Belaying a Rock Climber: Part 2

"Hi, I'm Bill with Zoar Outdoor on behalf of expertvillage.com. We're here today at Chapel Ledges in Ashfield, Massachusetts, Trustees of the Reservations Property and in this series I'm going to be talking about preparing to climb. I'm going to talk about belaying in a sociable top rope system with modern automatic belay device, such as the petzl gri-gri. First thing you might want to have is a ground anchor, it keeps you in place at the bottom of the cliff in case your climber is heavier than you or you're caught off guard, you can't get pulled out of position. Here's the rope going up to my anchor point. I need to set up the device correctly, you should know how to do it without directions. Most devices have something inprinted on the outside that will tell you exactly how the rope needs to go. The climber's end, the belayer's end, clip the device to the belay loop of my harness, make sure that the carabiner is locked, now I'm ready to go. This is the climbers side, this is the break hand side, this is where the action happens. You want to make sure that this hand never leaves the rope. It's the break hand, it's responsible for stopping falls if the device isn't doing its job. You want to make sure you're ready to do that. So you still want to use technique similar to what you'd use in a standard belay device. Bring the rope through, split and keep this hand on at all times. The rope comes through the device, this hand goes across to help out and the break hand stays on the rope at all times. If the climber falls, the device should do the work, but if my hand is back here, just in case I'm backing it up and I know that the friction in there is still going to stop the climber's fall. So, belaying with an automatic petzl gri-gri similar device, still use your same good belay technique, just have a extra safety with margin."