[HN Gopher] The belay test and the modern American climbing gym
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The belay test and the modern American climbing gym
Author : vasco
Score : 108 points
Date : 2025-03-19 18:19 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.climbing.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.climbing.com)
| packetlost wrote:
| My family has a unique history with the climbing gym boom of the
| 90s. In the early to mid 90s my dad was operating a "co-op"
| called "The Barn" between Madison, WI and Dodgeville, WI. It was
| literally a retired barn that he had built climbing walls and a
| small apartment for himself to live in. I guess he eventually got
| in trouble with the authorities or something because it had to go
| away (likely code related, but I'm not sure), but he and some of
| the members ended up founding a legitimate business that stands
| to this day: Boulders Climbing Gym in Madison. He ended up
| leaving the business around the time I was born in 1997, but was
| still somewhat involved for a good chunk of my childhood.
|
| The parts about the belay test are burned into my brain as a
| result. I had no idea that the industry had its roots in Silicon
| Valley!
| mdberkey wrote:
| Never thought I'd see Boulders Climbing Gym mentioned on HN! I
| loved going to the downtown location as a college student and
| everyone I met there was so nice and helpful.
| packetlost wrote:
| Yeah, it's a pretty awesome place! I didn't expect anyone
| here to have ever heard of it either!
| mordechai9000 wrote:
| "I had some really good, famous, climbers come in and fail the
| belay test,"
|
| Climbers still complain about the belay test, especially older
| climbers who cut their teeth outdoors and same late to the gym
| scene. But most gym accidents involving top roping or lead
| climbing are going to come down to a failed safety check or a
| mistake on the part of the belayer. And a failed safety check is
| at least partially a belayer failure.
|
| Experience level doesn't necessarily correlate with safe
| technique. Beginners can be highly conscious of the consequences
| of a fall, where more experienced climbers can get complacent and
| sloppy when the negative consequences fail to materialize.
|
| For example: the coach of an internationally competitive athlete
| dropped his climber on a grigri because he was casually chatting
| with someone on the ground and failed to control the brake
| strand.
|
| https://youtu.be/WBGkKqLhM8Y?si=p58XDsgOG5O2dbJP
| edf825 wrote:
| > more experienced climbers can get complacent and sloppy when
| the negative consequences fail to materialize.
|
| This effect in some fields is called "Normalisation of
| Deviance".
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalization_of_deviance
| deepsun wrote:
| It was even worse, the coach held grigri totally wrong the
| whole time, it would fail even if he wasn't chatting and
| concentrated on his climber.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I indoor climb with a friend semi regularly using a grigri, and
| it is important to be intentional about giving the climber your
| full attention and never taking your hand off the rope entirely
| [1]. Very similar to how the person qualifying you during a
| check ride for your private pilot certification will attempt to
| distract you on a final approach to see if you take the bait.
| If you don't want to or can't pay attention, that's what the
| auto belay [2] is for.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAxY-BBSlGc
|
| [2] https://www.verticalendeavors.com/auto-belays-pros-and-
| cons/
|
| (my climbing venue monitors and scolds you if you aren't paying
| attention while belaying, ymmv)
| jajko wrote:
| The technique with Grigri is easy to learn compared to some
| other tools especially during its initial release, and TBH I
| don't recall ever saw anybody using it incorrectly since it
| would always prompt a strong reaction from anybody else just
| passing by. But it has to be learned, it doesn't come somehow
| magically on its own. Its not fully auto-blocking, if angle
| of outgoing rope is 'right' it doesn't block at all.
|
| What that guy did on the video looks absolutely ridiculous
| from first second. Zero visual contact, too much slack (so
| that he doesn't have to look up), very little safety even
| without actual accident. When in practice there should be
| 100% visual contact, or at least 95% and fully covering all
| non-easy parts. It strains the neck massively but for that
| there are those cheap periscope glasses, I got mine for 10
| bucks on aliexpress and they work fine enough for 10 years.
|
| The basic technique means rope is 100% held by either hand at
| correct angle regardless what you need to do apart from
| holding it.
