JosephH

Not at all, the seatbelts are backup just like a rope is when climbing. Back when I had a '63 Impala without them I had to rig them with Skyhooks under the seats for anchors and doubled 1" webbing up thru the seat/back. You guys clearly don't know shit about ALBs or driving in inclement conditions or you wouldn't be saying shit like this. These are compensatory systems which have really don't have the smarts to deal with the all the differences between wet, snow/ice, and black ice. The traction control system in the Ford is especially bad in terms of black ice and basically made the car completely undrivable in those conditions before I figured out how to turn it off. Sucks would be too kind in describing it. Toyota's is no better.

Wow, that pithy riposte is your response? Dude, it's your time to shine man, I'm waiting for your dazzling insight and / or devastating critique of any of the above. Come on now, as a biologist whom I assume can do more than count fish and sex geese, please tear that shit up and lay the real facts on me and everyone else here. Folks are pretty much fed up with my shit and you're the perfect guy to set me straight in all this business where I'm clearly in over my head. Go for it dude! What is the real story and what facts should folks know about the Peregrines, the closure, the law, and your agency's policies that keep us from climbing? Exactly why would a three month closure be adequate? What would be the impact of such a change on the birds? Hell, I'm dying to hear it myself...

You're serious? We've had three cars with ALB and I disconnected or turned off all three along with the traction control on the 2008 Ford Edge. There is no circumstance under which I'd allow those systems to be active in a car I drive.

The exact same thing can be done with less hassle and no device swap whatsoever if you just bring the second up on your waist keeping them on belay as they setup for the next pitch and then launch - doesn't get any simpler. The whole lazy, 'do a bunch of other shit' thing is a really bad mindset to establish and get used to - odds are fair sooner or later it's going to bite you in the ass in some way.

Does that mean mere 'development' was inadequate to the task and climbing now has to resort to all out 'construction'? Must be a real natural line...

My turn to ask if you're serious here...

It's how I second every pitch when I'm roped soloing.

I doubt that happens too often, but I can believe you end up with a bunch of folks over time who can't follow you. Belaying is also a lot easier if you don't climb with people who dog up everything and maybe that in the end is what we're really talking about in this thread.

Seatbelts are a reasonable backup system no different from a rope. Antilock brakes is another matter and is definitely designed to compensate for people who don't know how to deal with driving in inclement weather and skidding. I don't know a single soul from back home in Chicago who would buy a car with antilock brakes or one that didn't allow you to turn it off. The car I'm driving now has the antilock system turned off for exactly that reason - they suck and respond badly more often than correctly.

I'm guessing off hand that it's a good bet I rope-solo more than pretty much anyone else on cc.com. Roped soloing is another case of a calculated trade-off being made for a specific purpose such as speed climbing, etc. It also requires total attentiveness and non-stop monitoring of your device / mechanism of choice. If I needed encouragement or help dealing with problems while doing it I wouldn't do it - it's all about the purity of self-reliance.

Communication between a climber and belayer is optimal, but as you point out, not always possible. Part of belaying as a craft and skill is learning how to know what a climbers is doing by feel. By holding a very slight tension on the line you should, over time, start to learn how to visualize what the climber is doing based on the feedback through the rope. This is a lot easier to learn if you have a steady partner who's habits on lead you can become familiar with than it is with random partners. After awhile though, you should get to the point where you can have a pretty good idea at any point what's going on with an out-of-sight climber.

You're about a 100 million times more likely to be dropped by an inattentive belayer then you are because they got hit by a rock. You should consider working on that. I can stay sharp and attentive belaying over however many pitches I'm doing or I wouldn't do them. As to "new terrain", when I'm doing FAs I definitely want an attentive belayer. I don't even know quite how to respond to the "and having fun" comment; the idea that having fun and belaying might be incompatible when rock climbing is too scary to even having contemplated the possibility prior to this moment. Now that would make climbing so boring I don't doubt people would doze off...

No, that isn't correct and you're misinterpreting. I'm saying IF you are using or counting on autoblocking to compensate for some actual or potential failing of your, or your partner's, belaying then you should address the root problem and not attempt to compensate with some device.

No, we agree, I should have qualified the statement with 'if teaching belaying with a device, then...'...

From my perspective, and I'm admittedly very old school about it, if I need a backup to compensate for any aspect of the person belaying me, then I'm not tying in with them. The loss of feel and control involved with moving a belay from you to the anchor is simply unaccetable to me. I can see legitimate circumstances for making that trade-off relative to speed or weather on bigger walls and alpine, but that's it and it is a trade-off.

