Me too. Same year, in fact. What should have been at most a 20-foot fall, ended up being about 60 feet with rope slipping through the device, and the climber came to a stop not more than 3 feet off the deck.

I have never trusted the Cinch on account of these occasional inexplicable and unreproducible incidents.

Jay

repost from couple years back:

Love the Cinch for belaying. However, like all mechanical things, they wear. My friend Stan Miller, who probably uses his Cinch as much or more than anyone on this board, has shared his method of replacing the Dowel Pin that is the main wear point. Allowing the Dowel pin to get too low will allow faster wear on the body. As Stan is not just a better climber, but much smarter than me, his replacement went much better. So I'll share Stans routine on this.




I figured I'd just grab our little press at work and use the new dowel pin to replace the old without doing anything to the existing jig. This is called laziness. My son had jigged up some PDFE for a job, which I took about 3 seconds to blow out. Dohh. Furthermore, as it wasn't straight, I actually blew a few thousands of the edge of the Cinch where the rope will be

Tore the jig out and hammered the wood in half with a hammer and a screwdriver, then used the PDFE to support the Cinch.
Out with the old and in with the new.


Cheapo press.
5/16 x 3/4 Dowel pin
Wear reading glasses, not safety glasses so you can see what you are doing.

I have extra dowel pins if you want to try this yourself, ask me for one if you see me out and about. You can easily get a 5/16" x 3/4" long dowel pin at any hardware store as well.

Back on track. What I haven't been able to correlate is what kind of grip/strength reduction is achieved in the Cinch at what level of wear. Certainly there is some, in fact, mine would not grip well rappelling a single rope if it was a thinner one (and had a slick dry coating applied too). So I could see a worn dowel pin and a brand new thin dry coated rope being a bad combo to hold a whipper. You would most certainly get the rope running through the device and zipping through your hands, and if you were not wearing gloves, it would be very painful, I don't care what your skill level of belaying was.

Give us the full Paul Harvey and let us know: "the rest of the story, Good day".

Me too, and yet the same year again - 2011. I was linking two pitches at Smith rocks where what should have been a 15' fall turned into me flying past 8 bolts before I stopped. Needless to say I stopped climbing with my belayer that very moment. I left the draws up and walked back to the car.

However, the reason why I was dropped was because my belayer was holding the cam open as I fell instead of holding the rope as she should have been doing. Regardless of what device you use, if you are not actually holding the rope, dont expect much to happen.

My version of hip belay is done with the rope from the leader going through a single non-locking biner on the harness and then the rope travels back around my hips. The rope path rides below the top point of your hip bones by about an inch and a half. In the case of a fall, your brake hand basically plunges to your upper inner thigh (butt of palm first, palm turned out). With that setup, holding a lead fall is plenty solid due to the friction of both hips.

In the scenario we're discussing the bends through the autoblocking device substitutes for some, but not all, of one hip's worth of friction. But in this case you don't brake around your hip because it's not tight enough a radious. Instead, you brake across the top of your upper thigh just below your butt cheek. You pick up about 160-170 degrees of wrap over the tighter radius around your thigh.

In a fall, rather than plunging your hand below your crotch in front as you do with a hip belay, you do close to the same, only behind you, while at the same time rotating your body ninety degrees or so towards the side of your brake hand and leaning back and bracing hard against the foot now pointing at the leader.

All of those features of the belay have to happen at the same time - the braking behind the thigh, the turn to the brake hand side, and the lean back and bracing against the now front foot. Also, if, how, and where you flake the rope can make it harder or easier to execute it as well; I tend to flake the rope out well to my brake hand side and slightly behind me.

Me too, and yet the same year again - 2011. I was linking two pitches at Smith rocks where what should have been a 15' fall turned into me flying past 8 bolts before I stopped. Needless to say I stopped climbing with my belayer that very moment. I left the draws up and walked back to the car.

Just a note that a friend who is quite accomplished was just following two linked pitches on the full length of a skinny '70 and fell about fifteen feet above the anchor. The surprising amount of rope stretch, even with a 'good' belay', resulted in a somewhat unexpected fall length and a broken ankle. Sounds like if you have a full skinny 70 out and a low crux, then the belay needs to be tighter than what would be otherwise be considered normal.

Just a note that a friend who is quite accomplished was just following two linked pitches on the full length of a skinny '70 and fell about fifteen feet above the anchor. The surprising amount of rope stretch, even with a 'good' belay', resulted in a somewhat unexpected fall length and a broken ankle. Sounds like if you have a full skinny 70 out and a low crux, then the belay needs to be tighter than what would be otherwise be considered normal.

What has always bugged me about the Cinch is, unlike the Grigri, there is evidence of an unknown failure mode: reported cases of unsafe amounts of rope slippage that could not be explained by misuse, and that Trango could not replicate.

The comment you quoted should be attributed to USNavy, not me.

What reported cases? .... I cannot possibly fathom anyway the device could fail to lock if the there is sufficient resistance on the brake end of the rope and the cam is free to move.

What reported cases? Is it possible these reported cases of an unknown failure mode are actually just instances of the belayer failing to properly grip the brake strand and prevent inadvertent jaming of the cam open by means of a second hand or the rock pressing on the cam? If you look at the Cinch it is pretty easy to understand how the device functions, you dont need to be an engineer to understand it. The basic design is fairly simple and foolproof. I cannot possibly fathom anyway the device could fail to lock if the there is sufficient resistance on the brake end of the rope and the cam is free to move. The device functions the same way as the GriGri. Drag on the brake strand initiates the cam, which pinches the rope. Unless there is something restricting the movement of the cam, it is not physically possible for the cam to fail to close if there is drag on the brake strand. So I dont see how the device could fail to lock if used in accordance with the manufacturer's instructions. I can, however, see how it could fail to lock if the user fails to provide drag on the brake strand.

Sorry about that, was on my iPhone at the time which is usually less than ideal for forum posting.