sorry I should haven included these details; the belayer was holding the rope with his break hand according to my friend who was sitting next to him

sorry I should haven included these details; the belayer was holding the rope with his break hand according to my friend who was sitting next to him and we did thread the gri-gri correctly. The rope was a newer 10.2 mm and the gri-gri is about a year old.

every time you lower someone with a grigri the cam is disengaged. You disengage the cam everytime you lower, so what you experienced is what every retard with a grigri has ever experienced!!! We are talking about complete grigri failure when the cam is COMPLETELY DISENGAGED. Go try lowering someone with the black lever completely pulled back. they will hit the ground "very fast" . Or just don't worry about any of this rhetoric and stick to your atc.

were grigris born out of the sport climbing revolution? were they created as a convenience for belayers to relax a little while their partner 'worked out the moves' (therefore not burning out the belayer before his turn)? or, created as an added rest to route setters as partners drilled on toprope, or worked on creating the route in the first place (an oftentimes tedious process for both climber and belayer).

Really doesn't matter, it a really good device that works if it is use properly. In my years of climbing this is not the first time I heard of a climber being dropped by a bad belay. Don't blame the Gri-gri, blame the belayer!

i took an unnecessary 10'+ fall recently on a sport climb (i was only 1/2 a move above the bolt) because of a gri-gri. my belayer has over 20 years of climbing experience AND got a rope burn during the arrest. i fell long enough to think, 'hey, am i going to stop falling'?

two things in my case:

-thin rope (9.something mm, i think it's on the low end of what is acceptable for a grigri)

-my belayer has been using a grigri for years now and his instict to arrest the fall as you would with an ATC probably didn't kick in quickly (hence the ropeburn).

has anyone used the cinch belay device by trango, which accepts 9-11mm ropes?

-kelly.

and no, it wasn't bobd! :)

ok, first off, let me say, i am brand spanking new to climbing. I hope no ones offended by this. Anyway, i got into gym climbing with a friend of mine (Also brand new) and the gym we use has top ropes with Gri Gri belay devices. Anyway, this is how I use it when my friend is climbing. As they go up I pull the slack out with my left hand and pull the rope through the gri gri with my right hand. the right hand pulls the rope straight up and its done to ensure that the right hand is never off the rope. now, when lowering, I bring the rope down and pull the level back, then I literally have to feed rope to lower, if i release the rope with the lever open, my friend goes no where. not that ive done that, you can just feel the it on the tension though. Onto my question. How safe/unsafe is this? and whats going on in relation to what happened in this thread. Please be kind, i dont want to be scared out of rockclimbing.com quite yet...
Thanks,
Dan

Although I know the gri-gri was loaded correctly he says it never engaged and that the rope just burnt through his hands.

if you just hold the cam open all the way and try to rely on the friction of the "brake plate" then you or the person you are lowering will hit the ground.

To lower a partner without effort, the gri gri remains in place on your harness as in belaying the leader. Grip the free end of the rope firmly then use the handle to unlock the rope. Brakeing is affected by loosening or tightening the grip on the hand on the free end of the rope.

When rapping or lowering most people let up on the handle of the grigri when they are going to fast. This is because a grigri provides minimal friction when the cam is not engaged...(snip)...last time I checked using a grigri for lead belaying always requires one to take his/her brakehand off the rope. Grigris are not dangerous, Stupid MF's who don't properly use them are.

Sometimes if you are holding the lead end of the rope and applying enough friction to it while using a gri gri it won't engage properly

10mm is minimal requirement for a grigri. Your fault. Return to start, don't cash the money.

to address the question posed earlier about grigris being convenient for establishing routes (in which the poster incorrectly used the term route setter, which is a gym term), it is still no excuse for giving an inattentive belay.

if you drop your partner it's your fault -- not the device's. it is a basic tenet of climbing and there is no arguing the point.

Technical specifications :
For ropes of diameters from 10 to 11 mm (9.7 mm accepted).
225 g.

You could weld the cam fully open on a Gri-gri and I could belay somebody perfectly safely with it.

now, when lowering, I bring the rope down and pull the level back, then I literally have to feed rope to lower, if i release the rope with the lever open, my friend goes no where.

{snip} ...Actually, you are mistaken.... ...Please go try this before you post another dangerous reply... {snip}

Firstly, in no way whatsoever was my reply dangerous.

A gri-gri that fails to cam is merely transformed into a tube type belay device. It may impose less friction, but it still operates in the same fashion as would an ATC.

That is why you ALWAYS keep your brake hand on the line (of course it also encourages a properly functioning gri-gri to engage the rope during a fall).

You could weld the cam fully open on a Gri-gri and I could belay somebody perfectly safely with it. As has been mentioned before, this merely turns the Gri-gri (in essence) into a tube belay device like an ATC.

Curt

No it doesn't. There's much less friction. I bet if a 150 lb climber took a 10' fall from 20' up a route you'd end up with 3rd degree rope burn in the palm of your hand and they'd be crawling back to the car.

Of course we are all speculating, and I'd love to see tests of the holding power of an open grigri.

UB

No it doesn't. There's much less friction. I bet if a 150 lb climber took a 10' fall from 20' up a route you'd end up with 3rd degree rope burn in the palm of your hand and they'd be crawling back to the car.

Of course we are all speculating, and I'd love to see tests of the holding power of an open grigri.

