Should the leader clip the belay anchor?

Discussion Topic

Return to Forum List

This thread has been locked

Messages 161 - 180 of total 184 in this topic

<< First | < Previous | Show All | Next > | Last >>

healyje

Trad climber

Portland, Oregon

Dec 13, 2008 - 09:14pm PT

To be honest, I'm more from the Edisonian school of engineering. And while the 'models' may set some useful constraints and boundaries around the problem space, I personally don't find them nearly as informative as simply catching these sorts of falls. Once you've done that a couple of times you get a pretty intrinsic feel for the forces involved which does inform in some significant ways that you then factor such a possibility into every belay.

For me that means I insert my body into the system to act as the principal buffer and cushion between a falling leader and my anchor if worst comes to worst. I have no doubt whatsoever about my ability to hold and control such falls directly off my harness, however punishing, and an anchor would have to be extremely stout before I'd hazard clipping it to spare myself the abuse.

Without the substantial dynamics inherent in having a human body directly in-line in the system, or when redirected through the anchor, I have no doubt the models get more accurate - and scary as far as I'm concerned. From my experience going au naturale, everything from sacrificial stancing, to rotating with the fall, to simply being 'crunched' hard relieves considerable amounts of force involved in [unfortunate] real world 'tests' - lots of little dynamics add up in very beneficial ways. But to make it all work, you really have to be actively working the small stuff, be hyper vigilant, and have your belay and stance pretty 'detailed' out on minute-by-minute basis.

In the end, I suspect this is definitely a case of 'to each his or her own' and probably no small amount of perceptions, adrenaline, and FUD influence the decision-making as well.

WBraun

climber

Dec 13, 2008 - 09:35pm PT

Largo -- "Perhaps it's true - I never rule out the possibility that I'm totally full of sh#t - but it is strictly fantastic if so."

Ah so .... I know I'm full of sh#t, I take one every morning.

Now ... when second yells up to me and asks "Is belay Bomber?" while I'm anchored to the usual tiny twig, I yell back down ....

BOMBER man ......

Tarbuster

climber

right here, right now

Dec 13, 2008 - 09:46pm PT

Should the leader clip the belay anchor?
Sure, as standard procedure, unless the anchor is crap, then the leader should instead clip the next solid piece of protection.

If the next piece of protection isn't solid, then the leader should not clip that either (WTF??!!??)

Or sometimes I don't clip the anchor if I'm not concerned that I might fall right away and if I also see that clipping the anchor is just going to cause unnecessary drag and implement a poor feed.

Lots of times I don't clip the anchor because I have determined that's not where the action is going to be.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

madbolter1

Big Wall climber

Walla Walla, WA

Dec 14, 2008 - 04:20am PT

John, a class act, as always. Thanks. Such is the difficulty with "reading" people based upon a brief snippet of verbiage. My bad that I took it wrong. Thanks.

rgold, you too. Much appreciated.

Regarding the six-foot "launch," I take that to be a good thing, as it is akin to soloing with the anchor-end tied to a haul bag in the hope of introducing some "dynamic" action during a fall. I've gotta believe that launching a belayer absorbs a LOT of force and mitigates some of that 2 to 1 force on the power point.

But, I'm with tarbuster in the sense of just "having a story and sticking to it." Could be crap, but having been the launchee, all I can say is that I would rather have held the falls that way than onto my harness. I honestly can't imagine how horrendous that would have been. The forces involved are indescribable.

Oh, and: modern climbing ropes are BEYOND marvels of engineering! Kudos to those engineers!

Steve Grossman

Trad climber

Seattle, WA

Sep 19, 2009 - 05:47pm PT

Overblown And Humorless Blather Bump!!! QED

Quintessentially Egotistical Dumbass that you are at the end of each sentence. QED

Does your course in logic enable you to cram two greenhorns, a half ton of crap and thirty nine days into anything resembling good or noble style? LOL

RyanD

climber

Squamish

Jan 26, 2015 - 09:53am PT

Oh my.

rgold

Trad climber

Poughkeepsie, NY

Topic Author's Reply - Jan 26, 2015 - 05:34pm PT

My goodness! We were young once.

Majid_S

Mountain climber

Karkoekstan

Jan 26, 2015 - 08:50pm PT

If we do some serious FF2 drop test with live person on most trad anchors, I would wounder how many drops turn in to a Taco incident report.

