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Firefly: New way to bail without leaving gear

Shelton Hatfield · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Apr 2011 · Points: 650
Briggs Lazalde wrote:

Efficiency is lost in this particular application when the energy required to avoid or remedy the problem causes a greater amount of problems. As everyone in this thread mainly agrees, so I dont mean to beat the dead horse, but a several ounce locking biner at say $5 isn't worth carrying something multiple times its weight and price for the not even sure chance you will use it. Again not even mentioning safety concerns

Now I understand where my confusion stems from. I appears that we're having two different conversations. I'm not advocating the purchase of this product, but I'm not sure about your math. Care to demonstrate how compared to a locking carabiner, the firefly setup is "multiple times its weight"? Also, what safety concerns does the firefly system introduce? Obviously the firefly system doesn't allow the use of a locking carabiner, but in my eyes the most dangerous part of either system would be the decision to lower off a single bolt.

Andrew Rice · · Los Angeles, CA · Joined Jan 2016 · Points: 11
Shelton Hatfield wrote:

Now I understand where my confusion stems from. I appears that we're having two different conversations. I'm not advocating the purchase of this product, but I'm not sure about your math. Care to demonstrate how compared to a locking carabiner, the firefly setup is "multiple times its weight"? Also, what safety concerns does the firefly system introduce? Obviously the firefly system doesn't allow the use of a locking carabiner, but in my eyes the most dangerous part of either system would be the decision to lower off a single bolt.

You're not asking me but I'll answer anyway. You're probably right about weight. I can't imagine a firefly + string weight anything more than a locker. But, then again, it has to be racked on a carabiner anyway, to be there for you to use. The point I see, though, it that you're carrying another, larger, more complex thing that you don't need. I ALREADY have quickdraws and biners every time I go climbing. So for me to leave one or two behind doesn't take additional planning or purchases.

The safety issue, really involves the possible failures of this rig. I can't imagine it works 100% of the time. So I get stuck, hook up my firely. Lower off. Yank on it a few times. It doesn't work. I either have to pull my rope, anyway, and just leave the draw and Firefly hanging or I have to to climb BACK up and leave a bail biner anyway. Plus, thin lines like the one on the firefly just LOVE to get stuck. in cracks.

Plus, what happens when I'm bailing off a bolt that's not line of sight/straight line of pull from the ground?

Nobody is saying it's a menace to life and limb. But it just seems an overly complicated answer to a simple question. 

Alex Temus · · Lehi, UT · Joined Jun 2016 · Points: 362

I'm sure this post won't change most people's opinions, but I know the inventor, and was able to test several prototypes for him. Since it's a new product and doesn't yet have a wide base of users, you can't ask your buddy to show you how the Firefly works. We see the same half-dozen or so concerns on every forum or comment section here, on Climbing.com, Facebook, Instagram, and elsewhere, so here are a few answers to your FAQs.

"It's not safe to bail off a single bolt"
     - I like redundancy as much as the next guy, but if I'm bailing on a sport route, it's because I already took several whippers on a bolt and if it didn't budge after that, then It's not just going to pop out when I lower off of it.

"Why not leave a bail biner/sling/quicklink"
     - Have you ever tried to leave a bail biner on a difficult, overhanging route?? I use the Firefly to bail on routes where I can't make any more upward progress - that usually means overhanging with minimal holds and pumped arms. Try switching your rope to a carabiner while hanging under a roof with arms that feel like jello. It's just not happening! If you can make that move, then you can probably finish the route.
     - Be honest, most of the gear on your harness is going to cost more than the $4 that I occasionally see quoted for a bail biner.
     - No one wants to have their route chalked full of ratty, old slings. Nobody wants their onsight to be wrecked by a rusted, old quick-link that's clogging up the hanger or an old bail biner that they don't know if they should trust. No body want to try and remove that gear so the next climber doesn't have to deal with it. The thought behind the Firefly is that you can safely bail off a wall without leaving a trace so the next climber can have an untainted experience on the route.

