please remind me, what page in Freedom is your belay technique on?

You really prove your point quite well by stating you'd drop a total stranger on purpose (last time I checked the results of this can be quite bad), and resorting to name calling because I said I wouldn't let someone belay me who was using a very non-standard belay technique.

"You're right though, I should make the effort to be less of a "gumby" - please remind me, what page in Freedom is your belay technique on? or in any book, ever published that mentions climbing?

If I remember correctly every drawn picture has the person either belaying in this way or indeterminably. BTW- also I think they may be back-clipped in every drawing as well.

I'm a noob, though climbing longer then you, regardless, even as the original re-starter of this new thread of flame (no hard feelings nonapplicable :) ) I think you and I both need to STFU and listen to what our betters have to say.

You're probably a shitty engineer too.

Curt

Insults - the next best thing to a sound argument.

Ridicule is the only weapon that can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them.

I'm not speaking for either curt or dingus, but my impressions of this thread so far are:

-Older, experienced climbers like me don't like being told our belay method is "incompetant, unsafe, ignorant", or any other such adjectives, especially without any objective support, and with considerable anecdotal support of their effectiveness.

-Older, experienced trad climbers have generally faced more adversity than young sporties. If I drop my belay/rappel device, or leave it at home, I can still safely go climbing. I learned to climb with less equipment, and can still do so when necessary.

-If I tear a pulley, or even dislocate a shoulder, I can still certainly rappel, can probably still competantly belay, and have a pretty fair chance at self-rescue, without needing to call magic sorbet to take 12 hours to haul my ass out.

I didn't come on here to tell anybody else how to belay. I came on to defend my (objectively, so far) 100% safe method of belaying.

Insults - the next best thing to a sound argument.

...You name it, I want to climb it. If you're experienced, and don't mind taking someone newer trad climbing (who will listen and learn), hit me up...

Just because you have gotten away with something for a long time doesn't make it correct.

It's like you haven't even read this thread. I have spent the last 5 pages applying critical thought to this problem.

Whether you like it or not has no relation to its truth value.


Which is completely irrelevant to whether your let-go-with-the-brake-hand technique is safe. Since the technique not only flies in the face of how climbers have been taught to belay for generations, common sense, and logic, which puts the onus to prove your method is safe squarely on you, not us.


What the fuck does that have to do with anything? Are you so insecure about your belaying that you have to concoct one irrelevant story after another about things that you might actually be good at?


And that statement right there proves you are either lying or deluded. There is no foolproof way to belay.

Jay

Perhaps you should actually pay attention to what you wrote?

Curt

The king of the strawman returns! I didn't call my method "foolproof". I said it is objectively 100% safe so far, which is true.

I''ve already told you sliding a grip is not releasing, and you have conceded that re-gripping is faster than locking off.

You SAYING it's a release, does not make it so. Prove my methods unsafe, or STFU.

Fuck you. I don't use straw man arguments ever.

Are you so insecure about your belaying that you have to concoct one irrelevant story after another about things that you might actually be good at?

I've already told you that I don't believe it is possible to consistently slide your brake hand up the rope with a firm enough grip without holding the free end of the rope with your non-brake hand.

And you have consistently come to the wrong conclusions. Valid logic applied to false premises.

Jay

I stand by what I wrote...

I stand by what I wrote. So far your responses to me have been name calling, insults, and a few posts up, actually making fun of the fact that I would probably wear a helmet while climbing outside (you are correct). If I found a climbing mentor who happened to be that demeaning, negative, and immature, I would not be climbing with them for long. The fact that you scoured the few posts I've made on here for "ammunition" to respond with...I don't really know how to comment, but give me a break.

You don't "believe"? Fine. Prove it.

God. I so hope this all ends with video footage of someone trying to validate the relative merits of this method.

Who owns a video camera?

Oh man, thanks. That's so rich. I really DID laugh out loud, although I never type the abbreviation.

Here is you, from the same post:


The argument is not about my insecurity, as you tried to assert in strawman fashion.

The issue is safety. My methods have proven safe, whether in sunshine, with frozen ropes, lightning, hypothermia, snow, sleet, rain, hail, at night, bit by biting ants, or with poison ivy on the belay ledge.

I have never dropped anyone, in a 30 + year climbing career. Insecurity is no problem here. I know my ways work. And I'm still learning.

As I said, prove my ways unsafe, and I'll gladly change.

I've already told you that I don't believe it is possible to consistently slide your brake hand up the rope with a firm enough grip without holding the free end of the rope with your non-brake hand.

You don't "believe"? Fine. Prove it.

Well, we could probably put this issue to rest empirically, if anyone had the energy and desire to do so. Simply substitute sandbags tossed from the top of a climb, at random intervals, while several belayers use the belay technique in question to arrest the fall of the sandbags. I already know what the result will be, but the experiment may serve to calm down jt512.

Curt

Fuck off.


You obviously do not know what a straw man argument is. In fact, I'm not even sure you know the difference between an argument and a question.


30 years of climbing, or 30 years since you first climbed?

And the fact that you haven't dropped anyone, doesn't mean that your method has "proven safe."


Well, appeals to logic, common sense, and accepted practice haven't been effective, and no reliable safety data exists; so, why don't you just shut the fuck up and keep doing what you're doing on your fabulous moderate trad lines, instead of keep lying to us about all the falls you've caught—in light of the fact that one active sport climber will catch more falls in a matter of months than you and Curt put together have in your whole careers.



No matter how many times you write "prove it," the onus to "prove it" will still be on you, retard.

Jay

Jay,

I don't know how you got so "out-to-lunch" on this topic. I have now suggested that we test the belay technique in question and see what happens. I guarantee you I will safely arrest the fall of all the sandbags using the belay technique under discussion, but I will do this anyway--just to humor you.

If you feel my proposal is not sufficient, then the onus is clearly on you to suggest an experiment that would be meaningful. Absent any measurable data, your opinion (no matter how strongly stated) is simply a baseless opinion.

Curt

What you were taught has never, as far as I am aware, been considered a valid belay technique. It is true that you see a lot of "veterans" use it. Whether or not they could be counted on to catch a fall is debatable. What is not debatable is that they should not have passed this technique on to you, and you should not pass it on to other beginners.

The test you describe would not be convincing, and may do more harm than good, since naive readers may not understand the limitations of the study. For one thing, you cannot possibly generate a large enough sample size. The event of dropping a climber would likely be rare under any belay technique, so you would need a huge sample size of drops to even see a single event, never mind enough to make meaningful comparisons with a control group (read on). Third, you ought to have a control group that uses an accepted belay method for comparison, because the question, really, is whether your method is at least as safe as accepted methods. Fourth, Hawthorne effect: Subjects will know they are being studied, and will almost certainly be on their best belay behavior, whereas they may not be in actual practice. Fifth, external validity: Real belaying involves taking up and letting out slack at irregular, unpredictable intervals. I don't see how you can replicate that using sandbags, and it would likely be an error to assume that the results of a sandbag study would translate to the more complex task of real-life belaying.

So, not only is there no real data to back up your claims, collecting valid, convincing data may prove impracticable.

Jay

...Well, appeals to logic, common sense, and accepted practice haven't been effective, and no reliable safety data exists; so, why don't you just shut the fuck up and keep doing what you're doing on your fabulous moderate trad lines, instead of keep lying to us about all the falls you've caught—in light of the fact that one active sport climber will catch more falls in a matter of months than you and Curt put together have in your whole careers...