| lazide wrote:
| There is at least one technique which is officially 'bad',
| but was first taught.
|
| That said, I've been caught (and caught others) while half
| asleep on big walls with Grigris when no one could see each
| other.
|
| The hardest part with a gri gri (imo) is early on when
| doing sport or gym belaying when there is a lot of
| switching between taking in and paying out slack.
| hinkley wrote:
| It was a big story a while back that someone noticed that
| climbing deaths increase with experience, and the blame was
| ultimately attributed to equipment wear, especially ropes.
|
| Once you start trusting the rope and the belay, you better be
| sure you can trust that rope, and your partner.
| fsh wrote:
| It would be interesting to compare the accident statistics with
| European climbing gyms where belay tests are not common.
|
| The coach in the video has some of the worst belay technique I
| have ever seen. Unfortunately, this is somewhat common among
| older climbers who learned using the first generation Grigri in
| the 90s. Petzl's recommended technique back then is very safe
| (essentially using the Grigri like an ATC), but does not allow
| giving slack quickly. This made it completely useless for any
| kind of ambitious sports climbing, and people started coming up
| with often extremely dangerous workarounds. Petzl has upgraded
| their recommendations a long time ago, but some people are
| resistant to change ("it never failed for me"...) Hopefully
| this video can convince at least some of them to finally adopt
| the proper technique.
| jjcob wrote:
| I thought it was interesting when I looked up US gyms that
| they require a belay test.
|
| In Austria, the gyms I went to you just had to sign a form
| that you know how to climb top-rope, lead, and how to belay.
| lazide wrote:
| The US is extremely sue happy - US courts will often not
| recognize the 'of course it's obviously dangerous' defense
| without extensive warning in writing - and even then, there
| is a significant amount of due diligence that needs to
| happen.
|
| Most of the rest of the world goes 'meh, don't be so
| obviously dumb then' and kicks the lawsuits out.
| gruez wrote:
| >The US is extremely sue happy - US courts will often not
| recognize the 'of course it's obviously dangerous'
| defense without extensive warning in writing - and even
| then, there is a significant amount of due diligence that
| needs to happen.
|
| What does that have to do with US gyms requiring belay
| tests, which is a bunch of steps that doesn't involve
| "extensive warning in writing".
| lazide wrote:
| Insurance.
|
| Which requires due diligence.
|
| Which means there is some guarantee that people belaying
| at the facility meet some basic standard of skill, so
| that people are not being dropped all the time and then
| turning around and suing the facility for negligent
| supervision/creating a dangerous environment.
| InitialBP wrote:
| Because they have evidence "in writing" that everyone at
| the gym had to pass a test that proves they know how to
| properly and securely belay a climber. In the event that
| there is an accident, the liability falls completely on
| the belayer and/or the climber and not the gym itself for
| allowing someone to participate in something that is
| "obviously dangerous" without demonstrating they have the
| ability to do it properly.
| dmoy wrote:
| > What does that have to do with US gyms requiring belay
| tests, which is a bunch of steps that doesn't involve
| "extensive warning in writing".
|
| It lowers insurance bills. If you don't let anyone climb
| without having done a belay test and putting that paper
| in a cabinet for 10+ years, then you can get cheaper
| insurance.
|
| It's the same reason why some gun ranges won't let random
| people in without joining up and going through a safety
| intro thing - cheaper insurance.
| sfn42 wrote:
| In Norway there is a lead climbing certification. You
| attend and pass a weekend course including a final test,
| then you get a card. In order to be allowed to belay/lead
| climb in a gym you have to present this card. You can bring
| friends and let them top rope without the card, at least in
| some gyms, but the belayer needs to have the card. I think
| you can also climb on autobelay without the card.
| ekr____ wrote:
| The grigri in particular is a bit of a mixed blessing. Because
| it has an auto brake, it's harder -- though not impossible, as
| you indicate -- to just totally fail to brake the climber on
| top rope. If you let go of an ATC, there is no braking and the
| rope just runs through, which is obviously very bad. By
| contrast, if you just let go of an grigri it will lock,
| arresting the fall.