"It's not safe to be on an open carabiner or couldn't the Firefly remove the quickdraw off the bolt while you're still on it?"
     - UIAA (French Initials for "The International Climbing and Mountaineering Federation" which specifies the strengths for all your climbing gear) mandates that a carabiner be able to hold at least 7kN when the gate is open. a kilonewton is about 225 pounds, so 7kN translates to almost 1,600 pounds! Petzl's testing says that you don't even generate that much force in a typical factor 1 lead fall (which is an extreme scenario you should never find yourself in)! Suffice it to say that you won't run into any issues when you only use the Firefly and then weight the rope or lowering down. The exception would be if your carabiner is significantly damaged - in which case, why are you using it on the wall??
     - You don't even need to open the carabiner to install the Firefly, anyway. It comes with screws that allow it to be used without opening a carabiner gate.
     - In order to operate the Firefly to open and remove the quickdraw, both the rope and the firefly pull cord need to be used. If I had to guess, you would need around 20 pounds of force on the rope then, around 20 pounds on the pull cord. You would need to pull in a very controlled manner, unweighting one as you pull the other. and sometimes it takes a couple tries to get that pattern right - basically It's safe to say that it would be impossible to do that procedure on accident. It would also be impossible to open and rotate the carabiner while you are on the rope - if there's any more than ~30 pounds on the rope, nothing moves and the pullcord can't rotate the carabiner.
Basically, I'm saying it's beyond impossible to do that. I tried once, just bouncing around, up and off the wall, all while pulling the pullcord and trying to open the gate and remove the quickdraw I was on from the wall. I couldn't even get it to budge! If anyone does figure out a way to pull it off while on the rope, send me the video! I'm not sure it'll ever be done.

"It won't work if you aren't directly below the bolt"
     - I've used it around corners, off the sides, on overhanging and less-than-vertical walls, and haven't had any issues. No doubt you could find a route with just the right rock formation that would prevent the quickdraw from rotating, but I haven't seen that.

"Someone said I need 200 feet of parachute cord. That's bulky/awkward/heavy/not enough"
     - You only need a single strand of rope to trail down with you from your high point. Take a look at the walls you typically climb. My experience has been that they aren't typically rope-stretchers (they are rarely as long as half of your rope), and that i typically know if I can finish a route within the first 20 or 30 feet of the climb.
     - I generally use 275-lb test cord or "Half 550 cord to make it less bulky, but still plenty strong (if that breaks, then you and your buddy are hanging on it, and you're doing something wrong). Bundled up, it's about the same size as a single cam or quickdraw. Throw that on the back of your harness, and it'll never be in your way. Plus it weighs about a tenth of a quickdraw (Negligible)

"How do I know if it'll work on my quickdraws?"
     - It's really quite adjustable, the prototypes we've tested work on all of the normal and wire-gate carabiners we've seen. Unfortunately, we hadn't worked out all the bugs on wiregate carabiners when we shot the videos, so the newer version that accepts straight or wiregate carabiner gates isn't shown there. The only carabiners that I'm not sure about are Petzl's Ange S carabiners because, if I'm correct, the single wire on the gate is really thick? It's might fine, but I just haven't tried it myself, and it's not a particularly common design anyway.

Moral of the story is that the Firefly is a much easier and safer option for when you find yourself in a situation where you need to bail off a sport climb. It's opened a lot of doors, and solved a lot of headaches for climbers (including myself) who have either spent hours trying to bail off a route, or retrieve their gear safely, or put themselves in dangerous situations in an attempt to not leave anything on the wall, or leaving something terribly inconvenient on the wall (like a quicklink or bail biner). I'm glad my friend's Kickstarter campaign was funded. I think he's made a really innovative product and I think that it will help a lot of people!

MojoMonkey · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Jan 2009 · Points: 66
Alex Temus wrote:

I'm sure this post won't change most people's opinions, but I know the inventor, and was able to test several prototypes for him. 

Odd, did your friendship and testing of prototypes happen in the last few weeks, or were you being coy in October when you posted as some dude just hoping to try one some day?

Alex Temus wrote:

I totally want one. I'm always hesitant to try difficult routes in case I can't make it to the chains and have to leave gear.

Sick idea!

And my reading of these threads haven't been that the device isn't well-engineered or that it will kill noobs in droves. The gist is that it is an overly complicated solution utilizing specialty, single-purpose kit. Were you really spending hours trying to bail off of single pitch sport climbs before this device as you claim above? The video with the kickstarter had the same feel - way overstating the problem of having to bail on a route and then figuring out an equally overblown solution. To me it feels like 1) either the producers are really inexperienced if they have so much trouble bailing or 2) they are trying to play it up to extract cash from inexperienced climbers.

That said, I fully support you marketing this to people that use quick links to bail on a sport climbs.

M Mobley · · Bar Harbor, ME · Joined Mar 2006 · Points: 911
MojoMonkey wrote:

Odd, did your friendship and testing of prototypes happen in the last few weeks, or were you being coy in October when you posted as some dude just hoping to try one some day?

