying accidents. There is no question that there has been an absolute explosion of dropped climbers, but I have no idea whether that is an artifact of the explosion of the climbing population or something beyond that involving contemporary attitudes about the reliability of technological solutions. Every belay device from the venerable hip belay on has failure modes. If the belay fails, it is always possible to make it the belayer's fault as a matter of definition. In the present day, the ATC has become an old technique, still employed by many (perhaps most) but competing with an ever larger host of assisted-belay devices. The ATC has a very small number of very well-understood failure modes. You can't have the load and breaking strand parallel and expect to get any braking force multiplication. (This means that the device has to be handled differently if there is a potential factor-2 fall directly onto the belay.) If your brake hand is too close to the device at the moment of a fall, it might get pulled in and the skin pinched unless you are gloved (which I think is appropriate with all devices). And most important but least considered, the device may not supply enough friction for very high-impact falls, depending on rope diameter, the amount of wear on the sheath, and the nature of any dry treatment. Because of the known nature of the failure modes and the small number of them, an ATC in experienced hands is probably as safe a device as it is possible have from the operational standpoint. If you add potential rockfall to the mix, i.e. consider belayer-incapacitating events, then the operational safety judgement has to be moderated. The assisted-locking devices have features that could be called safety features, in that the devices rely less on belayer attention and strength than does an ATC, and so are a hedge against human fallibility. With a fully-engaged belayer, they are almost as safe operationally as an ATC in experienced hands, but not quite. The main difference, which goes all the way back to the first post here and underpins the immoderate flaming which continues to flare and ebb in the thread, is that other than the deliberate disabling of the assisting mechanisms for pumping slack to the leader, lowering, and rappelling, the failure modes of the assisted locking devices are neither well-understood nor universally known, and may not yet be fully enumerated. The result that even fully attentive experienced belayers may be (and have been) unprepared for one of these rare but possible failures. In the sense that general belaying experience does not confer competence with any particular assisted-locking device, these devices are arguably operationally less safe than an ATC, a distinction that might be eradicated in cases where rockfall is a substantial threat. Once the sides in the argument take offense and start attacking each other, there is no longer much value in the discussion except for those who are entertained by disharmony and conflict. The fact is that all the devices have their place and are reasonably if not perfectly safe most of the time. But the arcane nature of the failure modes of assisted lockers calls, not only for more rather than less attention, but also for a consistent effort to stay abreast of news about how these devices function and malfunction.

the grigri has been around for a few decades now ...

all of its failure modes are well known .... the problem is that folks keep on denying they happen and dont follow petzls instructions

they think its fine to give the grigri to a "yoga pants" (or male equivalent) as a substitute for proper belaying skills ... weve seen some MPers say that on this thread

they keep belaying in the "fast feed" position all the time ... and theyre surprised or in denial when accidents happen

they think that think they can go "hands free" and nothing will happen ... till it does and theyll keep denying it for pages of MP fun

the grigri should be a safer device than a tube ... for one simple reason ... rockfall

but with the attitude above thats evidenced over and over again even by "experienced climbers" ... in the hands of a "yoga pants" newb who was given one of a substitute for proper belay instruction, its a dangerous device, as is ANY belay device

it just shows that some climbers wont even believe the manufacturer of the device when they say its not "hands free" and that folks should be using the "proper technique"

i bet many if not most of the MP grigri folks here use mostly the "fast feed" method despite petzl warning against using it all the time, rather than the ATC style feed they recommend for most grigri belaying ... especially when the ropes get 10mm+

its absolutely hilarious that with decade of documentation, some of the BEST instructions of any belay device and decades of folks learning the hard way through accidents ... that many if not most folks, even "experienced' ones, still ignore the instructions and recommendations on the grigri from PETZL themselves

;)

bearbreeder wrote: the grigri has been around for a few decades now ... all of its failure modes are well known ...

They certainly should be well-known, but as you yourself point out they aren't. (You chalk it up to denial, but I suspect ignorance the more prevalent condition.) And as for "all," there are accidents like the Ewing one where no one seems to be sure whether what happened is a known issue (lots of hypotheses suggested) or something new.