|
| However, when lead belaying, you need to pay out rope, which
| means disengaging the auto brake. If you do this buy holding
| the handle and the climber falls at the wrong time, it's easy
| to react by just holding everything tighter, at which point
| you're holding the grigri open, at which point the auto brake
| isn't doing anything. By contrast with an ATC or other tube-
| type device you never have to touch the belay device and so you
| always can keep your brake hand in the brake position, so if
| the climber falls, your reflex action -- assuming you have
| practiced -- should be to pull harder with your brake hand,
| thus arresting the fall.
|
| Aside from belay devices, some other practices I've seen gyms
| do to try make indoor climbing safer:
|
| - Captive grigris on top rope so that you (1) have to use a
| grigri and (2) can't screw up putting them on and off. - High
| friction toprope anchors (e.g., wrapped several times around a
| pipe) so that even with no belay device at all there is still
| some friction. - Requiring people to tie in with a trace eight
| rather than a double bowline on the theory that the trace eight
| is harder to screw up and easier to check.
| kyledrake wrote:
| If you get a chance try out the NEOX. It's basically a GriGri
| with smoother rope feed, so you almost never have to defeat
| the cam when lead belaying with a proper dynamic technique.
| They've been polarizing to some people but it really feels
| like a "fixed GriGri" to me. You still need to mind the brake
| side, but at least feeding doesn't have an intrinsic design
| flaw where you have to temporarily disable the safety device.
| placardloop wrote:
| The GriGri does _not_ have an autobrake. Petzl is very
| intentional in saying it is an "assisted braking device", not
| auto braking. If there is any tension at all on the rope
| (even just lightly being held), then the GriGri will likely
| brake, but if the rope isn't being held at all then there is
| no guarantee it will brake.
|
| See this video, around the 10 minute mark where there's
| several examples of the GriGri not locking at all:
| https://youtu.be/We-nxljgnw4?t=605
|
| This is perhaps an even greater issue than what you pointed
| out because people misunderstand the GriGri a lot, and assume
| it will always catch them even if you aren't holding the
| rope. It won't.
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| To be fair, I suspect the difference between "auto brake"
| and "assisted braking device" is mostly legal liability. In
| practical use I would understand both terms to mean the
| same thing. I think very few people believe a grigri will
| _always_ catch them. They just (accurately!) believe that
| in most circumstances it will. The 5% where it won't catch
| you is of course deadly.
| lazide wrote:
| It's one of those distinctions which only actually matters
| in a small and somewhat rare, but very important, edge
| case. Usually more determined by rope diameter and
| conditions than anything else.
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| In contexts where a fuckup is likely to result in death
| or permanent disability it might be prudent to play the
| consequences instead of the odds. Marginally related: I
| was always shocked by the diversity of crispy bullshit
| other climbers were willing to rap off of. I kept new
| webbing and rap rings in my daypack at all times just in
| case.
| ekr____ wrote:
| Thanks for the correction.
| RyanCavanaugh wrote:
| The problem with the belay test as it exists today is that it
| tests whether you know all the peculiarities of each gym's
| beliefs around things like the exact order your hands should
| move when taking slack, whether tails on figure 8s are
| important (if so, how long, and what kind of knot may or must
| terminate them), whether the length of the belay loop matters,
| and so on. These things change seemingly on a whim and aren't
| always motivated by good evidence.
|
| I learned to belay at Vertical World in 2005 and would fail
| Vertical World's belay test today, for multiple reasons, if I
| used the same method they themselves taught me!
|
| Meanwhile, as you point out, no test can determine whether or
| not a person will be paying attention during an actual climb.
| japhyr wrote:
| I supervised a small climbing wall for one year in the mid
| 2000s. I was really strict about our belay test, but we had
| some flexibility built in. If you had experience climbing, you
| could show us your technique and we'd pass you if your
| technique kept the climber safe at all times.
|
| It didn't happen often, but there were a number of people who
| had over a decade of experience, who didn't realize they were
| leaving the climber vulnerable to a catastrophic fall in some
| of their transitions. Those people had just never had anyone
| fall at that point in their belaying.
