My name is Jason Montecalvo with Sport Rock Climbing centers and today we’re learning how to safely climb an Indoor Climbing facility, remember, rock climbing is inherently a dangerous activity, you need to seek professional help with our certified instructors before engaging in this.
Now I’d like to show you the Full system in Action, in terms of using a Climber, a Belayer, and a back-up Belayer to safely climb indoors At this point, we’re going to need to accomplish our safety checks and we’re going to do that by, again, utilizing our ABC’s; A- standing for Anchor, making sure that the anchor is tight, my stance is correct and the Carabiner is locked; next she’ll check my Harness, making sure that it’s snug and closed, work our way up, checking my Carabiner to make sure it’s attached to my Belay loop, next making sure that my Carabiner is locked and last, that I’ve hooked up my Belay device correctly with the rope caught into the Carabiner as well as the break coming out of the bottom of the device or away from my body. Next we’ll go to C, C for Climber. First I will check that our harness is snug and all of our buckles is closed, next I will make sure that she’s tied in through 2 points of contact, being her crotch loop and her waist loop, I will work my way out making sure that her figure 8 follow through is tied correctly with 3 sets of parallel lines, and then I’ll make sure that her back-up knot is finally tied correctly as well, with an equals and then the cross or the X on the other side, leaving a little bit of extension for her double over-hands safety knot.
At this point we’re done with our ABC’s and we’re ready to climb, utilizing our correct belay commands. The first command will come from my climber and she’ll ask a question “I’m Belayed?”, once the rope is tight I can reply “Belay is on”. And now she’ll ask me one more question “Climbing”, “Climb on”. At this point I’m going to be taking up the slack as she climbs by using our method of Poke, Pinch and Slide, keeping the rope very tight as my back-up Belayer allows a little bit of slack in the break as well, so he can catch the Climber in case I have a problem with my break hand. I want to make sure that I keep this right rope tight the entire way up and if she ever needs a rest, “Take”, she’ll say “Take”, I’ll take out any of the stretch, put the break on and hold her up. If she needs a minute or two to shake out, she can do that, and whenever she’s ready to continue on, “Climbing”, she’ll say “Climbing”, get back on the wall and continue climbing as I pull, pinch and slide the slack that builds up as she ascends.
As she’s going up, my back-up Belayer continues to pay full attention with two hands on the break, putting a little bit of slack in the line there and making sure that he has two hands and ready to catch at anytime.
My stance is correct with my right foot ahead and my left foot back, since I’m a left-handed Belayer; nice job, keep using those feet, very good. “Falling”, now she just said “Falling” and what I did there as a Belayer is I immediately went down to the break and caught her, generally think about ta4king any of the stretch on the rope, just wanted to catch her immediately. As soon as she’s back on the wall, she’ll say “Climbing”, she’ll say “Climbing” and she’ll continue on and I’ll continue my process of pull, pinch and slide, never taking my break hand off the rope, which is my left hand in this case.
Nice work, and we, of course, need our back-up Belayer to be paying full attention and not to get caught up in watching the climber as entertainment, but he is there for safety as well, so full attention by myself and by my back-up Belayer is necessary. Once she has reached the top, she’s just said “Take”, I’ll take out any of the stretch, I’ll put two hands on my break to appropriately lower, I’ll tell her “On me”, which will basically tell her that I have the break, she’ll get into lowering position at this point.
Lowering position looks like a big uppercase L, meaning that her legs are out on to the wall, the soles of her feet are flat onto the wall and she’s leaned the back into her harness. At this point as I slowly release the slack, she will walk back towards down the wall, before doing that I will tell her “Lowering”. “Lowering”, she will slowly walk controlled down the wall; she will not bounce or hop, so this can be a very, very safe lower. My back-up Belayer is slowly giving me a slack to feed into my device as I need to lower her; he’s maintaining two hands on the break as well as myself. A nice safe speed to lower your climber is extremely important in climbing, especially as we get towards the bottom where the ground is coming up at her. At this point I’ll let her know the ground is there, and once she touches down, I will feed her a little bit of the slack to make it comfortable for her to untie and I’ll tell her that I am now off Belay.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services