The Grigri failure modes we do know about would by now be well-known to anyone who had done the "due diligence" I mentioned at the end of my quoted post, at least if the reader had the attention span to get through the failure mode descriptions when they were posted. But as it stands now, you have to read posts on the internet and watch you-tube videos---as well as read the sometimes cryptic instructions supplied with the device---in order to be fully informed, which is to say competent. Not everyone does any of this, and so, at least for that population, my characterization of the failure modes as "arcane" is accurate.

Morgan Patterson wrote: Except that his logic is flawed and he's contradicting himself... No study needed.

Every now and again, an argument with flawed logic and contradictions yields a correct result. Perhaps by chance, but none the less correct.

I guess my question is how can you study times when someone has been spared harm from an autolocking device?

That's a good question, one way of getting around complicated questions is asking a slightly different, easier question.
The crux of *my* curiousity is the following question:

Are climbers overall safer with a grigri2 or a modern tube (ATC-G,reverso4, et al)?

How would such a study be arranged? Well, a large club/organisation could issue tubes to one set of their members, and grigri2s to another set. Everyone would get instruction on use, and be asked to use the device over the next few years. They'd also be asked to log their climbs, and their accidents.

After say, 5-10 years, with a few hundred people involved, then we could get an idea for which device is safer.
From the accident logs we could see how many belayers had been injured while belaying, we could see that perhaps ones belayed with ATCs hit the ground more often than ones belayed with grigris - or the distinction maybe so small it wouldn't register above the noise.

Who knows what outcome we'd get. I have no idea how to structure a study, it's not my field, I gather it's rather hard to get right and that some professionals should be involved.

I don't think you can and I think taking anecdotal evidence is sound. Esp when proper training and complacency is the cause of incidents with the gri, not a mechanical malfunction. There is a plethora of us (each with decades of climbing exp) speaking up right here where the use of a gri has saved us from bodily harm that would have likely otherwise occurred with an ATC. There seems to be a noticeable lack of folks who are speaking up about being dropped by someone using a gri. Given the sampling here, however anecdotal, it would seem Healy is incorrect in his assumption that its such a small number.

I do not think anecdotal evidence is worth all that much. My own anecdotal evidence is that autolocking devices are more dangerous than rockfall. My sample size is too small, it's bias (maybe we have great rock and shit belayers? Maybe you have shit belayers and shitter rock?).

People bring up seatbelts a lot, when I was growing up my uncle told me how seatbeats were dangerous, because someone in the family had died in a car accident unharmed except for a seatbelt around his neck. My uncles anecdotal experience lead him to never wear a seatbelt. We of course know better, but only because we have the benefit of tens of thousands of datapoints of accidents with seatbelts vs not. We have the benefit of well funded government organisations focused on safety examining the data to deduce which is the safest course of action.

Now, we're just a bunch of climbers. Climbing is not well funded. We're not very good at a lot of things. The history of a community is full of interesting failures of knowledge, from failures at basic mechanics (ADT anchors), to failures at materials (disgarding carabiners because of 'microfractures', or all those bolts placed that rapidly became victims of corrosion).
What makes you think we have a firm grasp on safety engineering?

Sadly the type of research I'd like to see, seems unlikely given the general lack of funds and will.

I have hopes that interesting things will emerge from DAV (and be translated into English!), they seem to have some inclination towards examining and testing things.

There's a best method/device for each situation and being competent is being able to identify which is the best. It could be a Gri, Smart, click-up, ATC, munter, Matik, reverso, or maybe even a sticht plate. For example, if a FF2 is a remote possibility, a munter would be a better choice than an ATC, and a grigri may be best choice.

It's been a couple of months since I used either of my smarts since, due to weather i've been in the gym a lot which means stiff fat ropes, that will be a pain with the smart. Considering the potential to short rope the leader and the probability of rockfall, I'd be willing to say that it is safer for me to belay with my sticht plate than my smart. Come spring when it's time to go choss wrangling, I'll be using my smart because, in the hands of an unconscious belayer, I'd rather he/she be using a smart than an ATC.

If the belayer is not well informed about all known failure modes of an assisted locking device, they are ill-prepared to prevent such failure modes, and I'll hand them an ATC or maybe even just find a different belayer. Which is more important: getting the send right this very moment or living to get the send next week?