|
| They were momentarily embarrassed, but to their credit everyone
| I had to call out about technique appreciated not being given a
| pass because of their years of experience.
| nick3443 wrote:
| At a gym I used to climb, there was also a Grigri "failure"
| where a lighter belayer was pulled up the the first clip, which
| then unlocked the Grigri until the climber hit the ground.
|
| Pretty sure there were no major injuries thankfully.
| blackguardx wrote:
| This can only happen if the belayer takes their hand off the
| brake strand. When unlocked, the grigri has the same braking
| force as a regular ATC. This essentially was a belayer error.
| One can't take their hand off the brake strand even if
| violently jerked around.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| Sure, but it's probably best to try to avoid baking the
| belayers into the air in the first place instead of hoping
| and assuming they'll maintain best belaying practices while
| being abducted into the sky.
| Fricken wrote:
| A Entreprises wall went up at the University of Alberta in 1989,
| which was pretty early for North American indoor walls. The
| Verdon Gorge was the hot shit place to climb at the time, and the
| Entreprises (a french company) wall textures and holds emulated
| the small technical limestone features that are commonly found
| there.
|
| I wasn't allowed to climb there until I was 16. I cut my teeth as
| a climber traversing back and forth on a cobbled bridge abutment
| local climbers would train on before the U of A wall went up.
|
| The second Gym to open in my home city, Vertically inclined, in
| 1994, was designed by Christian Griffith. It is still in
| operation today. Griffith also designed my original chalkbag,
| which I bought with allowance money and still have. I'm
| sentimental about that chalkbag.
|
| Around that time a local climber was dabbling around with hold
| making and went on to found Teknick climbing hold company, which
| set off a trend towards the big fat holds you see in climbing
| gyms today. Teknik is now a venerable old company and the second
| biggest supplier of holds in the world. He was a way better
| climber than me back then, and he still is.
| egl2020 wrote:
| I took a belay test in 1970 to qualify to climb with my school's
| outing club. We used a concrete weight and a hip belay.
| drcode wrote:
| PSA: Most modern gyms have "autobelay" devices that let you climb
| on your own without a partner. This makes gym climbing a super
| fun and accessible exercise anyone, even beginners, can do by
| just showing up to a gym at your convenience.
|
| (If you're a beginner you should still take the 1 hour class
| first and you will have to pass a belay test. And yes, if you can
| make the schedule work out with a friend so can belay each other,
| that's even more fun)
| lazide wrote:
| Unfortunately, auto belays are also pretty terrible once you're
| familiar with climbing - they pull on you and make harder
| climbing extremely awkward.
| jajko wrote:
| They lower the grade by cca 1 level by pulling you up, at
| least till 6a/6b in french scale. In higher levels I can
| imagine they also interfere with careful balance and body
| weight shifting training you away from actual skills, thats
| why I never saw them on anything harder than maybe 7b and
| even there it was like 1 or 2 routes in whole gym.
|
| But for easy grades and cca beginners, if you lack a good
| partner for whatever reason, they are great IMHO.
| toxik wrote:
| The pull of an autobelay is negligible, surely. The cable
| is a bit annoying perhaps but the real problem is that the
| wall is like near vertical, completely flat. Super
| uninspiring in my opinion.
| lazide wrote:
| Most climbing gyms put auto belays only on flat or slabby
| 'beginniner' areas of the walls because most people using
| auto belays can't do much on harder stuff - and also it's
| kind of convenient to have your partner 'take'/hold you
| on steep stuff sometimes.
|
| Having uncontrolled (but slow) descents onto people's
| heads probably also doesn't help.
| dschroer wrote:
| You still need to be careful. I'm an avid climber. Most
| autobelay accidents happen because people don't clip in
| properly. However for me the auto belay cable broke after
| catching me. Resulted in five minor spinal fractures.
|
| So from my experience I would say at least Google what are the
| common auto belay manufacturers and only use gyms that have
| them. True Blue and Perfect Decent are the only auto belays I
| will touch now.