And my reading of these threads haven't been that the device isn't well-engineered or that it will kill noobs in droves. The gist is that it is an overly complicated solution utilizing specialty, single-purpose kit. Were you really spending hours trying to bail off of single pitch sport climbs before this device as you claim above? The video with the kickstarter had the same feel - way overstating the problem of having to bail on a route and then figuring out an equally overblown solution. To me it feels like 1) either the producers are really inexperienced if they have so much trouble bailing or 2) they are trying to play it up to extract cash from inexperienced climbers.

That said, I fully support you marketing this to people that use quick links to bail on a sport climbs.

ha ha, busted spammer!

Alex Temus wrote:

TLDR...

Moral of the story is that the Firefly is a much easier and safer option for when you find yourself in a situation where you need to bail off a sport climb. It's opened a lot of doors, and solved a lot of headaches for climbers (including myself) who have either spent hours trying to bail off a route, or retrieve their gear safely, or put themselves in dangerous situations in an attempt to not leave anything on the wall, or leaving something terribly inconvenient on the wall (like a quicklink or bail biner). I'm glad my friend's Kickstarter campaign was funded. I think he's made a really innovative product and I think that it will help a lot of people!

hours bailing off a route???

greggle · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Jul 2016 · Points: 0
MojoMonkey wrote:

Odd, did your friendship and testing of prototypes happen in the last few weeks, or were you being coy in October when you posted as some dude just hoping to try one some day?

Burn.

sapiecha Sapiecha · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Sep 2013 · Points: 140
Alex Temus wrote:

I'm sure this post won't change most people's opinions, but I know the inventor, and was able to test several prototypes for him. Since it's a new product and doesn't yet have a wide base of users, you can't ask your buddy to show you how the Firefly works. We see the same half-dozen or so concerns on every forum or comment section here, on Climbing.com, Facebook, Instagram, and elsewhere, so here are a few answers to your FAQs.

"It's not safe to bail off a single bolt"
     - I like redundancy as much as the next guy, but if I'm bailing on a sport route, it's because I already took several whippers on a bolt and if it didn't budge after that, then It's not just going to pop out when I lower off of it.

"Why not leave a bail biner/sling/quicklink"
     - Have you ever tried to leave a bail biner on a difficult, overhanging route?? I use the Firefly to bail on routes where I can't make any more upward progress - that usually means overhanging with minimal holds and pumped arms. Try switching your rope to a carabiner while hanging under a roof with arms that feel like jello. It's just not happening! If you can make that move, then you can probably finish the route.
     - Be honest, most of the gear on your harness is going to cost more than the $4 that I occasionally see quoted for a bail biner.
     - No one wants to have their route chalked full of ratty, old slings. Nobody wants their onsight to be wrecked by a rusted, old quick-link that's clogging up the hanger or an old bail biner that they don't know if they should trust. No body want to try and remove that gear so the next climber doesn't have to deal with it. The thought behind the Firefly is that you can safely bail off a wall without leaving a trace so the next climber can have an untainted experience on the route.

"It's not safe to be on an open carabiner or couldn't the Firefly remove the quickdraw off the bolt while you're still on it?"
     - UIAA (French Initials for "The International Climbing and Mountaineering Federation" which specifies the strengths for all your climbing gear) mandates that a carabiner be able to hold at least 7kN when the gate is open. a kilonewton is about 225 pounds, so 7kN translates to almost 1,600 pounds! Petzl's testing says that you don't even generate that much force in a typical factor 1 lead fall (which is an extreme scenario you should never find yourself in)! Suffice it to say that you won't run into any issues when you only use the Firefly and then weight the rope or lowering down. The exception would be if your carabiner is significantly damaged - in which case, why are you using it on the wall??
     - You don't even need to open the carabiner to install the Firefly, anyway. It comes with screws that allow it to be used without opening a carabiner gate.
     - In order to operate the Firefly to open and remove the quickdraw, both the rope and the firefly pull cord need to be used. If I had to guess, you would need around 20 pounds of force on the rope then, around 20 pounds on the pull cord. You would need to pull in a very controlled manner, unweighting one as you pull the other. and sometimes it takes a couple tries to get that pattern right - basically It's safe to say that it would be impossible to do that procedure on accident. It would also be impossible to open and rotate the carabiner while you are on the rope - if there's any more than ~30 pounds on the rope, nothing moves and the pullcord can't rotate the carabiner.
Basically, I'm saying it's beyond impossible to do that. I tried once, just bouncing around, up and off the wall, all while pulling the pullcord and trying to open the gate and remove the quickdraw I was on from the wall. I couldn't even get it to budge! If anyone does figure out a way to pull it off while on the rope, send me the video! I'm not sure it'll ever be done.

