Flipping the brake side of the rope across your hip, and holding it beside or almost behind you was the way I was taught to descend someone with a Grigri. The device does provide friction, but you should NEVER become dependant on it. I've never thought it was that difficult, and I don't know why you would have to let go of the brake side of the rope!

They teach you to take your hand off of the rope and grab the slack, putting it behind you and doing a sort of hybrid body belay with a grigri.

My second question is, why the hell do they anchor the grigris to the ground?

Is it really safer?

Is it normal for the grigri to be slightly below hip height?

Are there any solutions to my problem.

That's the way that makes the most sense to me and the way I see everyone in videos do it. At this gym, they teach you to flip the brake side behind your back so it wraps around your body half way so it's tight across your back and provides friction that way. The real problem is fucking around with all of the slack to get it behind you in the first place. Then you have to reconfigure your legs around all of the slack laying on the floor.

It will look like this attached image:

[image]http://img199.imageshack.us/img199/6176/fr5i.png[/image]

Just because the gri-gris are anchored to the floor as a default, doesn't mean that you cannot take them off the anchor, place the biner on your belay loop, belay the climber, and then, when you are done, remove the gri-gri and the biner from your harness and anchor it back to the floor anchor.

I am guessing that it is done that way so there is a gri-gri at every station, and the gym patrons don't have to provide their own belay devices, nor do they walk away with gym gri-gris by accident.

I have only seen this sort of setup on topropes, in places where they have a lot of young/lightweight kids belaying. So for them it is probably positioned just right, so they can clip the biner to their harness without unclipping it from the floor anchor, and are anchored to the floor AND also belaying from their harness.

It is not a good setup, and the lowering method sounds pretty screwy.

Thanks for your reply but you're wrong. There is no biner. There is a quicklink attached to the grigri with webbing going from the quicklink to two eyelets in the floor.

I understand what you're saying. It's a stupid setup, I know. I doubt a kid at a birthday party is going to be climbing 5.11 all of a sudden. They have the same setup on all of the routes, not just the ones resembling ladders.

Props to bear for posting the petzl documentation and to the OP, as a beginner, for posting the question.

Nothing you've described is remotely normal and is probably some misguided effort by the liability insurance morons to dumb down belaying and make you "safe".

Your Grigri or ATC belongs on the belay loop of your harness attached with a suitable locking carabiner. The ground anchor is unnecessary and useless unless you are significantly lighter than your partner, and should only be used to anchor yourself down in those circumstances.

A Grigri in the hands of a beginner can result in dropped climbers due to "whiskey throttle", but this risk should be mitigated through proper instruction, testing, and certification - not a damn hip belay.

-end of rant-

You might want to find another gym.

Nothing you've described is remotely normal and is probably some misguided effort by the liability insurance morons to dumb down belaying and make you "safe".

Thanks for your reply but you're wrong. There is no biner. There is a quicklink attached to the grigri with webbing going from the quicklink to two eyelets in the floor.

I understand what you're saying. It's a stupid setup, I know. I doubt a kid at a birthday party is going to be climbing 5.11 all of a sudden. They have the same setup on all of the routes, not just the ones resembling ladders.

You might want to find another gym.

I think I know the gym you're talking about and the set-up was mandated for two reasons: insurance and teaching parents to belay for their kids at birthday parties, but this gym is making the transition to a bouldering gym. The only people belaying are school groups and birthday parties. I always pushed to have belaying from the harness for the regulars and we could attach it to the floor for groups, but it fell on deaf ears.

When a gym says 'insurance mandate' it often seems like a half truth which can be taken as "I don't want to get into explaining it". Insurance companies likely don't know a great deal about climbing and what does or does not need to be done for safety. Even if they've done their research, I'd wager a clever guy like Reid could get an insurer to see his way on such minor issues if that's not the way he wanted to set up belay stations.