5 Ways to Belay
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- Опубліковано 2 жов 2024
- AMGA Certified Rock Instructor Erik Kramer-Webb shows 5 ways to belay a climber on toprope. At the end of the video (3:07) he shows a very unsafe method. Never belay this way because the brake hand slides up the rope without a substitute brake hand. www.californiaclimbingschool.com
Awesome video i did a tope rope course at my gym. The guy was telling me to pull the break side all the way up to my chin which was too much slack for me as a belayer which meant if my climber fell he was screwed
Yikes! Was this guy taller than you?
@@CaliforniaClimbingSchool the climber that I was blamed for was taller than me. But the instructor of the course was about my height if I'm 5 7 and when he kept telling me to do that I was like that's too much slack which means is my brake hands not going to be ready in case my Climber Falls which he did luckily enough I have had some experience Blaine so I pulled both of the hands on to the break and stop this fall and I kind of felt like the instructor of the this top rope course I took for my local gym didn't really know what he was talking about. And it's like when we were tying in he was telling me that a stopper knot on your Figure 8 is not necessary and I was like dude what if the Figure 8 knot fails you have to have a stopper knot just in case it's like at the end of the Rope you have to tie it just in case if the Rope slides through your hand
@@seasonti8312 I agree. In fact it is unusual to find a climbing gym that requires a knot on the end of the rope, which leads to accidents on real rock! And there are lots of folks who are teaching belaying at gyms who are completely unqualified to do so!
@@CaliforniaClimbingSchool Agreed 100%a friend of mine has been doing it for years. He has climbed Mt Hood 6 times the grand teton plus all the mountains in Oregon. i doubt this guy at the gym has ever climbed a mountain or above 200 feet or 300.
I’ve always used the 2nd to last one you showed. It’s a bit more effort but I just like having both hands on the bottom part of the rope.
I would encourage you to learn the PBUS as your go-to alternate method. If you ever have to do a higher volume of belaying it might be nice on your shoulders.
What's the name for the second method?
Is there anything dangerous about it compared to the PBUS (with reaching under).
Reaching under looks way more cumbersome.
I call it a pbus variation. It’s safe, fast and less effort. Just make sure you learn the original pbus so you pass your gym belay test. Keep in mind belay standards do vary.
It seems there is little good concrete evidence that the pbus is superior to the sss method. Do you actually have this? It seems in both methods the time the break hand is above the braking plane is approximately the same. The real question is, under what conditions can a belayer safely lock off when the climber falls when the break hand is above the braking plane of the device? For top roping it is actually more important that the belayer watch the climber and is prepared to move to a locking position at any moment rather than that they think the climber is safe because of their belay technique or method. Also the point of hand position (thumb up or down or out) increasing strength of belay is dubious. I’m confident that novice belayers could hold significant falls in either orientation- given that the intention to lock off is well trained. I’m sad to see that few belay videos emphasize this.
I’d like to offer a reference which is a bit old-school but actually describes the real principles and mechanics of belaying. That is ‘freedom of the hills’ by the mountaineers. Thanks for the video. 🙏🏻
All of your points are good. Freedom of the Hills was a huge influence when I got into mountaineering and still ranks among the best resources out there. sss does the job. Paying attention to the climber is crucial, as you said. My intent is to provide widely accepted techniques so climbers can team up with one another and be on the same page. As norms change, I intend to update these videos to reflect current mainstream thought among the guiding community. The AMGA/IFMGA is currently the biggest influence on my guiding techniques.
@@CaliforniaClimbingSchool Thanks for the reply, grateful you take the time to look at these! I’m also working now to teach new climbers belaying (using pbus not surprisingly! as it’s accepted in North America). Just was trying to understand the shift in technique. Do you have a reference from AMGA or others that may be helpful that you mentioned? Thanks!
SSS has been around for decades and is perfectly safe if you learn how to do it correctly. PBUS came about because so many newbies were brought up in climbing gyms with GriGris which they believed were better than ATCs because they have moving parts and are mechanical. The solution to people not believing in the old way is not to dumb it down for them but to teach them properly. I'll not bow down to personal injury lawyers who know jack about climbing as to my choice of methods of climbing. Even with GriGris you still have to keep your eyes on the climber, pay attention to what you're doing, and keep your hand on the brake strand just like any other belay method. You shouldn't be listening to your tunes on your latest electronic gadget.
