1. you absolutely guarantee that everyone you climb with will never drop anyone for the rest of their climbing lives.

2. you climb with new people ... yet still guarantee the above ... how in the world can you "guarantee" it the first few times you climb with them and before they actually catch you on a fall ... sure you can take a test fall or two, and "train" em ... but guarantee that every single moment that there will never be a mess up is plain silly

if we could really guarantee that everyone else we have "faith" in can never fcuk up ... well the world would be a different place

heres something i find particularly relevant ... best wishes to mister powers...

...They were climbing a 5.10 route called Bypass on a crag called Highwire. They had reached the top, and Powers decided he wanted to rearrange an anchor. Then he downclimbed 15-20 feet to put in a directional anchor. When the rope slackened as he downclimbed, his belayer thought he was pulling up rope to rappel. She also thought she heard "Belay off." But he wasn't.
"It was just a bad position with regard to our ability to communicate," Powers said. "There's the river, there's the road (noise), and because of the overhang I'd just climbed over, we were not in visual contact, either. So by the time I asked for tension and leaned back on the rope, I had been taken off belay. I just leaned back and fell."...

..."It takes two people to make a mistake in climbing," Powers said.

..."It takes two people to make a mistake in climbing," Powers said.

Is this a troll, or some sort of Halloween prank? You don't seriously believe that do you?

The most competent belayers on the planet are still human, and none of them are exempt from our fallible human nature. None.

Yep.


Judgment. I only climb mulitpitch trad, usually 3-5 pitches at our local crag. A couple of time a year I'll take someone out and do a 5.7-.9 route and lead all the pitches with someone who has never climbed or belayed. I give them about ten minutes of practice hip belaying with a single, non-locking biner on the belay loop for the side of the rope going to the leader. In that time they learn how to brake, then hold me below a piece and lower, then hold a couple of lead falls and lower. I can usually tell in under two minutes if they are going to work out or not - if they don't, or I get the sense anywhere along the way in those ten minutes they aren't getting it - then we don't continue or climb. After that I have no hesitation leading the route with them if they did 'get it' to my satisfaction.


Again, I wouldn't climb if I couldn't make that judgment call and I've been making it successfully for close to four decades.


Well, some observations...

a) Power's partner wasn't belaying him at the time, she had taken him off belay - it was a communications failure, not a belaying failure, i.e. he wasn't dropped.

b) An unfamiliar partner (I believe that's what I read somewhere)

c) Lack of agreed protocol before leaving the ground

d) "Rearranging an anchor" without discussing it or communicating that the belayer

e) Failure to anchor while confirming with belayer prior to 'taking' to lower


Here I fundamentally disagree with Phil. Is that the case a lot of the time? Sure. Was that the case this time? Arguable. I'm old school and rope solo for at least half of all my climbing so my emphasis in climbing is personal responsibility - you leave the ground on the sharp end of the rope and you are wholly responsible for your safety. You pick the wrong partner, you fail to agree on protocols, you decide to do something unexpected when out of communication, and / or you fail to secure yourself in order to re-establish communication - then you have no one but yourself to blame. Should Phil's belayer have erred on the side of caution in the face of an uncertainty in communciation, sure, but it was Phil's responsibility to insure the communication, to have established the protocol upfront, or to secure himself having done that.

I'm also guessing Phil didn't become Exec-Dir of the AAC, President of the AMGA, or take up guiding as a career without being a highly social individual; if it was a stranger he had belay him then it would be interesting to know just what mental audit, if any, he went through to qualify the person as competent to belay him. But again, it wasn't a belaying accident per se, but rather a gross failure of communication and protocol.

================================


As I said, absolutely...


