[HN Gopher] The belay test and the modern American climbing gym
___________________________________________________________________
The belay test and the modern American climbing gym
Author : vasco
Score : 147 points
Date : 2025-03-19 18:19 UTC (5 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!
| quasse wrote:
| Wow, what a cool piece of Madison history. I spent a lot of
| afternoons at Boulders in the mid-2010s but never knew that it
| had a predecessor like that.
| 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.
| jayGlow wrote:
| they released a new device called a neox recently that
| allows slack to be given out easier. still autolocks if
| you pull to fast but it's great overall.
| jfengel wrote:
| My gym put grigris on every top rope, in place of us
| bringing our own ATCs.
|
| To be honest I've never seen a belaying accident. They
| appear to want to keep it that way.
| 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.
| johtso wrote:
| This sounds rather dubious, my impression was that climbing
| deaths are extremely rarely due to equipment failure. Also
| rope failures.. really? In normal use climbing ropes tend to
| fail by desheathing, dramatic but not necessarily that
| dangerous. Catastrophic rope failure only really tends to
| happen due to slicing over sharp edges under load, unrelated
| to wear and tear..
|
| What are you referencing?
| jmpetroske wrote:
| This sounds like more correlation than causation to me.
| There's a similar statistic people like to quote in regards
| to backcountry skiing - that you are more likely to be in an
| avalanche if you have taken an avalanche safety course. Sure,
| there's a correlation. But when basically everyone who
| backcountry skis regularly has taken such a course, and the
| people who backcountry ski infrequently are less likely to
| have taken a course, you can imagine why such statistic is
| true. Furthermore, advanced backcountry skiers are way more
| likely to be venturing into more complicated avalanche
| terrain that has more inherent danger.
|
| It would be better to measure the accident rate in a more
| controlled setting, like accidents per gym route climbed. I
| can only surmise on what the results here would be. I don't
| doubt that experienced climbers get complacent, but new
| climbers also are new to it and likely lack some knowledge to
| keep things safe.
|
| I suspect that with experienced climbers, they are probably
| climbing way more frequently than inexperienced climbers
| (which you would need to account for to suggest causation),
| and also doing more dangerous routes. New climbers are less
| likely to do alpine routes where you encounter climbing when
| fatigued/sleep deprived, weather concerns, rock fall hazards,
| complicated descents, etc. And brand new climbers are hardly
| ever climbing trad routes, especially with marginal
| protection.
|
| Side note, but as someone who nerds out on reading accident
| reports, climbing accidents are hardly ever caused the gear
| failing. Even old ropes damaged by the sun are super strong,
| and it's typically quite obvious when gear is wearing out.
| 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.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| What U.S. courts will look for is an industry standard
| for safety, even if implicit, and then see if you are
| meeting or exceeding that standard.
|
| In the U.S., for climbing gyms, part of the standard is a
| belay test. In the article, Mayfield talks about trying
| to get the industry self-regulating before the government
| steps in. This is basically how that works: industry
| founders or leaders establish some procedures for safety,
| prove them out over time, then insurance companies
| implicitly adopt them and everyone else follows.
| 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.
| sjburt wrote:
| I'm not sure why people are making a big deal of it. At my
| gym it took maybe 3 minutes. You tie a knot and show you
| know how to take up slack. And it only needs to be done
| once.
|
| There is a second test for lead but most people take a
| class and get the lead card during the class.
| 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.
| watwut wrote:
| It is not. There are situations where it won't break and
| someone dies.
|
| It is not just "legal liability" which is Musk speak for
| "won't always work but I want you to pay as if it did".
| 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.
| lazide wrote:
| Sure, it should be noted that applying that rule fully
| consistently would mean never doing recreational climbing
| at all eh? After all, it is fundamentally risky.
|
| Maybe still SAR, of course.
|
| I always carried a belay knife and some extra webbing,
| and used it more than once. A couple times I didn't need
| the knife.
