I've been doing a bit of solo aiding this summer, and this post and Kate's comments are very enlightening and right-on. Helps me to sort things out in my own mind now and recognize all the consequences of my actions and benefits, ie continuous loop- tagging. I've been using a steel biner for my grigri, but is it really neccessary to use a steel biner for the back up knot as my assumption has been that it was just to hold the knot in case the grigri failed to catch and the knot would wedge in the grigri. I never thought the back up knot would need to withstand the total force of the fall if using a steel biner for the grigri. As the grigri would never detonate,... would it?