"It won't work if you aren't directly below the bolt"
     - I've used it around corners, off the sides, on overhanging and less-than-vertical walls, and haven't had any issues. No doubt you could find a route with just the right rock formation that would prevent the quickdraw from rotating, but I haven't seen that.

"Someone said I need 200 feet of parachute cord. That's bulky/awkward/heavy/not enough"
     - You only need a single strand of rope to trail down with you from your high point. Take a look at the walls you typically climb. My experience has been that they aren't typically rope-stretchers (they are rarely as long as half of your rope), and that i typically know if I can finish a route within the first 20 or 30 feet of the climb.
     - I generally use 275-lb test cord or "Half 550 cord to make it less bulky, but still plenty strong (if that breaks, then you and your buddy are hanging on it, and you're doing something wrong). Bundled up, it's about the same size as a single cam or quickdraw. Throw that on the back of your harness, and it'll never be in your way. Plus it weighs about a tenth of a quickdraw (Negligible)

"How do I know if it'll work on my quickdraws?"
     - It's really quite adjustable, the prototypes we've tested work on all of the normal and wire-gate carabiners we've seen. Unfortunately, we hadn't worked out all the bugs on wiregate carabiners when we shot the videos, so the newer version that accepts straight or wiregate carabiner gates isn't shown there. The only carabiners that I'm not sure about are Petzl's Ange S carabiners because, if I'm correct, the single wire on the gate is really thick? It's might fine, but I just haven't tried it myself, and it's not a particularly common design anyway.

Moral of the story is that the Firefly is a much easier and safer option for when you find yourself in a situation where you need to bail off a sport climb. It's opened a lot of doors, and solved a lot of headaches for climbers (including myself) who have either spent hours trying to bail off a route, or retrieve their gear safely, or put themselves in dangerous situations in an attempt to not leave anything on the wall, or leaving something terribly inconvenient on the wall (like a quicklink or bail biner). I'm glad my friend's Kickstarter campaign was funded. I think he's made a really innovative product and I think that it will help a lot of people!

Respectfully, you're wrong. This product is a joke, and should be treated as one.

IJMayer · · Guemes Island, WA · Joined Jan 2011 · Points: 350

i get that leaving quick links are not preferred, but why not clip the quick link with your draw on the way up, and do a community service and remove your draw and the quick link on the way down? is it because your quick draw will then be rotated 90 degrees the wrong way? that doesn't seem like that big of a deal to me as dog bones usually have at least a little bit of flex/rotation

MojoMonkey · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Jan 2009 · Points: 66
IJMayer wrote:

i get that leaving quick links are not preferred, but why not clip the quick link with your draw on the way up, and do a community service and remove your draw and the quick link on the way down? is it because your quick draw will then be rotated 90 degrees the wrong way? that doesn't seem like that big of a deal to me as dog bones usually have at least a little bit of flex/rotation

Not that discussion again... try one of the many threads on it...

sapiecha Sapiecha · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Sep 2013 · Points: 140

The problem here is... Bailing off a route safely is an important amalgamation of many skills. Knowing how to improvise gear, the rope, manage time if the sun is setting, stay safe, redundant... These are things a climber should get comfortable with in the relative safety of a single pitch crag where one can rap from the top, stick clip their way up, lower off the hanger, lower of a mallion, lower off a leaver biner, texas rope trick, down whip, etc... Honing these skills in situ prepares you for when you're in a enviroment where the stakes are much higher than leaving a biner behind. This device only reinforces the behavior of newer climbers not preparing themselves for outdoor climbing enough to stay safe, and just breeds lazy climbing. These are the people who "sport" climb for years and years, and then one day get ready to lower from an anchor, when their belayer thought they were going to rap, and plummet to the ground.

sapiecha Sapiecha · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Sep 2013 · Points: 140
IJMayer wrote:

i get that leaving quick links are not preferred, but why not clip the quick link with your draw on the way up, and do a community service and remove your draw and the quick link on the way down? is it because your quick draw will then be rotated 90 degrees the wrong way? that doesn't seem like that big of a deal to me as dog bones usually have at least a little bit of flex/rotation

Yeah quicklinks suck, and climbers should switch to leaving biners. But the inconvenience of sometimes having to deal with a frozen quicklink, does not outweigh the embarrassment of seeing someone use the Firefly.

