Well, it's brilliant opinions like yours that end up getting people dropped while "practice falling". If the belayer had used a Gri-Gri, the leader would not have been dropped. Why? Because the "default" on the Gri-Gri is to autolock. The default for an ATC, in contrast, is "dropped leader".

I don't know how anyone in their right mind can argue that a Gri-Gri isn't safer than an ATC. If you are one of those who are in this camp, please enlighten me.

Seriously the most important lessons I learned were:
1) It can happen to anyone (even if you are the world's greatest climber, your belayer can fail you)
2) Cull the herd; only let those that you know, trust and have the experience to put you on belay.

You make it sound as though a belay is some sort of objective danger, like avalanches, rockfall or other similar risks that are beyond our control as climbers--and that simply isn't the case. A good belayer would never make the mistake that happened in this case--period.

If we choose to accept the risk of falling, especially in the context of "fall sessions" where falling is the whole point, I think that we need to accept that system failure can occur and decide if that risk feels small enough to us to continue to fall for practice or not.

I'm with 'thewallress here. The single most important thing I do before being lowered off is make eye contact with the belayer to be sure he/she is paying attention and has got me. The second most important thing I do is to hold on to the other side of the rope with a death grip until I can feel that the bealyer has me. I HATE it when the leader clips the anchors then just drops off, assuming that I have him. No way...

Mal

You mentioned that you see your belayer every day. Tell me, does she have any burns on her non-brake hand or fingers?

Reason I ask: There is a fairly common belay practice with a built in failure method. It was the way I learned to belay with an ATC, and I continued to do so until instructed to do otherwise by a guide, a year or so later. I had a hard time believing the guide that there was a problem with that my method, because *so* many people used it (and still do). So I looked around. Within a year, I had seen *two* people get dropped, both with that belay method, and both from exactly the reason described by the guide.

Here's the specific method, and the specific fault:

Palm up, pinch and slide, where the non-brake hand pinches both ropes.

Using this method, there is a moment when the belayer takes in rope, pulling it up parallel with the "live" strand. Next, in order to be able to slide the brake hand back down the rope, the belayer pinches both the brake strand and the live strand with the non-brake hand (typically left hand). If, at exactly that moment, the climber falls, both the belayer's hands grasp hard on the rope. Problem is, the belayer's left hand is pinching both ropes, and keeping the brake strand up too high, so the brake hand can't lock off. At this point, the belayer's hands are burned, he loses control, and no-one understands what went wrong.

...

Please note, if you're someone who's been belaying for 10 years with this method and thinks this can't happen to you - you're probably right! In my experience, people who make it past five years or so with this method seem to have sufficiently trained themselves to *let go* with the left hand when the climber falls, if it happens at that point in the belay method. This is highly anti-intuitive, since most of the time the left hand on the live strand helps catch a fall. There's just that one split second where the left must know *not* to do what it usually does.

1. Self-braking system helps the belayer stop a fall.
2. Smooth lip helps guide the rope during descent.

I disagree Curt.

Although an avalanche is certainly much more out of our control than the belay, the belay is controled by humans, and thus is inherantly error prone.

Although better and worse belayers exist, I don't believe that there is a perfect human out there who will never make a mistake.

If we choose to accept the risk of falling, especially in the context of "fall sessions" where falling is the whole point, I think that we need to accept that system failure can occur and decide if that risk feels small enough to us to continue to fall for practice or not.

Mal, your on belay ready to catch until your climber says "done climbing" and at which point if your off belay "belay off"; until that point your always suppose to be ready to catch. The person may be out of sight, out of ear shot, etc.

So yes.. anything that lulls people into thinking it will do everything automatically will make them lazy. I once saw someone lowering with a gri gri and only holding the rope ABOVE it while using the lever.. thinking the lever would do all the speed control... luckily the kid got going too fast.. the belayer let go of the lever and i ran over and showed him what he was screwing up.

alexmac, I'm not sure I understand your point here.

That's because he usually doesn't have one.

alexmac, I'm not sure I understand your point here.

My point is the belay job is to stay on belay, if someone drops , they catch until they are dead from other accident. Thus a person should always be ready to catch, you appear to excuse in your posting belayers out of a lack of trust.

I have seen good belays take a rock and keep their eye on the climber, I have been stung by a bee;

Then again maybe I misread what you were saying.

3) Cull the herd; select your belayers carefully and only allow those you trust to give you a belay

Unless you knew in advance that this partner was less than safe, and chose to climb with her anyway, this is both unfair and unrealistic.

4) Keep your circle small; know your belayers, constantly check on their potential for distraction, moods and energy level

Knowing what you know now, is there anything that you actually would do differently? If not, you really have only three logical choices: 1 - Accept the possibility that this could happen again without warning with you as either climber or belayer, 2 - dig a little deeper to find out what happened, or 3 - stop taking lead falls.

Don't expect to figure it all out instantly, but perhaps posting here can be a tiny help/start.
GO

Please understand that I have seen the belayer everyday since the incident. She is a healer and she is giving me healing sessions.

Sorry, you still helping look for WMD's to find a point.