Say you're top roping, or leading and are below your clip. You start to get pumped out don't see what to do, and step down a move or two quickly so you can retry with a different sequence. The belayer however doesn't feed slack quick enough so now the gri gri has a bit of weight on it and is partially engaged.

From here if you want the belayer to give you just a bit more slack so you can step down a little more and try again, what is the best way to have them do this?

Say you're top roping, or leading and are below your clip. You start to get pumped out don't see what to do, and step down a move or two quickly so you can retry with a different sequence. The belayer however doesn't feed slack quick enough so now the gri gri has a bit of weight on it and is partially engaged.

From here if you want the belayer to give you just a bit more slack so you can step down a little more and try again, what is the best way to have them do this? I typically see people put it into lower in these circumstances, which with an experienced belayer I'm fine with. With someone newer, I'm not so confident they get that if I fall as they're doing that they need to let go of the lever(making sure it doesn't get hung up on the rope when they let go).

So if I can I will unweight the rope, or if the roles are reversed I'll ask the climber if they can unweight the rope just a bit then slack can be fed as you would an atc. However sometimes the climber can't unweight the rope enough.

Just curious how others handle this. I don't use the grigri too much, I like the atc, but one of the new gyms I go to requires it.

cheers

I wish the gyms would stop using these things for beginners.

The two gyms I climb at in NJ ONLY use ATCs.

I actually used a Grigri for the first time last weekend at The Gunks.

If the climber has fallen, their full weight should be on the rope, and they can be lowered as normal. If the climber hasn't fallen, then the belayer should anticipate that the climber is downclimbing and feed rope back through the Gri Gri without touching the lever or capstan. If the cam locks up, they can pull the stretch down from the climber's strand to release the cam. If the cam cannot be released by pulling on the climber's rope, then the climber is hanging a significant portion of their weight and should either climb from where they are or sit back and be lowered.

Opening up the lever for a climber that is downclimbing with some portion of their weight on the rope is a bad idea. The fact that they are half hanging on the rope means they are probably relying on it a bit. The sudden loss of that tension could cause them to fall and put their full weight on the Grigri. If it's a move that they have to back off of to try again, it is probably at the limit of their ability also.

Say you're top roping, or leading and are below your clip. You start to get pumped out don't see what to do, and step down a move or two quickly so you can retry with a different sequence. The belayer however doesn't feed slack quick enough so now the gri gri has a bit of weight on it and is partially engaged.

From here if you want the belayer to give you just a bit more slack so you can step down a little more and try again, what is the best way to have them do this? I typically see people put it into lower in these circumstances, which with an experienced belayer I'm fine with. With someone newer, I'm not so confident they get that if I fall as they're doing that they need to let go of the lever(making sure it doesn't get hung up on the rope when they let go).

So if I can I will unweight the rope, or if the roles are reversed I'll ask the climber if they can unweight the rope just a bit then slack can be fed as you would an atc. However sometimes the climber can't unweight the rope enough.

Just curious how others handle this. I don't use the grigri too much, I like the atc, but one of the new gyms I go to requires it.

cheers

If you don't know how to give slack with a gri-gri, maybe you shouldn't give advice on it...

/if you have big meaty paws, you can use the pinky of your brake hand to hold the cam open
//without leaving a solid braking position

Paying out slack for a lead clip is different than paying out slack for a top roped climber with half of their weight on the rope. In the later situation, holding the cam open is asking for trouble.

As a new climber I have only used a grigri as that's the only device that my local gym uses. I have learned to always keep my hand on the brake line specifically for this reason. Even if I have the lever fully open I can still stop the climber from falling with just my brake hand.

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not. I don't prentend like I know anything because I don't. I just know what I feel is right.

This thread is not about whippers it's about providing slack without letting your lead climber fall using a grigri. If my lead climber fell I would simply let go of the oh sh1t handle and jump while pulling in as much slack as I could.

I consider the gri-gri to be the beginner's device and the tube-type the advanced. Why? You screw up with a properly threaded gri-gri and you still have a chance that it will do it's job. You screw up with an atc and it's all over. This is coming from someone who is alive today because the gri-gri held when my belayer was knocked out cold.

In that situation I do the following, using the "new" technique for the grigri as my starting point.

Hit the hinge between the lowering handle and the cam mechanism with the butt (that's right, I wrote butt) of my non-brake hand. Enough to slightly push it down but a fairly short contact so that I don't block the device in the open position. Generally that little shot disengages the cam enough to release slack for the climber to position properly. On occasion I have to hit it twice.

. . .watching your climber. . .