Lasti

Trad climber

Budapest

Jan 27, 2015 - 07:36am PT

Interesting read, a lot of very good points by some great minds with both the theoretical knowledge and real-life experience to get into a massive debate.

Clint wrote on the first page, following up on Tomcat and others:

To reiterate what others have said, you can drastically lengthen the belayer's connection to the anchor, when there is hard climbing immediately above the belay, and clip the belay with a screamer/load limiter. This is what Kelly and Bruce did when trying to lead p2 of Exodus on Middle Cathedral this past summer. Bruce connected to the anchor with about 20 feet of rope, so he hung well below the bolts.

This has been standard practice on German and Czech sandstone for ages. These places often have hanging belays (no deep knee bend) of a single ringbolt (a big one, but still...) and no "Jesus nut" option for a ways off the anchor.

The question remains: how much rope between the belayer and the anchor would mitigate the pulley effect?

Lasti

sDawg

climber

Jan 27, 2015 - 01:38pm PT

Interesting physics lesson and no argument here with your logic. Personally, I like to believe my anchors are at least stronger than the average belayer's back and as a standard-issue 60kg belayer, I prefer upwards to downwards forces on my hips when catching a flyer 30-50% heavier than I am. I'd bet that when most climbers clip the anchor or a first piece from the belay, they're thinking more about keeping their belayer uninjured than preventing anchor failure.

Gnome Ofthe Diabase

climber

Out Of Bed

Jan 27, 2015 - 05:20pm PT

The group reached no real concensus, but that what Clint said and was backed up,anadotaly,
was that by extending the belay, a far enough distance to provide the climber to opertunistically take advantage of the belay anchors as the first protection point, one could minimize the forces of the long fall on the short/no pro from the belay (yikes, just trying to summarize!)

Largo, opinined, that Under some circumstances he would choose to be anchored to a single point in the system and try to use the rest of a questionable anchor as pro
to reduce the forces that are generated in a fall that borders on a factor 2 force fall.

Largo' statement includes the modified 'would try to hold the fall off my waist'(a down ward pull off his waist)- this can be the hard part due to the chaotic nature of the belayer reaction to the forces,ie slammed into or up to the anchor. . .

I hope that, that is the right answer, Jebus

jstan

climber

Jan 27, 2015 - 08:28pm PT

We have been exchanging perceptions here. How about looking at some data?

Gritstone climbers have published their techniques allowing use of marginal pro. They set the second up with their tie in above the belayer so that when there is a fall the belayer is pendulumed a long distance up into the air. As long as their tie in acts as a pendulum their mass can be made effectively less than their full weight. A dynamic belay where they can actually tune the belayer's effective mass to meet the requirements of the situation. All a matter of the angle. Now some measurements I made in 1971.

I dropped a 165# bag of shale forty feet in free fall, measured the total force on the top piece in two situations. One where the belay rope was tied directly to a big tree trunk and the second where I gave a waist belay and could be whipped around a couple of feet. When my motion provided dynamic response I measured a peak force of 500# on the top piece. With the rope tied directly to the tree I measured 1000#.

rgold

Trad climber

Poughkeepsie, NY

Topic Author's Reply - Jan 27, 2015 - 08:30pm PT

There is no consensus. As with many things it depends, and in this case there are two aspects to depending. One aspect includes the objective considerations such as

How good is the anchor?

How close is the belayer to the anchor?

A second aspect has to do with the climber's approach to and philosophy about risk management. I'm not going to list specific items here to try to keep a lid on contention, but a reading of the thread reveals some genuine differences in how people think about these things.

Petzl and other belay-device manufacturers include warnings in their manuals that indicate that their devices cannot be counted on to stop a factor-2 fall from a waist belay. One of the reasons is that one has to know to use a different braking hand position, but another reason is that the amount of friction supplied by the device, especially with thin slippery ropes, may be inadequate. These manufacturers tend to assume the existence of bolted belays, as is more common in Europe than in this country, although we are catching up.

I've caught a UIAA-level fall (i.e. factor 1.7 ish) with a Petzl Reverso II on the harness. Well, not directly on the harness but rather clipped to the rope loop, as some Brits are fond of doing. (See http://www.ukclimbing.com/articles/page.php?id=1129. I learned it from Chris Harmston on rec.climbing many years ago.) The tie-in was fully tensioned so that the load went directly to the anchor, mediated by the stretch in the tie-in and a small amount of resistance from the legs. The catch was on a single strand of 8.5mm half rope and yet there was enough friction for me to hold the fall. I don't remember the rope slipping but had gloves on and so might not have noticed a small amount of slip, which probably happened.

