The belay test and the modern American climbing gym
climbing.com
climbing.com
Climbers still complain about the belay test, especially older climbers who cut their teeth outdoors and same late to the gym scene. But most gym accidents involving top roping or lead climbing are going to come down to a failed safety check or a mistake on the part of the belayer. And a failed safety check is at least partially a belayer failure.
Experience level doesn't necessarily correlate with safe technique. Beginners can be highly conscious of the consequences of a fall, where more experienced climbers can get complacent and sloppy when the negative consequences fail to materialize.
For example: the coach of an internationally competitive athlete dropped his climber on a grigri because he was casually chatting with someone on the ground and failed to control the brake strand.
This effect in some fields is called "Normalisation of Deviance". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalization_of_deviance
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAxY-BBSlGc
[2] https://www.verticalendeavors.com/auto-belays-pros-and-cons/
(my climbing venue monitors and scolds you if you aren't paying attention while belaying, ymmv)
What that guy did on the video looks absolutely ridiculous from first second. Zero visual contact, too much slack (so that he doesn't have to look up), very little safety even without actual accident. When in practice there should be 100% visual contact, or at least 95% and fully covering all non-easy parts. It strains the neck massively but for that there are those cheap periscope glasses, I got mine for 10 bucks on aliexpress and they work fine enough for 10 years.
The basic technique means rope is 100% held by either hand at correct angle regardless what you need to do apart from holding it.
That said, I’ve been caught (and caught others) while half asleep on big walls with Grigris when no one could see each other.
The hardest part with a gri gri (imo) is early on when doing sport or gym belaying when there is a lot of switching between taking in and paying out slack.
To be honest I've never seen a belaying accident. They appear to want to keep it that way.
Once you start trusting the rope and the belay, you better be sure you can trust that rope, and your partner.
What are you referencing?
It would be better to measure the accident rate in a more controlled setting, like accidents per gym route climbed. I can only surmise on what the results here would be. I don’t doubt that experienced climbers get complacent, but new climbers also are new to it and likely lack some knowledge to keep things safe.
I suspect that with experienced climbers, they are probably climbing way more frequently than inexperienced climbers (which you would need to account for to suggest causation), and also doing more dangerous routes. New climbers are less likely to do alpine routes where you encounter climbing when fatigued/sleep deprived, weather concerns, rock fall hazards, complicated descents, etc. And brand new climbers are hardly ever climbing trad routes, especially with marginal protection.
Side note, but as someone who nerds out on reading accident reports, climbing accidents are hardly ever caused the gear failing. Even old ropes damaged by the sun are super strong, and it’s typically quite obvious when gear is wearing out.
The coach in the video has some of the worst belay technique I have ever seen. Unfortunately, this is somewhat common among older climbers who learned using the first generation Grigri in the 90s. Petzl's recommended technique back then is very safe (essentially using the Grigri like an ATC), but does not allow giving slack quickly. This made it completely useless for any kind of ambitious sports climbing, and people started coming up with often extremely dangerous workarounds. Petzl has upgraded their recommendations a long time ago, but some people are resistant to change ("it never failed for me"...) Hopefully this video can convince at least some of them to finally adopt the proper technique.
In Austria, the gyms I went to you just had to sign a form that you know how to climb top-rope, lead, and how to belay.
Most of the rest of the world goes ‘meh, don’t be so obviously dumb then’ and kicks the lawsuits out.
What does that have to do with US gyms requiring belay tests, which is a bunch of steps that doesn't involve "extensive warning in writing".
Which requires due diligence.
Which means there is some guarantee that people belaying at the facility meet some basic standard of skill, so that people are not being dropped all the time and then turning around and suing the facility for negligent supervision/creating a dangerous environment.
It lowers insurance bills. If you don't let anyone climb without having done a belay test and putting that paper in a cabinet for 10+ years, then you can get cheaper insurance.
It's the same reason why some gun ranges won't let random people in without joining up and going through a safety intro thing - cheaper insurance.
In the U.S., for climbing gyms, part of the standard is a belay test. In the article, Mayfield talks about trying to get the industry self-regulating before the government steps in. This is basically how that works: industry founders or leaders establish some procedures for safety, prove them out over time, then insurance companies implicitly adopt them and everyone else follows.
There is a second test for lead but most people take a class and get the lead card during the class.