On the other hand, climbing is a dangerous activity, and we inherently accept that risk every time we choose to leave the ground. I personally choose embrace this aspect of climbing, but I can empathize with others who may do so grudgingly and take all measures possible to mitigate it. After all, life is fucking awesome, and I'd like to enjoy more than my current 19 years of it. The fact of the matter, though, is that we all still make that choice to leave the ground and we all have to take responsibility and accept the consequences of our choices.

Q: Do you think there is intelligent life on other planets?

A: Why would the other planets be any different than this one?

1st & 27
Yes!!!

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I think the bear humper still expects 30. In other words, we might need Haley get all stupid again. Where you at old man?

WE WANT 30 !!!

heres a few more i dont think i posted up yet ... all anti-grigri propaganda of course ...

I was involved in a climbing accident in April in the gym. My belayer was inexperienced, but knew how to belay and had caught my falls before. I fell shortly after clipping, and I believe my belayer was overwhelmed and feeding me rope just as I fell. I don't know for sure what happened, but the rope did not engage the gri-gri and continued to feed through the device. I fell about 30ft and decked.

--------

I witnessed an accident very similar to this a few years ago at my gym as well. The belayer had his hands off the rope and the gri-gri (original model, not 2) did not lock up on a gradual fall immediately after a clip. Climber fell from near the top of the wall, almost 40 ft.


reddit.com/r/climbing/comme…

and more phun ...

I have been climbing for just over a year and a half. I have seen 4 ground falls, one of which was outside and by the grace of C'thulu nothing happened. 3 were in a gym and one of those resulted in a broken leg. This past weekend I witnessed one sprain and one broken foot. The sprain was because some guy fell like 30 feet, easily 15 more than he needed to. The broken foot was a result of being lowered over a ledge and being dropped suddenly. I had to carry this poor lady on my back down an ankle breaking gully while being belayed from above.

All of these incidents have one thing in common. They were being belayed by a gri-gri. Now I'm not here to bash the gri-gri, it really is a wonderful piece of engineering and has its use. But, I am reminded of that saying, "Complacency kills." In the same way that I believe a manual transmission leads to safer driving because you are forced to actively operate the vehicle with all limbs, an ATC requires your full attention 100% of the time.

Additionally, one of the most common things I hear idiots tell new belayers is "...and you can go hands free with the gri-gri because it is autolocking..." This is of course completely wrong. Most of these incidents have happened relatively recently, and so I feel the need to post this anecdotal PSA:



reddit.com/r/climbing/comme…

the grigri is a fine device when used PROPERLY according to petzl INSTRCUTCIONS and should be SAFER ... however many if not most climbers dont use it properly as they believe the grigri will make up for inattention or a lack of skill

let me ask a simple question of MPers ... how many folks belay "ATC style" on the grigri as recommended by petzl most of the time ... saving the fast feed method for quick clips

or are you like most grigri lead belayers out there parking your hand in the "fast feed" position and using that method almost exclusively ... especially when dealing with a 10mm+ rope?

be honest now ... ive bred a bear that can sniff out and eat intrawebz LIARS !!!

look around yr gym tonight and it should be obvious what folks REALLY do in the real world ...

--------

as a bonus ... in the interesting of intrawebz education ... heres an old accident report of a little known "failure" mode

all the grigri "failure" modes are known ... some are just less well known than others ...

http://itrsonline.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Hasse.2000.pdf

old climbing accident with grigri

old grigri accident 2

climbin we no never do nothing, ’cause if you had if you had have has have havesed if you did haveidid hasididvisid…the grigri and you looks had looks have looks has looks have looks at it, look at it is it, look at it have look at lidididatit, then you might not even know why you had do that

J Q wrote: we might need Haley get all stupid again. Where you at old man?

It's bingo night, give him a break, ok?

Healyje wrote:someone is being dropped by a belayer using a grigri every 15 minutes, 24x7 somewhere around the planet these days.

Going by Healyje's authoritatively documented statistics, 33,696 climbers have been dropped by grigris since this thread was started. It's hard to believe there's anyone left to post on MP.

JL