How to Use GriGri & Automatic Belay Devices While Rock Climbing

Video Transcript

"Hi! I'm Bill with Zoar Outdoor here on behalf of expertvillage.com. Today we are at Chapel Ledges at Ashville, Massachusetts, trustees of the reservation property and in this series I am going to be talking about rock climbing gear. A few more belay devices that you might encounter out there that you might want to know about and might work for you are a class of belay devices that are considered automatic or self locking this being the Pelzel grigri is probably the first and most common still. It is a little complicated to set up but once you got it, it is quite reliable and what it offers you in theory belaying that's its fool proof. I don't recommend that you take your hand off of it but if you were to, it's suppose to catch the fall on its own. Another variation on that them is a device called the since and works in a very similar way. Clip to here, automatically catches the fall. You notice that both of these have a lever on them. That's the release to allow the rope to pass through when you need to let it out, lower the climber whatever you might be doing. Another type of belay device that I want to talk about is this sort of unit. This is a Pelzel Reverso and there are a few other brands on the market but it is designed to operate in two orientations. You can belay off of your harness as normally just like an ATC device and you can also use it at the top of the cliff to belay someone coming up from the bottom in this orientation. "