However, when lead belaying, you need to pay out rope, which means disengaging the auto brake. If you do this buy holding the handle and the climber falls at the wrong time, it's easy to react by just holding everything tighter, at which point you're holding the grigri open, at which point the auto brake isn't doing anything. By contrast with an ATC or other tube-type device you never have to touch the belay device and so you always can keep your brake hand in the brake position, so if the climber falls, your reflex action -- assuming you have practiced -- should be to pull harder with your brake hand, thus arresting the fall.
Aside from belay devices, some other practices I've seen gyms do to try make indoor climbing safer:
- Captive grigris on top rope so that you (1) have to use a grigri and (2) can't screw up putting them on and off. - High friction toprope anchors (e.g., wrapped several times around a pipe) so that even with no belay device at all there is still some friction. - Requiring people to tie in with a trace eight rather than a double bowline on the theory that the trace eight is harder to screw up and easier to check.
See this video, around the 10 minute mark where there’s several examples of the GriGri not locking at all: https://youtu.be/We-nxljgnw4?t=605
This is perhaps an even greater issue than what you pointed out because people misunderstand the GriGri a lot, and assume it will always catch them even if you aren’t holding the rope. It won’t.
It is not just "legal liability" which is Musk speak for "won't always work but I want you to pay as if it did".
Maybe still SAR, of course.
I always carried a belay knife and some extra webbing, and used it more than once. A couple times I didn’t need the knife.
I wonder if it has something to do with the angle, as it's pretty uncommon to have the climbing strand going straight up from the belayer.
All that said, I still prefer to be belayed with a grigri.
What the hell are they teaching kids these days. I've NEVER needed to hold the handle on a grigri unless I'm trying to lower something. The correct technique is hold the cam down with your thumb leaving three to four fingers in contact with the rope at all time. The left hand is used to pull rope through the girgri to give rope to the climber, the climber already has to pull up a bunch of rope through a maze of carabiners and don't need the extra work of trying to pull it through a grigri.
I learned to belay at Vertical World in 2005 and would fail Vertical World's belay test today, for multiple reasons, if I used the same method they themselves taught me!
Meanwhile, as you point out, no test can determine whether or not a person will be paying attention during an actual climb.
I’ve also been failed in seemingly spurious details that I was subsequently passed on with different testers at several gyms.
Meanwhile, I very frequently see people belaying in manners where their climber would hit the ground if they fell (usually the first 3-4 bolts up). The difference is, this is much harder for gym staff to notice and correct. Furthermore, I’m sure most of these climbers are capable of using better technique and do so when taking a belay test, but then get complacent afterwards.
I once almost failed a belay test because I did not know that gym’s particular trick for “counting strands” to prove the figure 8 was tied correctly. I just know what a correct knot looks like after decades of tying them. Ultimately I asked them to check with a manager, who passed me.
That said, I’ve also seen experienced climbers with terrible belay technique; catching them with a modern test would seem like a good thing to me.
It didn't happen often, but there were a number of people who had over a decade of experience, who didn't realize they were leaving the climber vulnerable to a catastrophic fall in some of their transitions. Those people had just never had anyone fall at that point in their belaying.
They were momentarily embarrassed, but to their credit everyone I had to call out about technique appreciated not being given a pass because of their years of experience.
Pretty sure there were no major injuries thankfully.
Also, use of belay gloves can help a lot and I think is more emphasized in Europe than the US.
At two meters tall and 93kg, by necessity I own an Ohm (by Edelrid), which buys an extra 20kg or so of margin.
If it's a planned descent, usually you say "take" or similar to have the belayer hold the rope securely and then you ask to "lower" so the belayer lowers you in a controlled fashion.
(If you're a beginner you should still take the 1 hour class first and you will have to pass a belay test. And yes, if you can make the schedule work out with a friend so can belay each other, that's even more fun)
But for easy grades and cca beginners, if you lack a good partner for whatever reason, they are great IMHO.
Having uncontrolled (but slow) descents onto people’s heads probably also doesn’t help.
So from my experience I would say at least Google what are the common auto belay manufacturers and only use gyms that have them. True Blue and Perfect Decent are the only auto belays I will touch now.
update: they use trueblue
I don't live in the states so it's not as dramatic legally as you may imagine.
I'm really averse to the autobelay because I can't feel the "pull" of a human belayer, so this is a nightmare scenario for me.
Then again, I'm sure that the autobelay is safer than the average human, even so, except I really trust my belayer.
Climbing is unique among sports in that you have to trust a random person to keep you alive through the most common action within the sport (falling)
Given its rising popularity, the sport should be safer by default.
I downclimbed, not the route just whatever holds were easiest, and left. I’d known this person for a few months and was convinced they knew basic safety. I was always kind of anal about safety, with everyone, so it wasn’t a vibe I was giving off.
