tying in/ belaying on multi pitch?

[Brendan]

just wondering how you people tie yourselves in to the anchors AND belay your second up to you?

i'm not asking cause i need tips. i'm just purely curious what other methods are out there, after discussing it w/ my climbing partner recently.

(and lets save the policing to the real cops (Mike, this doesn't mean you)
and leave equalization out of this). if you tie in a certain way, express it as best as possible, regardless if the anchors are 'equal' or not.

thanks

[Dru]

I mostly stopped using cordelettes, in favour of the good ol' sliding-X.

The Metolius PAS is another good option, safer than a daisy, but does not solve the issue of having two climbers anchored to the same powerpoint - not as good for block leading.

[5.4 Slayer]

A long time ago I saw two girls climbing up St. Vitus Dance. They used one nut as an achor for the belayer and another nut for the second. Bomber station!

[Brendan]

Dru, what do you mean by the 'sliding-X'?


and how do you belay the second up? (Reverso off anchor, or regular belay method off harness redirected up to anchor, etc...)?

discuss.

[ras]

just wondering how you people tie yourselves in to the anchors AND belay your second up to you?

Seems there's a bazillion ways, eh? All subtly different.

I mostly do sport, so there are bolt anchors. I have the fast way, which is a daisy chain into each bolt, a quickdraw off one bolt, and I belay from the harness redirected through the QD. This takes zero effort for belay change-over, the 2nd can just climb right by after grabbing any gear I still have.

I have found this to work really badly, though, when I'm belaying on a slab, but the 2nd is climbing something vertical and overhanging. This fairly common, and when you've got a 180 lb climber, hanging with all their weight over an overhang, and you're on a 40degree slab above belaying, there is a lot of force pulling you forward into your anchors. Can be pretty uncomfortable.

In this case I've a 2m sling with a wide mouthed locking biner, and two non-locking biners on it, its small and I always have it on the back of my harness, I make a sliding-X with it or tie an overhand on the bight, and belay using a munter hitch off the big locking biner. This can take a lot of weight, easily, without stress on me, but takes slightly more time to setup. Also, when the 2nd leads past I need to switch to belaying off the harness through a QD, anyway.

I also like this system on really easy slab, like Banana Peel, when the 2nd is coming up really fast, because I can haul rope in arm-over-arm through a munter hitch really fast.

Story:

First time I was down in Potrero Chico I was getting frustrated with how slow the belay changeovers were (this was before I worked out a system that works for me), and asked Dane (guy who set a lot of routes down there) what he did. For the record, he says as soon as he gets to a station he sticks a locker in one hanger, ties a bight from his end of the rope through with a clove hitch to anchor off, screams off-belay, and starts hauling up the slack. As soon as he gets it all, he sticks a QD through the other anchor, puts the climber on belay, and tells him to go. To quote him "doubling your protection is a trad habit, cause you can't trust the gear, you don't need to do that with bolts".

Maybe he's right. I've never heard of a bolt pulling in Squamish, and the last guy to die from a trad piece popping was only a month ago... but I still like two.

[ras]

Dru, what do you mean by the 'sliding-X'?

http://www.spadout.com/wiki/index.php/C ... _Sliding_X

http://www.rockclimbing.com/cgi-bin/for ... 33#1309933

[jefffski]

A long time ago I saw two girls climbing up St. Vitus Dance. They used one nut as an achor for the belayer and another nut for the second. Bomber station!

yeah, but that's an alpine climb, dude. you gotta do, what ya gotta do.

[Brendan]

Duh, a Sliding X!! haha.

i use them all the time. very fast/ effective! i guess i never really knew the name.

[reed]

Funny thing; recently on a trip to Chek, I had the hanger fall off of a bolt. It was on a route at the Main Event called Dark Don't Lie. I had clipped the first bolt and was about to clip the second, when I heard a clanging noise. The hanger had fallen down to my belayer with the quickdraw attached. Since then, we've been checking how tight the nuts are on bolts, and have found that many of them are loose. Something to keep in mind when trusting your life to a belay station...

[Brendan]

reed, when you clipped the bolt you must have known the nut holding the hanger on was loose. there's no way it unscrewed 8x (or whatever) and fell off...

anyways, do you climb multi pitch??

[reed]

The next day we did Ultimate Everything. This time we were checking very closely to see how loose nuts were, and many of them were pretty darn loose. I hadn't noticed that the nut was loose because I wasn't in the habit of checking. I suppose at a belay on a multipitch route, I would have noticed, since I always check on the quality of bolts at belays.

[hafilax]

I usually clove hitch in and belay off the anchor with an autoblock if we're swapping leads (unless there's a good chance I'll have to lower the second for any reason). For change overs, my partner usually carries an autoblocking device so when they get to the anchor they're secure. I take their belay device to put them on belay and they take the other one anchoring them to use at the top of the next pitch.

I find that an anchor sling often seems to get in the way. Tieing in with the rope adds that little bit of damping stretch which gives me the warm fuzzies.

[Dru]

i hate tieing in with the rope cause it makes it harder to start simulclimbing when your partner needs an extra fifteen meters to make the next ledge and you have to f**k around untying the knots....

[Brendan]

i hate tieing in with the rope cause it makes it harder to start simulclimbing when your partner needs an extra fifteen meters to make the next ledge and you have to f**k around untying the knots....

wow. i can't wait till 80m ropes hit NA (i mean easily available at MEC). damn 70's just aren't long enough.

'Dru', why would tying in to the anchor w/ the rope require "fifteen meters"??

[bradley3297]

lol sorry but the simuclimbing is 15 m not the belay lol.