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| I mean I hear what you're saying but at the same time
| avoidable bullshit like scrambling off rope 50'+ off the
| deck, rapping off of some random stripper's thong that
| got caught in a shrub, or letting your intrusive thoughts
| win while belaying are all dirt common in the community.
| Its one thing to get caught out while engaging in
| dangerous hobbies, it's something else entirely to die
| doing something that's obviously stupid. I absolutely
| cannot even when someone goes for a 10th of a mile slide
| off of one of the flatirons in Tevas and the locals have
| the gall to call it a tragedy.
| ekr____ wrote:
| Thanks for the correction.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| I have the exact same grigri shown in the video, and
| somehow it never fails to lock when I'm quickly trying to
| feed slack to a leader and don't put a bit of pressure on
| the left side. Even when I've added slack to the brake
| strand.
|
| I wonder if it has something to do with the angle, as it's
| pretty uncommon to have the climbing strand going _straight
| up_ from the belayer.
| k3lsi3r wrote:
| Important point. It's not actually all that trivial to give a
| good and safe lead belay with a grigri. I see folks wrap
| their thumb over the Grigri cam to pay slack all the time. It
| is extremely dangerous when combined with not paying much
| attention because a surprise fall will cause the belayer to
| seize their grip on the device and lock it open. Heart
| breaking example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBGkKqLhM8Y
|
| All that said, I still prefer to be belayed with a grigri.
| GloriousKoji wrote:
| > when lead belaying, you need to pay out rope, which means
| disengaging the auto brake. If you do this buy holding the
| handle
|
| What the hell are they teaching kids these days. I've NEVER
| needed to hold the handle on a grigri unless I'm trying to
| lower something. The correct technique is hold the cam down
| with your thumb leaving three to four fingers in contact with
| the rope at all time. The left hand is used to pull rope
| through the girgri to give rope to the climber, the climber
| already has to pull up a bunch of rope through a maze of
| carabiners and don't need the extra work of trying to pull it
| through a grigri.
|
| https://www.petzl.com/US/en/Sport/Belaying-with-the-GRIGRI
| 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.
| rhombocombus wrote:
| There's huge variability even in some of the gyms in the
| article, whether from site to site or inter-tester
| variability. Whether or not it improves safety, if it helps
| places like this stay open and solvent I guess that's a win,
| but I wouldn't rely solely on someone's passing a gym's test
| for me to let them catch me in a lead fall.
|
| I've also been failed in seemingly spurious details that I
| was subsequently passed on with different testers at several
| gyms.
| blackguardx wrote:
| Standards change and improved methods are discovered. In the
| 50s and 60s the "hip belay" was the standard and considered
| safe. Once ATC/tube style belay devices became ubiquitous,
| the "pinch and slide" technique took over. The "pinch and
| slide" technique you likely learned is no longer considered
| the safest method of belaying. The AMGA belaying technique is
| now considered standard and for awhile gyms would still pass
| "pinch and slide" users but I'm not surprised they have
| stopped.
| jmpetroske wrote:
| Safety standards do change for the better, but insurance
| and legal risks do have gyms on edge. I think his point is
| that gyms tend to be overly strict in areas that do not
| matter, but are easy to regulate/check. I.e requiring you
| have an unnecessary "backup" knot above your figure 8,
| requiring 2 Tri-locking carabiners for autobelay in
| response to accidents where people simply didn't clip into
| the autobelay, knowing your gyms mnemonic for checking your
| knot, and disallowing wearing a single earbud when
| autobelaying (saying you won't be able to hear if there is
| an emergency). These are all things I've seen required in
| gyms that IMO do not actually improve safety. Having
| friends that work in gyms, I've heard a lot of these
| policies are due to demands by insurance companies.
|
| Meanwhile, I very frequently see people belaying in manners
| where their climber would hit the ground if they fell
| (usually the first 3-4 bolts up). The difference is, this
| is much harder for gym staff to notice and correct.
| Furthermore, I'm sure most of these climbers are capable of
| using better technique and do so when taking a belay test,
| but then get complacent afterwards.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| You shouldn't be getting downvoted, this is sometimes true.
| Most often what happens is a junior staff member is overly
| rigid in applying what they were taught.