Fallibility is not an option when belaying competently. Period. Don't accept that it is. Case in point, a couple of years ago I passed out once while belaying a guy due to what turned out to be a transient health event, but in the course of about a minute that took, I still managed to tell my partner to get clipped into something, locked off the ATC solid, gripped the rope hard, and made a point of falling on the ATC and my hand as I faded out. Despite being passed out with an ATC, my partner still had to wait for some other guys to finish rapping, come over to me, roll me over, and pry the rope out of my hand in order to free the rope to come down. Bottom line is you have to be prepared to compensate when you have to, whenever and however you have to.

udgment. I only climb mulitpitch trad, usually 3-5 pitches at our local crag. A couple of time a year I'll take someone out and do a 5.7-.9 route and lead all the pitches with someone who has never climbed or belayed. I give them about ten minutes of practice hip belaying with a single, non-locking biner on the belay loop for the side of the rope going to the leader. In that time they learn how to brake, then hold me below a piece and lower, then hold a couple of lead falls and lower. I can usually tell in under two minutes if they are going to work out or not - if they don't, or I get the sense anywhere along the way in those ten minutes they aren't getting it - then we don't continue or climb. After that I have no hesitation leading the route with them if they did 'get it' to my satisfaction.

...Fallibility is not an option when belaying competently. Period. Don't accept that it is...

one can argue whether the above failure is really communication, "belaying", or something else ... mr powers seems to think it is belaying or part of it ... and i believe he [Powers] is in the best position to have known and judge

Healyj is 100% spot on here.

There are many skills to be a great belayer, but the only one that needs to be guaranteed is to hold the bloody rope.

If you cannot manage that 100% of the time, you are incompetent.

I climb with a lot of folks, young and old - all competent belayers or I wouldn't climb with them. Age and chance have nothing to do with it, only competence does.

I see so many crappy belayers, many of whom I know, and they climb with some of my climbing partners. But I will not climb with them. Nevertheless, none of them seem to find any difficulty getting partners. I suspect that folks like Bearbreeder, who think it's all a matter of chance, have no such qualms, or perhaps don't even notice some of the things I notice in a belay. I've seen several people get dropped, and I know lots of warning signs.

The only risk I see in my getting dropped is my *own* fallibility in judging new partners.

GO

Just keep it simple, I've always found that keeping things simple and performing them flawlessly are the best way to do things when climbing, complicating things that should be simple often times leads to failures, rather than making things simpler.

I'm double the weight of my wife, we've been climbing together for 18 years. The only device she's used to belay me as been an atc. We've top roped, and done multi pitch trad routes.

Teach her how to belay properly, and stay on easier routes until you are comfortable that she has belaying down pat (that goes for anyone that is new to belaying). Definately anchor her in!

Now if the real issue is that she says she's not comfortable belaying you, then give serious consideration to bringing an experienced climber to belay you.

... but to DENY it can ever happen to you ... thats bull

have to agree with bearbreeder. most belay practices are held with the rope from the belayer to the leader going through at least one anchored biner before the leader takes his/her test fall. how many times do belayers practice while sitting on a ledge up on a cliff with the leader falling before placing or clipping their first piece, i.e. falling directly against the belayer? the force generated in this scenario is not only in a direction which they have never practiced for (downwards), it also can be more than they've experienced before because there is no rope drag through that first biner. plus, in this direction, they don't have the advantage of any body weight to help hold the fall. even experienced "competent" belayers may be hard pressed to hold such a fall, especially if there is any slack whatsoever in the system. I was dropped by my experienced and competent belayer in such a situation. there is no such thing as 100% infallibility. another example is if you're climbing outside with double ropes and your belayer has only practiced belaying with single ropes. The required additional rope management can lead to a leader fall catching the belayer at a bad moment, while they're adjusting the slack in one rope or the other, tending to tangles etc. I was dropped once in a such a situation by an otherwise experienced and competent belayer.

to the original OP, if you are really concerned, another option is to use a petzl shunt as a belay backup. this can be very cumbersome to do (and I don't do this), but at least it will prevent the worst case scenario (belayer losing the rope completely, allowing the leader to ground out) and the shunt is also very useful when rapping multipitch and can be used as an ascender in a pinch etc. also the shunt can be used with double ropes, unlike the grigri. but as others have said, a belay backup is no substitute for good belay technique and practice catching falls.

... I was dropped by my experienced and competent belayer in such a situation. ... I was dropped once in a such a situation by an otherwise experienced and competent belayer.....

Two different belayers. Both women though-- coincidence of course.