The belay system should be considered a peak load limiting system, basically set up to eliminate loading directly onto the anchor.

Since the peak force is always absorbed by the top piece, that piece is always the most important because it precluded you shock loading the anchor.

Rethinking the roped safety system as a peak force limiting device is a a little counterintuitive, and is not so easy to fully explain in few words.

JL

You now seem to be implying that the belay anchor itself should be protected.

Jay

Some of us are old and when I was younger I basically didn't trust any anchor. If there was a decent stance I made damn sure I never loaded the anchor even during falls. Lots of time you ended up at a place to belay with just a nut or two at best and the options for an anchor sucked, so you relied on stancing, or a combination of stancing and whatever you were willing to load an anchor with. Hanging belays didn't leave you much of a choice, but even in those I tried to absorb as much of a fall as I possibly could through my body down to whatever small edges my feet were on.

John's point is likely due to the fact that in recent decades of climbing literature the focus has been more on anchors in isolation, rather than on as just a component of a roped system. And that's what a leader is constructing a piece at a time - a roped protection system with a belayer as the foundation of the system. The belayer, anchor, and the placements are designed to act in concert as a whole in the event of a fall. Appropriate anchoring and slinging are also integral to the optimal design of an effective roped protection system.

The 'system' aspect of what we do has always been underemphasised and overshadowed compared to the individual components of the system (belaying, anchors, and placing gear) and I've always thought that was a mistake.

The counterintuitive part is that if you are, say, at a place where you can only get in one super bombproof piece, you use that piece for the Jesus Nut and drop down below and belay from whatever you can get (including the Jesus Nut). The physics (load limiting) of using the "system" like this, as opposed to slamming onto the anchor directly, are much better in this set up, which again, looks at the roped safety system AS a system, not a bunch of disparate parts that you try and and make as bombproof as possible. You still emphasize bombproof primary placements, but you have to keep everything off the anchor if at all possible.

The 'system' aspect of what we do has always been underemphasised and overshadowed compared to the individual components of the system (belaying, anchors, and placing gear) and I've always thought that was a mistake.

well i am getting older and i guess after 21 years on the rock,my bones are getting tired,i do enjoy talking about climbing with like minded people so here i am, this is the first time for me writting on a forum and i found this subject interesting,after reading all of the content and deciding to start with this ,i will share some of my experiences and no doubt come up with somthing that some self proclaimed expert will have a pissing contest with;)

well in my experiences , i have had this debate in personne with many over the years,

the final agreement we could all come to "given that it was a strait forward crack "

to reduce the danger of a serious fall factor was to place protection immediatly after leaving the anchor and close to the the highest protection in the anchor,

but not clipping the anchor as your first point,

our reasoning for this was

that most 3 point anchors with natural protection with a cordelette for example is intended to hold you and your second in a situation (depending on load directions )for

an/ abseil for retreat /or rescue,
hauling for rescue of a disabled second ,
in normal belaying of the second and leader

a fall factor 2 from above should be tolerated by the belay anchor ,,,

that to call it a "belay anchor" the the system used the philosophy that if any single point in the anchor was to pull out its strenght would still exceed the ultimate breaking strenght of the rope used and this exceeds that of the occasional fall factor 2 immediatly after leaving the belay,

all of this depends on your ability to reasonably forsee all of the risks and anticipate directions of force while building an anchor for belay. and of course it helps to have tap tested the rock with a hammer or steel carabiner listening for changes in pitch or tone which may indicate weakness under the surface,

by clipping the anchor as your first point,we decided that this alone (unless a load tested bolt anchor)could destroy the total integrity of this system by pulling the belayer in a direction to affect the equalization of the anchor and or pulling the protection off its intended direction of load ,,,

at the same time as load two climbers in a high fall factor situation onto one piece of protection,,,this could then be the first failure in the system,now leaving you with two compromised points of protection still yet to load and with the protection poorly seated and not in its intended position as before it is possible for a total failure of the belay anchor system,,,

if one more point fails you have one left and imagine if your leader is now below you unconcious with the rack ,,

and you are both hanging on one compromised point,,,

you only have the two points of protection hanging in the loose ends of the cordelette,,,

this is as scary as it gets and all the while you are holding the rope in a probably burnt hand while trying to come to terms with what just happend ,

NOW is the time to think about how to get out of this situation ,can you think?can you save the two of you first then save your climbing partner who has only 5 OR 10 MINUTES approx before suspension trauma kills him ,,,

can you get to him in time to relieve the blood flow restrictions the harness is putting on him can you at least get him upright so that he may gain conciousness?

that was just to give you an example of why i don't personally use my belay anchor for the first point (unless it is a multidirectional bolt at 22kn x 2 )



back to the jesus nut, to reduce the danger of a serious fall factor was to place protection immediatly after leaving the anchor and close to the the highest protection in the anchor,,,

and another a little higher when the climber is at waste height with the last point of protection keeping the following protection close this way and gradually spacing them out afterwards ...