|
| I once almost failed a belay test because I did not know that
| gym's particular trick for "counting strands" to prove the
| figure 8 was tied correctly. I just know what a correct knot
| looks like after decades of tying them. Ultimately I asked
| them to check with a manager, who passed me.
|
| That said, I've also seen experienced climbers with terrible
| belay technique; catching them with a modern test would seem
| like a good thing to me.
| 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.
| johtso wrote:
| Being pulled up onto the air is not abnormal when
| belaying, and is a sign that they are giving a soft
| catch. Granted with a belayer who is much lighter than
| the climber this can end up being "too soft", risking a
| ground fall lower on the route. Something you'll also
| often see is unclipping the first quickdraw to give the
| belayer more space to "fly".
| watwut wrote:
| Yeah, but proper technique is such that your natural
| instincts taking over for a moment don't cause trouble.
| blackguardx wrote:
| This is why belaying a lead climber shouldn't be
| considered a casual activity. The belayer literally has
| the climber's life in their hands. In addition to violet
| jerks, the belayer needs to keep their hands on the belay
| strand even if hit by falling rocks.
|
| Also, use of belay gloves can help a lot and I think is
| more emphasized in Europe than the US.
| physicles wrote:
| Indeed. When I mentor new lead climbers/belayers, I point
| out that lead belaying should feel about as stressful as
| lead climbing. If it doesn't, you're not paying
| attention.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| Sure, but any safety paradigm that begins and ends with
| "(people) should/n't x" is a bad safety paradigm across
| anything enough people do enough of. It's probably easier
| to compensate for weight differences with a tether or
| weights than to convince people to spend long periods of
| time on high alert with low chance of incident.
| physicles wrote:
| In my climbing group, we consider a weight difference of
| more than about 25kg to be too dangerous when leading.
| It's definitely a safety issue for both climber and
| belayer.
|
| At two meters tall and 93kg, by necessity I own an Ohm
| (by Edelrid), which buys an extra 20kg or so of margin.
| exabrial wrote:
| This accident analysis doesn't seem correct. A GriGri sucked
| into a draw will automatically unlock the cam; there has to
| be a differential force between the top and bottom of the
| GriGri to hold the cam down. Some critical details are
| missing here, but nobody should come to the conclusion that a
| GriGri unlocks automatically if sucked into a draw.
| mmmlinux wrote:
| Is it common to just yeet your self off the wall like that with
| out saying anything to the belayer?
| amatecha wrote:
| Shouldn't matter, they should be expecting you to fall at any
| moment, as that's what happens when climbing
|
| If it's a planned descent, usually you say "take" or similar
| to have the belayer hold the rope securely and then you ask
| to "lower" so the belayer lowers you in a controlled fashion.
| amatecha wrote:
| Ah yeah I saw that video before, so bad. If I saw someone
| belaying like that I'd immediately call them out and tell them
| to hold the brake strand. Lucky this was even caught on video
| to prove what the error was. It's disturbing to see how his
| right hand still appears to just hold onto the gri-gri while
| the climber falls (rather than grabbing the rope). Inexcusable
| IMO, especially for someone who isn't a total beginner. There's
| no "people make mistakes" caveat here, that was straight-up
| dangerous technique, like driving a car with no hands on the
| wheel or with a blindfold on.
| 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.
| mc3301 wrote:
| Whoa, (indoor) climbing seems to have a rich history in
| Edmonton, and I had no idea.
| 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.
| lukeinator42 wrote:
| absolutely legendary. Like they would throw a concrete weight
| off the top of the wall, and you would catch it with 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.
| cheschire wrote:
| Ever seen a spotter help in a struggling bench presser
| with just a couple fingers?
| 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.
| stavros wrote:
| Jesus, what do you mean the cable broke? The rope itself got
| cut? Even though the device didn't fail?
|
| I'm really averse to the autobelay because I can't feel the
| "pull" of a human belayer, so this is a nightmare scenario
| for me.
|
| Then again, I'm sure that the autobelay is safer than the
| average human, even so, except I really trust my belayer.
| 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.
| mc3301 wrote:
| That could be said about a variety of athletic endeavors.
| Mountain biking comes immediately to mind.
| 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).
