How to Belay Yourself While Rock Climbing

Video Transcript

"We're going to show you some belaying now. We've already got Dave all tied in here with the Figure 8 and the sport back, so he's set to go. Now we're going to set up the ATC over here. So here you've got your blade of ice -- your ATC. You're going to take a bite of rope, which is just a loop of rope, and feed that through one of the two loops in the ATC. Just like this; line it up with the black keeper. You're going to take your lock and carabiner and clip it through the keeper -- the black plastic keeper -- and your bite of rope, which is now running through the ATC. Clip it in your belay loop and lock it down. All right, then I'm going to take my break hand which for me is my right hand because I'm right-handed and put it on the slack end of the rope. So this end goes up, this end is my break end. Then I'm going to say, all right Dave, you're ready to climb. All right, now to take the slack out of the rope, I'm going to hold down with my left hand, pull up with my right hand, pinch it off, slide my hand down -- never want your brake hand coming off the rope and then go back into a braking position, which is the right hand, your brake hand, down by your hip. That's going to create enough friction between it running over the carabinder and then over this edge here, that I can hold ten times my body weight with this. All right, so I'm going to continue that process until all the slack is out of the rope. Some people call it "slip, slap, slide" so you slip rope through the blade of ice, you slap the rope into the other hand, then you slide your other -- your right hand down. All right Dave, you're ready to go. Start climbing. So I slip, slap, slide. All right. Blaze on, climb away. We go through those commands just to make sure we're both on the same page so that he doesn't start climbing before I'm ready. And I'm basically just going to repeat the belay process the entire time he's climbing until he's at the top. So, go ahead. See as the rope -- as he goes up the rope gets loose and I have to take in more. Slip, slap, slide. And it's going to take awhile for this to become second nature, but eventually you'll get it. Common mistakes are people try to slip and then slap above your left hand -- that doesn't work because then you have to take your right hand off to get it down here. Which I would show you if he wasn't actually climbing. Love it, Dave. So if Dave falls, all I have to do is come down into my brake position, and that will arrest his fall. The dynamic rope will stretch a little bit to cushion his fall, but other than that, he's not going to go anywhere. So Dave can fall anytime he wants -- he doesn't need to give me warning. Some people like to, so I guess, fall whenever you want. See, Dave comes down but I've got him right here. And then Dave can continue climbing."