How to Belay a Climber in Indoor Rock Climbing

Video Transcript

"Hey guys! This is Danny Logan and on behalf of Expert Village, I'm here to talk about indoor rock climbing. Okay, in this clip, I'm going to be explaining how to control the climber which is the person who's on the ground, making sure the climber is climbing safely. To use this...we call it...to use a belaying device, this is called the ATC (which stands for Air Traffic Control), which means you are controlling if he falls, whether you are going to catch him or not. There's many types of belaying devices. I'm going to use this one. It's really quite simple. What you are going to do is approach the rope, you grab a bite (this is called a bite of rope), you grab it and you notice how there's two sides. Technically, you can use either side. This side is more for friction climbs, which means if you fall, it's going to be harder for him to fall all the way down because there's more friction. This side is for a more smoother belay. I'm going to place it in like so; it's down like that. I attach it to my carabiner, and attach it to my belay loop like so. I keep my hand here, as he climbs here on this rope, I'll bring up. Notice how that goes up. I'll bring this down, put my hand here and bring up my hand to do it again. So if he falls at any moment, I always will have a hand on this rope, locking it in this position to where he cannot fall. To let him go down, I gently relax my fingers, bring up the rope and he goes. To lock it, bring it down. "