I thought that the new group of assisted locking devices (not the Grigri) might be the answer to the problem of inadequate friction for high loads. But Jim Titt has done some tests that suggest the assisted locking devices have a substantial fall-off in braking power as the load goes up and may well be worse than, say, an ATC-XP. Anyone interested in those results can consult the Mountain Project donnybrook on the subject, but you'll need to be able to tolerate a very high level of static. http://www.mountainproject.com/v/edelrid-megajul-belay-device/109133730__1

There is no question that extending the belayer's tie-in will allow the anchor to be clipped yet loaded less critically in case a fall happens. In many ordinary climbing situations, it would make sense to build the belay anchor much higher than the belay ledge so that the leader could clip it and contemplate falling on it without producing maximal loads. This is utterly removed from the conventional approach to belay stance construction but, as I said, makes a lot of sense. Craig Connally suggests it for some situations in his vastly under-appreciated book The Mountaineering Handbook: Modern Tools and Techniques That Will Take You to the Top. http://www.amazon.com/The-Mountaineering-Handbook-Modern-Techniques/dp/0071430105, but I've seen no evidence that such an option is on the general climbing world's radar.

As for John's comments about lifting the belayer, there is little question that this provides lower loads than a totally static belay. But in a belay stance situation with the rope clipped through the anchor, lifting the belayer can have a host of adverse effects, as mentioned earlier in the thread. Tests by the Italian Alpine Club suggest that, as far as load reduction goes, just a little amount of lifting (I think less than a meter) contributes to load reduction on the top piece, after which there is no further advantage. So the message would be, if a down-anchor is employed, to not tension it but allow for some lifting (but not enough to let the belay collide with the clipped main anchor).

It is interesting in this regard that European practice---especially in Italy and Germany---seems to be evolving in the direction of belays for the leader directly on the anchor (assumed to be the typical two-bolt installation of course). The somewhat higher anchor loads are offset by a kindler gentler experience for the belayer. Belaying the leader directly off the anchor seems to be greeted in this country by shock, disbelief, and scorn, even when climbs are equipped with bolted anchors that would be up to the task. But then we still have absurd discussion about "equalizing" such anchors...

Lorenzo

Trad climber

Oregon

Jan 28, 2015 - 10:45am PT

thought that the new group of assisted locking devices (not the Grigri) might be the answer to the problem of inadequate friction for high loads. But Jim Titt has done some tests that suggest the assisted locking devices have a substantial fall-off in braking power as the load goes up and may well be worse than, say, an ATC-XP. Anyone interested in those results can consult the Mountain Project donnybrook on the subject, but you'll need to be able to tolerate a very high level of static. http://www.mountainproject.com/v/edelrid-megajul-belay-device/109133730__1

Interesting link. Halfway through I was thinking " this is three hours of my life I'll never get back" but there is value there.

I'm a little puzzled by one thing. With the new generation of floss ropes one would think there would be a bit more attention paid to how devices worked with them. For multi pitch leading my partner and I have both preferred half/double ropes for decades. I have 8.2 ropes, my partner owns 7.8. We both use the ATC-XP, but are open to other solutions. Devices that only handle one rope aren't even in consideration and most devices aren't even offered as suitable for ropes that small.
I'm a bit puzzled why Jim Titt didn't even try the Microjul device In those size ranges but insisted on staying with the Megajul. ( I haven't yet tried either) Clearly, the larger device is not the device design best suited to them. The Microjul is designed for smaller ropes, and looks to be the only device that claims to work with ropes smaller than 7.7 mm. The best I can come up with is he owned one and not the other.

rgold

Trad climber

Poughkeepsie, NY

Topic Author's Reply - Jan 28, 2015 - 02:01pm PT

I fully sympathize with the waste of your life.

Those tests addressed the lower limit claimed by the manufacturer. Another device (like the microjul) might work better, but the point was to understand the manufacturer's claims for a given device.

Don Paul

Big Wall climber

Denver, Colorado

Jan 28, 2015 - 02:35pm PT

I remember climbing with someone who clipped the anchor, then had me (the belayer) unclip it after he clipped his first piece. Must have already known all this.

Glad to see other people climbing on double ropes. I like them too but thought they were out of style.