Dennis Shaver · · Estes Park, CO · Joined May 2012 · Points: 0

I love finding booty including bail biners. I'll even climb a route I wouldn't have otherwise if I can spot something I can get. I've spent a significant amount of time trying to remove stuck nuts and cams for that matter... surprisingly rewarding when ya get it out. 

Sam Sala · · Denver, CO · Joined Oct 2013 · Points: 82

A most elegant solution in search of a problem.

Cron · · Maine / NH · Joined Oct 2009 · Points: 60
Alex Temus wrote:
     - Be honest, most of the gear on your harness is going to cost more than the $4 that I occasionally see quoted for a bail biner.

You be honest. The cost of a bail biner is exactly $0.00. The majority of folks in the thread probably booty way more jank biners every year than they leave. 

Andrew Rice · · Los Angeles, CA · Joined Jan 2016 · Points: 11

I'm a terrible climber and even I've bootied bail biners and quickdraws off sport routes. I'm always totally happy to find that because not only does it mean I'm actually a better climber than at least ONE OTHER PERSON, it's also always just fun to find free stuff.

Can't wait to find my first stuck QD with a Firefly still attached.

Josh Janes · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Jun 2001 · Points: 9,954

I look forward to bootying my first Firefly.

Jimmy Downhillinthesnow · · Fort Collins, CO / Seattle, WA · Joined Mar 2013 · Points: 10
Alex Temus wrote:

"Why not leave a bail biner/sling/quicklink"
     - Have you ever tried to leave a bail biner on a difficult, overhanging route?? I use the Firefly to bail on routes where I can't make any more upward progress - that usually means overhanging with minimal holds and pumped arms. Try switching your rope to a carabiner while hanging under a roof with arms that feel like jello. It's just not happening! If you can make that move, then you can probably finish the route.
   

Yes, I have. The hard part if you whip off an overhanging route is getting up to your last draw--which you would need to do to put the Gumby-fly on the draw anyway. Once you're there, all it takes is a couple quickdraws from your belay loop to the bolt, a little slack, pop the 'biner in, clip the rope, take up...voila. You are ready to bail. If you can climb hard enough to be on difficult, overhanging routes, something that simple should be in your bag of tricks. 

Again, the designer clearly put a lot of thought into this, and kudos to him for doing that. I hope he applies that same talent to a more serious problem.

Bryan K · · Las Vegas, NV · Joined Jul 2016 · Points: 509

I don't particularly see why everyone is so fussy about this thing.  Clearly it's not necessary for the problem it's trying to solve and there are already easy solutions to bailing, but it already met it's goal for funding, so obviously enough people feel it's valuable enough of a product.  So long as this product won't cause safety issues that result in people getting hurt, I don't see why there's a problem.  If you think it's stupid and not necessary, then don't buy it.  Pretty simple.  I won't buy it for that reason.  But saying it shouldn't be made at all just because it's not necessary goes against free market capitalism.  If that's the case, we don't need 100 different kinds of toothpaste on the shelf because they all clean your teeth, so we should just do what the Soviets did and have one kind of toothpaste in stores.

Also, the Firefly is like Einstein-level smart compared to this old gem:

https://www.mountainproject.com/forum/topic/112092436/leaning-to-climb-tradtionally-indoors

Now THERE is something that is pointless and dangerous.

Bryan K · · Las Vegas, NV · Joined Jul 2016 · Points: 509
Jake Jones wrote:

I wonder what happens if the pull cord gets snagged while the climber is being lowered off the draw.

I think someone already addressed that the device cannot open and flip the carbiner with your weight in the system.  If you can't unclip a draw by hand with your full body weight on it, then there's no way some 550 cord will be able to.  It will break before that happens.  If that was a concern, then absolutely this would be a terrible idea, but that has been addressed.  Most that would happen is the device gets stuck, you're out $50 bucks, plus there's a bunch of crap hanging on the wall.

Jon Frisby · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Feb 2013 · Points: 270
Matt Robinson wrote:

Seems to me like it would be lighter to just take the string with you.  When you get stuck just lower the string down, have someone tie the stickclip to it (yes, you have a stickclip if you are considering purchasing this), and then stick clip your way up the route.

The only decent thought to come from this thread is that it may be a good idea to keep a balled up wad of string in your pocket.

Guideline #1: Don't be a jerk.

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