I hear what you're saying. This is a very exciting time in climbing. Compared to the field of medicine, climbing is a relatively new field. Now that our sport has exploded in size we are entering an age of innovation. More minds are working on technique and gear improvements and look for better ways to do things in the coming decade. SSS will always be useful and I will never forget it. I find all 5 of these methods useful in different situations. Just from the standpoint of repetitive motion injury prevention, I like to use a variety of methods. It takes 5 minutes to learn PBUS, and adding it to your repertoire is a plus. I find grigris to be extremely helpful in certain situations, and other situations I prefer a plate/plaquette device and other environments I prefer a hip belay. For me it's all situational.
So there's the Pull-Break-Under-Slide, (plus some hand-over-hand variations like V-to-knee 1-2-3), the Slip-Slap-Slide with hand-up and hand-down variations, a Pull-Brake-switch-brake-hand method, the up-down-slide-slide waterfall method, and the unsafe Pull-Brake-Slide method. I think I learned Slip-Slap-Slide method with a hip belay, and with a carabiner-brake-hip-belay, but for use with a tube or grigri-like device, SSS seems as unsafe as the unsafe Pull-Brake-Slide method. What makes SSS better than the unsafe one? The speed?
What is the advantage of slip slap slide? None, really. I don't think anyone teaches it anymore. It evolved out of the hip belay, as you experienced. It is faster than the PBUS but it's not that fast. Switching brake hands is faster.
Speed. It applies to any belay device including hip belaying which you should know for when you drop your precious GriGri. PBUS seems to only apply to taking in on a toprope; if it applies to paying out rope I'd love to see a demo.
Any idea what name is used to refer to the penultimate method shown in the video, i.e. just shrugging the rope through the belay device with both hands together?
I’ve learned it as up-down-slide-slide
Recently realized that I utilize the hand switch method, is that a variation of the PBUS or a different technique all together? I am generally curious because there were some concerned individuals in my training class when I was demonstrating my technique.
The hand switch is unique. It is not a variation on the PBUS because switching brake hands is a radical departure from always locking off with the same hand. I picked it up from other guides. It is a survival technique as a guide when a fast climber gets ahead of you and you have to speed up to catch up and your shoulders are on fire because you are guiding 22 days in a month sometimes. I've seen dozens of guides belay this way but never seen it officially taught in a training. When I used to guide for Bob Gaines he and I agreed it's a great method to know as a guide, but too advanced for most recreational climbers. The risk is if someone gets confused about which hand to lock off with at the moment of a fall.
I use a variation of the slip, slap, slide method. My break side of the rope is closest to me, not away from me. I also belay palm down, not palm up. A gym instructor said that it is safe, just tougher, but I've been doing it so long, that anything else is super awkward. The term he used was that my belay was upside down. I could not figure out what he meant for 10 minutes. His terminology made no sense. This video helped me figure out the difference, but I'm still not sure why my method is and incorrect one?
Your belay method could be fine, just unusual. Assuming it is strong I would still advise learning the PBUS because it is so commonly taught and recognized. That way you won't get funny looks and will generally make life easier for you at the crags and gyms. Practice the PBUS for 20 minutes and you will have it down for life plus you will never forget your method either. The more belay methods you know the easier belaying becomes.
@@CaliforniaClimbingSchool thanks for your reply. I appreciate it.
Great video.
Im a little confused why the end method of sliding your hand up the dead rope is not allowed? Surely as long as they dont open their hand, they still have hold of the dead rope? Appreciate the other methods are safer, but i would still see this as ok to do? Im always learning so would be good to get your thoughts.
I think what happened is too many people got dropped who weren't using a substitute brake hand while sliding the primary brake up the rope. If the fall comes right at the moment you are sliding the brake hand up you could lose control depending on the relative weight of the climber and belayer. The method you describe is taught by some. It is fast and easy, I will give you that. I have done it on sections of the climb where the climber is on lower angled terrain and sped up to the point I got behind on the belay.
If you're doing it right SSS is perfectly safe. PBUS is the common core version of belaying for people who can't be bothered with learning the same method used since body belaying was the only option.
Thank you for the video