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Weekend HN is a different vibe. Much lower bar to hit the front
| page. Maybe because everyone is out climbing instead of reading
| HN.
| 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.
| normie3000 wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Maybe moving fast and breaking things is not always
| appropriate.
| ehnto wrote:
| > The market for climbing is built through reputation,
| tradition, & thus a visceral rejection of new ideas & methods.
|
| Every climber I meet is lovely, but there is your standard
| sports equipment elitism at play as well, not to be confused
| with the very real brand loyalism that comes out of trusting
| something with your life.
|
| I think if you are bringing a product into the climbing space
| you would do well to lead with a low risk product for brand
| reputation, something like a hangboard or training equipment
| perhaps.
| 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
| normie3000 wrote:
| > competition climbing aside, obviously
|
| You can add free soloing to the list as well.
| dgfitz wrote:
| I was top-roping in a gym once, about 40 ft up, my belayer said
| "one sec" so I stopped and looked down, they had __unhooked__
| their belay device, fucked with it for a bit, and reconnected it.
|
| I downclimbed, not the route just whatever holds were easiest,
| and left. I'd known this person for a few months and was
| convinced they knew basic safety. I was always kind of anal about
| safety, with everyone, so it wasn't a vibe I was giving off.
|
| That was my last time on a rope. Strictly bouldering now.
| scottlamb wrote:
| Terrifying!
|
| * Duh, you don't stop belaying mid-climb.
|
| * And why? Was it because something was uncomfortable (and
| somehow they thought fixing that was more important than your
| safety?) or because they suddenly thought the belay device
| was...not clipped into the harness right to begin with or
| something? Was it right when you cross-checked them prior to
| climbing?
|
| * And in saying "one sec" rather than a clear "belay off", they
| were minimizing the event at additional risk to you. No
| integrity there.
|
| I guess the only good thing I can say is that even if the belay
| device wasn't clipped into the harness, as long as the rope was
| wound through it properly, someone could still yank on the
| brake side and stop you. But obviously not take slack as you
| continued to climb, and from what you're describing I doubt
| they had their hand on the brake side as they futzed with the
| harness or whatever. So pretty weak comfort overall.
|
| I had the opposite experience once: while climbing in a park,
| my belayer sung a song that went something like "you're off
| belay, you're off belay, if you fall and die it's not my fault
| because you're off belay". I was pissed but what you're
| describing is a million times worse. My belayer was clearly
| being a dick but not so much that he actually stopped belaying
| and risked my life. Lyrics aside, he always used correct
| technique from pre checks through the whole climb, had
| practiced stopping someone from the ground if they lost their
| grip while repelling, came with a thoughtfully stocked first-
| aid kit, set up the climb properly with redundant webbing at
| the top, etc.
| highstep wrote:
| Good thing you werent about to fall off the route! The older i
| grow the more I've come to realize that its not uncommon for
| people to lack awareness about risk and consequences. These
| days it takes me many outings with a climber partner to truly
| trust them. This is why it always blows my mind when i see
| people going out on multi pitch climbs with people they've
| never climbed with before.
| necubi wrote:
| Interesting article! I climb at Berkeley Ironworks which is the
| successor to City Rock, but didn't know all of the history.
|
| The story ends in 2000 when Ironworks "represented the next
| generation of climbing gyms", but the trends have continued. IW
| is now old and grungy (I say as a complement) compared to the
| modern gyms targeted towards even more casual users.
| jerlam wrote:
| "Old and grungy" they may be, but Touchstone seems to be doing
| well enough to expand dramatically. They've got a dozen+
| locations.
| decimalenough wrote:
| For any other non-climbers wondering what exactly "the belay
| test" is: https://climb-va.com/gettingstarted/belay-
| certification/
| exabrial wrote:
| Holy macro, Safari Developers, please bring back the "disable
| javascript" shortcut in the develop menu for sites like this.
|
| You literally _cannot_ make the obnoxious video player go away
| because they are hijacking right click.
|
| It should not be this difficult to disable code execution.
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