UB

I think he might have been pinching the gri-gri preventing it from locking off or something.

Gotta agree with Jay on this. Although you might be able to hold a top rope fall or safely lower someone, a fully unengaged gri-gri has considerably less friction than an ATC (as Jay described). I would be very surprised if someone could consistently hold anything more than the smallest leader fall, and then only if the belayer reacted before the fall (as in the leader said something before he/she came off). I have no data, of course.

Once the leader has fallen, if you do not have a tight grip on the brake hand, the rope will zip through your hand so fast you'll never recover. This is why it is SOOOO neccessary to keep your brake hand in good contact with the rope and locked off as much (often) as possible. By good contact I mean fully around the rope, none of that 2 finger s--t I see more and more often.

The brake hand should be locked off quickly when you are not taking in or paying out rope.


TS

I didn't say the open Gri-gri was identical to a tube belay device, hence my use of the words "in essence" in my previous quote. I still stand by my comment above. I have caught heavier climbers on more severe falls (many times) than your proposed example above, using a waist belay and nobody got hurt.

And I'm not sure what you mean by testing the "holding power" of an open Gri-gri, as I suspect there is none. The holding power comes from the sharp bend created in the rope where it emerges from the Gri-gri and runs to the belayer's hand--if he/she is belaying properly.

get yerself a real hunk of pig-iron -- say a kong figure-8?

it's a belay device, it's a rap device ... it's a partner alignment device. :wink:

after the plethora of "belayer drops partner using gri gri" and Gri gri drops climber " etc,
im staying well away from them. screw new fangled, ill take and use ATC, BD pyramid, etc before i get my life dangling from some overrated french foo foo piece a crap like that

Do you have a little French-phobia? As stated before, Gri-gri work fine when used right, I know the belayer in this case wasn't working properly.

I fall asleep all the time belaying with a gri-gri at 2am
while my partner is halfway through an 8 hour lead, I
even had to yell at him not to fall because I was taking
a leak and didn't want to dribble. The point is that it is
always user error. And about all the comments regarding
attentive belayers and such. . . when you self-belay during
a solo aid climb how could you ever get anything done with
one hand on the rope?

I have caught heavier climbers on more severe falls (many times) than your proposed example above, using a waist belay and nobody got hurt.

Curt, in 1978 I led the roof pitch of Birdie Party, got over the roof, ran it out about 15 feet and tried to put a nut in. Hardie Truesdale was belaying me by around his waist. I asked for slack, he thought I wanted tension, I came flying off and took a least a fifty-footer. I remember to this day day the sheer look of terror on his face as I went flying by. Hardie like the good belayer he was, caught my fall with a waist belay. We both laughed out asses off when we both realized what just happened! I'll take a good belayer over a gri-gri any-day.

Wait. He pulled you off the rock and you call him a "good belayer?"

Jay, the guy caught a fifty-footer on his waist. That's a good belayer.

I also use a gri gri with a 10.5 mm rope and it works great, a pal of mine has a 10.2mm and when I used the gri gri on that, I found that the cam only engages at the absolute extreme end just before it would not work anymore (hope this makes sence), I found that one really has to concentrate on your belaying when you use such a thin rope cause the rope runs quite abit before it actually stops causing rope burn.

I have a Gri-Gri that pretty much sits in the garage. I've never had a problem with it but prefere an ATC. An ATC just feels like more control and like "real climbing' not just whatever is most convineint.

I've also noticed belayers pay attention more when using and ATC.

Sorry to tack this on. I climb with a dude who passed out while climbing last year. He no longer leads but he does toprope. He still belays but now with a GriGri. I guess based on this thread that this is unsafe. Thought please?

Of course you will not be able to be lowered either, which means down climbing.

A gri-gri is designed to be a hands free belay if necessary (meaning you are still belaywed if you fall and your belayer does not have a hold of the device!!!!).

people, the simple fact is that this crop of so-called "auto-locking" belay devices has spawned a lazy breed of belayer; a belayer who allows himself to be lulled into the mindset that all that is required of him is to act as balast; that the whiz-bang device will do all the thinking for him.

with the possible exception of a massive stroke, or perhaps rupturing a major vessel coming out of your heart, there is no excuse for dropping your leader.

Once, I had someone decked 10' in a gym while i was belaying him with a grigri.
He was much heavier than me and I was handing the handle with only one finger... when the ropes accelerated, it was too late for me to react, and the guy (I had never climbed with hime before, nore after!) hit the ground...

So now I take the brake with 3 or 4 fingers, and it's more efficient.

Something else with the grigri : I'm so light and the grigri blocks so strongly that very often the rope is blocked but I leave the ground and goes up 1 or 2' while the climber goes down...

^^anybody have more info on that? that is incredibly scary.

Is this what you meant by "that"?

From me: Maybe I'm just old school or just a little off_route, but to me SIMPLICITY = SAFETY. I use a Stich plate.

Although I haven't read all of the posts on this thread the majority want to crucify the belayer for taking his brake hand off. They weren't following the petzl directions.

Well, aren't we all high and mighty. Despite the recommendations from petzl. To effectively use a gri-gri on hard sport-climbs, the belayer must take their brake hand off and slightly squeeze the device. Personally, I wouldn't want someone to belay me who kept their brake hand on at all times. I would get hosed at the clip.