Funny, that's not what you take away from any of a myriad of threads on RC.com where they've even polled on it. Being dropped is incredibly common these days. I'd go so far as to say that, indoors or out, it's likely someone somewhere is being dropped every 15 minutes, 24x7 around the globe.

It's sort of like the old Monty Python line: "I was raped...at first.". Yeah, you're momentarily unaware at first, then you're looking at the cute girl's ass, then you're talking with your scene of friends, next you're getting dressed, eating, texting, and browsing. "Hey, STFU and pay attention" is my response to 'momentarily unaware'. Exactly, and if you aren't capable of keeping them on the rope then I don't want to climb with you.

Dead serious.

Nah, I pretty much explicitly reject the notion of safety being derived from belay devices. If a belay device is providing safety in some way it's by shifting responsibility from the belayer to the device (which is what grigris are all about). You're the belayer and responsible for belaying, not a belay attendant to a device responsible for belaying. It's a distinction that seems to be getting lost year by year to the point where being dropped has become a common experience in climbing. P.S. the best device for teaching belaying was and still is a stitch plate with a spring, which I believe is still made by ABC.

I just disagree with the premise is all. Again, 'extremely useful' is all about convenience to the belayer. Yes, I kind of despise climbing in threesomes, but even when I do it's one follower at a time. The only utility in autoblocking two followers is if they're going to simuclimb and that is an unwise expediency in every respect as far as I'm concerned - a deliberate trade-off of safety for speed. And I just don't buy into any aspect of the safety argument other than the part where it allows you to do a bunch of shit you shouldn't be doing at all. Get dressed, sort out your tie-in length, and whatever before you put someone on belay. It's like saying I could cruise the web or text on my iPhone safer if I'm autoblocking off the anchor.

Lame in every respect you just mentioned would be my response. I don't want my belayer getting dressed, organizing their song playlist, wiping their ass, picking their nose, or anything else, I want them belaying with a modicum of attention. Reprioritizing that for speed climbing is another matter. And please, if I hear the 'hit by a rock' argument I'll get ill. Again, from my perspective the perception that belaying is simply a necessary evil that can or should be dispensed with by delegating to a device is very self-absorbed and grigri.

I don't do alpine and I don't doubt that may be the case. At least it's an honest assessment of what's really going on and offering a rationale for why you might want to accept that reprioritization. In rock climbing I don't buy it at all and find it a really lame behavior.

I don't really get that? Autoblocking works really well. you can belay super fast and organize the rope with ease, all things with make the belay better and safer. There's nothing about it that makes a belay 'safer' - devices don't make belays safer, at best they make them more 'convenient' for belayers (as you also rightfully say) and therein lies my view of them being the height of laziness and disinterest in a second. Basically just a grigri mentality on an anchor and all about the belayer. I don't really think it has much to do with the attributes of this or that particular device so much as the pointlessness of belaying with the wrong size device for the rope you're using.

Oh, quite the contrary Kevin, you never have had an argument of any kind other than that the tourist trail should be closed, and I agree with you. Where you have no argument at all is in there being any rationale which makes the logical leap from that fact to an arguable reason why climbers should be allowed to climb as well. The fact that hikers can't position themselves on the face, and that there is nowhere on the South Face proper from where you can see hikers on the trail, are entirely relavant. Your argument is a purely numerical one and not even a good one there as it ignores line-of-sight issues. The birds do fine with thousands of tourists because those tourists never position on the South Face and never even come close to breaking the plane of the South Face. Figure out how to do that when climbing and I'm guessing you'd get your exception. Again, the closure isn't 'stringent' and is very much in line with the norm applied to such closures around the US. The trail is another matter altogether and is closed to both to keep people out from under the East Face roofs and because everytime a car parks down that end of the lot and they suspect someone, particularly a climber, might be on the trail then they have to insure that individual isn't up under the roofs or climbing. That's due to the history of climbers breaking the closure and it means the rangers then have to hit the boat ramp to check the face and possibly hike the trail as well. Bottom line is they don't have the manpower to be doing it so they closed it after having to chase folks (non-climbers) out from under the East Face and check on folks potentially poaching climbs. Of course, you don't go to Beacon to climb let alone walk the trail or base and I suspect Jim and everyone else will somehow survive such a savage deprivation and insult as well. In the end you can simply chalk it up to the long term cost of folks commonly poaching routes during the closure.

I dislike autoblocking or munters for any use in climbing outside of aid climbing and self-rescue functions. Particularly the munter which I find an entirely disagreeable thing to do to any rope other than goldline. Also don't like climbing in threes or the notion of needing a device to help you manage doing it. The whole 'autolocking' seconds off an anchor deal seems to me to be the very height of laziness and relative disinterest in what's actually going on with a second - never do it and don't care for folks doing it when I'm seconding.