now this all depends on your decisions and where you climb and every thing depends on the experience of the first accentionist and his or her willingness to protect the climb for future generations or at least give the correct advise in the guidebook ,,,

i have no doubt that the situation in the mind of the origins of this subject have great merit as to the idea of preplacing the jesus nut in a bombproof placement in a diffucult climb is surely better for a fall at the end of the pitch but if it is possible to climb to that point why not build the anchor there and bring the second up to there on toprope instead of downclimbing to make a belay anchor,,,

in my experience i have come to the end of my rope and tried to build an anchor with only one suitable point and down climbed to gain more rope and a better crack for a solid belay anchor whilst leaving that point up there and by chance my climbing partner got a free point preplaced by me,,,

but after all these years i will say it all depends on your situation as to what you choose...

thanks for the thinking.

climb safe

steve

Are you Majid?

not sure what you mean by majid?

is it some new slang word i haven't heard yet?

the moral of my storie is ,my primary concern at every belay anchor is the simple question of can i rescue if somthing goes bad?

it is not enough just to catch a falling partner ,that is important yes but without a plan for rescues on every multipitch or alpine route or at least two climbers thinking about escape as much as the summit you can bet your in the shit bigtime when or if somthing goes wrong,

i never doubt my partners abilty to get me out of the shit,,,

he or she can also be confident in my abilty to climb responsibly and be able to in most situations efficiantly get them out of the shit...

remember up there you are always in the shit it is only the depth that varies and you should be ok to make the right decisions,,,

or just climb with your head in the clouds

or you could find that there is a lot of fun to be had in the proccess practicing some techniques with you partner for example a simple hauling rescue or a tendem rappel to escape a route with an unconcious partner this is all part of that system of protection

like with all bags of tricks its better to have it and not need it ,,,than to need it and not have it,,,

steve

ps: i am using a pain in my arse french keyboard,
but its good to see that traditional climbing has anything to do with puntuation or grammar, i guess that old tradition of writing comes in handy when your not climbing

Getting back to trad multi-pitch after the winter and thinking some more about the options discussed above, I realized that with option 3, you need to consider ahead of time whether you will be swapping leads or if the same leader will keep on leading. If swapping, the previous leader will need to back-clip his high anchor before downclimbing back to the belay stance so the next leader will find it correctly clipped on his lead. I’m thinking that this is not a big problem since the previous leader will not climb above that high pro (which is when back-clipping is an issue).

Finally, although I already felt that it would make sense for this high anchor to be bombproof (eg double equalized pros) to back-stop the belay chain above the belay anchor, I hadn’t considered the implications of this high anchor functioning as a top-rope anchor for the partner as he seconds the previous pitch and starts leading the next one. In addition to being bombproof, it probably should also have the same kind of security as a regular top-rope anchor, ie using two biners with opposed gates (which also makes the back-clipping even less of an issue).

Stéphane

I’m not too crazy about doing that redirect through just a QD. Like I said before, this is essentially a top-roping set-up and at least some of the usual TR precautions ought to be taken.

Well, say...the QD comes apart as the second takes a fall

I red most of the post and I have one question: how many time is it more dangerous to place the "jesus nut" at the end of the pitch, instead of when the leader start the pitch?

How many quickdraws have you seen come apart?

This is still pretty new to me but, based on past experience, it's the belay ledge condition that's going to be the most restrictive. Running out of rope or gear isn't all that frequent but belay positions will quite often be unsuitable to climb above at the end of the previous pitch with no spotter and with a lot of stretch in the rope. Still, it's an option to keep in mind because, when the conditions are right, I prefer it to the other two (although I'm certainly not willing to forgo a good belay ledge just to be able to implement it)

Not a single one ever. I take it that you have never seen one come apart either and that, on the strength of that knowledge, you set up all your top-ropes with single QDs as anchors?

I used "come apart" but I could have used "fail" or any other term. I am not particularly interested in discussing the different ways in which a QD used as a TR anchor might go kablooie and how unlikely each way might be. Bottom line is we don't normally use single QDs as TR anchors and there's plenty of good reasons for that.

Well, say the first clip of the next pitch is about 3m from the "floor level" of the belay position and the QD comes apart as the second takes a fall, he will instantly drop about 4 m + the stretch in the rope. Since the rope will be at its stretchiest at the beginning of the pitch, you basically have a situation where, for the first 5 m or so of the pitch your QD redirect must not fail under any circumstance. Of course, with a proper TR that applies to the entire route, which is definitely a tougher standard than just the first 5 m, but I’m not sure that your second would appreciate the difference if he were to take a 5 m groundfall. Of course, if your second’s 4+ m fall happened further up (less stretch higher up), he could still hit something else and, if it happened near the top, it would result in a fairly high fall factor. So, yes, these are also the kinds of things that can happen in leader falls, on simple QDs, etc. but to impose those risks on a second when a tiny bit of extra gear and work could have avoided it doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Clipping the first pro of the next pitch is all about taking advantage of the greater safety factors at the end of a pitch to make the beginning of the next pitch safer for the next leader. That greater safety should definitely not come at the expense of the second.

This is still pretty new to me but, based on past experience, it's the belay ledge condition that's going to be the most restrictive. Running out of rope or gear isn't all that frequent but belay positions will quite often be unsuitable to climb above at the end of the previous pitch with no spotter and with a lot of stretch in the rope. Still, it's an option to keep in mind because, when the conditions are right, I prefer it to the other two (although I'm certainly not willing to forgo a good belay ledge just to be able to implement it)