That was my last time on a rope. Strictly bouldering now.
* Duh, you don't stop belaying mid-climb.
* And why? Was it because something was uncomfortable (and somehow they thought fixing that was more important than your safety?) or because they suddenly thought the belay device was...not clipped into the harness right to begin with or something? Was it right when you cross-checked them prior to climbing?
* And in saying "one sec" rather than a clear "belay off", they were minimizing the event at additional risk to you. No integrity there.
I guess the only good thing I can say is that even if the belay device wasn't clipped into the harness, as long as the rope was wound through it properly, someone could still yank on the brake side and stop you. But obviously not take slack as you continued to climb, and from what you're describing I doubt they had their hand on the brake side as they futzed with the harness or whatever. So pretty weak comfort overall.
I had the opposite experience once: while climbing in a park, my belayer sung a song that went something like "you're off belay, you're off belay, if you fall and die it's not my fault because you're off belay". I was pissed but what you're describing is a million times worse. My belayer was clearly being a dick but not so much that he actually stopped belaying and risked my life. Lyrics aside, he always used correct technique from pre checks through the whole climb, had practiced stopping someone from the ground if they lost their grip while repelling, came with a thoughtfully stocked first-aid kit, set up the climb properly with redundant webbing at the top, etc.
This was my experience trying to create a climbing tech product in the last few years.
The market for climbing is built through reputation, tradition, & thus a visceral rejection of new ideas & methods. This is very interesting, since many climbers work in forward-thinking tech companies.
Companies often resist growth to stay small. There are dirty secrets and bad blood among many competitors.
Amazing sport, hard fought market.
Maybe moving fast and breaking things is not always appropriate.
Every climber I meet is lovely, but there is your standard sports equipment elitism at play as well, not to be confused with the very real brand loyalism that comes out of trusting something with your life.
I think if you are bringing a product into the climbing space you would do well to lead with a low risk product for brand reputation, something like a hangboard or training equipment perhaps.
The parts about the belay test are burned into my brain as a result. I had no idea that the industry had its roots in Silicon Valley!
I wasn't allowed to climb there until I was 16. I cut my teeth as a climber traversing back and forth on a cobbled bridge abutment local climbers would train on before the U of A wall went up.
The second Gym to open in my home city, Vertically inclined, in 1994, was designed by Christian Griffith. It is still in operation today. Griffith also designed my original chalkbag, which I bought with allowance money and still have. I'm sentimental about that chalkbag.
Around that time a local climber was dabbling around with hold making and went on to found Teknick climbing hold company, which set off a trend towards the big fat holds you see in climbing gyms today. Teknik is now a venerable old company and the second biggest supplier of holds in the world. He was a way better climber than me back then, and he still is.
The story ends in 2000 when Ironworks "represented the next generation of climbing gyms", but the trends have continued. IW is now old and grungy (I say as a complement) compared to the modern gyms targeted towards even more casual users.
Peter would also show up at Indian Rock sometimes, a popular outdoor climbing spot in Berkeley. He was an incredibly good climber and a friendly guy to boot. It took me a fair number of years to realize that the outgoing guy at Indian Rock was actually the founder of City Rock!
He's one of those who seems to get a lot of satisfaction from building something cool and inspiring people, without much regard for money and traditional status. We could use more people like that.
You were right the first time. Climbing is a largely constrained problem solving exercise with binary outcomes (you either did the route or didn't) and a built-in level-up style progression in the grading system. (Today I did my fist V2! etc...) You can do it entirely on your own, at your own time, in your own pace and it's not really possible to "lose" at climbing[1], you get unlimited attempts to try and figure it out. You can, for outdoor climbs, try the climb, fail, train for 6 months and retry the climb to succeed. In short it's almost designed to be addictive to coder types, but all that came before the indoor walls, not after.
Source: I climb obsessively. They got me good.
[1] - competition climbing aside, obviously
You can add free soloing to the list as well.
You literally _cannot_ make the obnoxious video player go away because they are hijacking right click.
It should not be this difficult to disable code execution.
Hacker news never claimed to be exclusively about digital technology, or electronic technology.
This is an article telling the story of someone passionate about creating something new and innovative. Seems pretty aligned to me?
Plus its properly great and fulfilling activity that very few sports can deliver (IMHO), not requiring massive investment or some ridiculously long and difficult trips to just get to it (gyms, if you want to climb in Patagonia or Antarctic then its a different game altogether).