| drcode wrote:
| thanks, I'll investigate my local gym!
|
| update: they use trueblue
| jckrichabdkejdb wrote:
| That sounds terrible, did you take any legal action?
| dschroer wrote:
| I did. It's behind me now and more importantly I'm fully
| recovered mentally and physically.
|
| I don't live in the states so it's not as dramatic legally
| as you may imagine.
| kyledrake wrote:
| My understanding is that our local climbing gym sees most of
| its non-bouldering accidents from people not clipping into
| autobelays before they start climbing.
| nepthar wrote:
| Is there really such a large crossover that climbing.com makes it
| to hacker news? Sure, this is interesting, but I love that this
| site is focused on tech.
| airstrike wrote:
| "On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting.
| That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to
| reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that
| gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| The headline is about the guy who created new procedures and
| standardization. Those are certainly technologies by many
| definitions. The article talks about how he created a lot of
| what we consider the modern climbing gym. Fitness innovations
| are also a form of technology.
|
| Hacker news never claimed to be exclusively about digital
| technology, or electronic technology.
|
| This is an article telling the story of someone passionate
| about creating something new and innovative. Seems pretty
| aligned to me?
| ics wrote:
| Anecdotally the climbing gym is the only semi-public place in
| which I've walked past someone browsing HN; without material
| stats I would still guess developers and people in tech vastly
| outnumber other fields among climbing gym members.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| Planet Granite Sunnyvale was my haunt when I lived in CA.
| Almost everybody it seemed were wearing tshirts with the same
| logos you see driving down 101, in those days (10 years ago
| before that was uncool).
| sampton wrote:
| Climbing, especially bouldering, requires solo problem solving.
| It's the closest thing to coding in athletic terms.
| jajko wrote:
| A lot of devs love climbing. Problem solving is part of it,
| especially if you climb a route for the first time. Very
| different area but similar approaches need to be deployed to
| succeed.
|
| Plus its properly great and fulfilling activity that very few
| sports can deliver (IMHO), not requiring massive investment or
| some ridiculously long and difficult trips to just get to it
| (gyms, if you want to climb in Patagonia or Antarctic then its
| a different game altogether).
| thirtywatt wrote:
| >I got no positive reaction from the [climbing] industry at all
|
| This was my experience trying to create a climbing tech product
| in the last few years.
|
| The market for climbing is built through reputation, tradition, &
| thus a visceral rejection of new ideas & methods. This is very
| interesting, since many climbers work in forward-thinking tech
| companies.
|
| Companies often resist growth to stay small. There are dirty
| secrets and bad blood among many competitors.
|
| Amazing sport, hard fought market.
| MarcelOlsz wrote:
| If you're into this you should also check out Dan Iaboni from the
| parkour world. Started from a forum+fb group with a parkour gym
| built by the community in an old carpet factory, and now The
| Monkey Vault is in a massive factory in Toronto. Everyone thought
| he was crazy.
| CephalopodMD wrote:
| Ohhhhhh. It just clicked for me that indoor climbing is from
| silicon valley and that's why the Venn diagram of tech bros and
| crag dirtbags overlays so much. I always assumed there was just
| something about the type of people who work in tech that they're
| weirdly more into climbing than average. But it's not a
| psychological quirk, it's a historical quirk!
| drahazar wrote:
| > I always assumed there was just something about the type of
| people who work in tech that they're weirdly more into climbing
| than average.
|
| You were right the first time. Climbing is a largely
| constrained problem solving exercise with binary outcomes (you
| either did the route or didn't) and a built-in level-up style
| progression in the grading system. (Today I did my fist V2!
| etc...) You can do it entirely on your own, at your own time,
| in your own pace and it's not really possible to "lose" at
| climbing[1], you get unlimited attempts to try and figure it
| out. You can, for outdoor climbs, try the climb, fail, train
| for 6 months and retry the climb to succeed. In short it's
| almost designed to be addictive to coder types, but all that
| came before the indoor walls, not after.
|
| Source: I climb obsessively. They got me good.
|
| [1] - competition climbing aside, obviously
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