Belaying Someone Twice Your Weight

June 2014

Climb Dogs Training

Hi Steph!

My name is Emily from California by way of Seattle. I’ve been climbing since I was a teenager and admiring your writing and your climbs basically as long. I’m also a lover of dogs–the photo of you and Fletch was the reason I picked up your first book. 🙂 I have a kind of weirdly specific question – I hope you don’t mind me asking – but I thought I’d write and ask your advice. Maybe some of your other readers are in a similar position!



The situation is: my partner learned to climb in the past few years and we had an awesome summer of climbing planned out. He learned to lead this year and has been training in the gym. The problem is we have a huge weight difference – almost 100 lbs – and I’m not sure I can belay him safely when he’s leading. We tested this out in the gym, with him taking a planned fall from above the last clip, and he would have pulled me to the first clip if our backup belayer hadn’t stomped on the rope. One solution is for me to just lead all summer, but he’s so enthusiastic and psyched about everything he’s learning that I think it would be a shame for him not to be able to do awesome (but safe!) stuff outside. For belaying single-pitch sport climbs, my inclination is to throw some rocks in my backpack to make myself heavier and build myself a loose anchor so that I can give him a controlled catch without flying all the way to the first clip, but I’ve been reading up online and it seems many people think anchoring the lead belayer is always a bad idea. I’ve always climbed with partners bigger than myself and I can catch someone who’s probably 70 lbs. heavier than me with confidence, but 100 lbs. without some backup spooks me. What do you think? I know there are some great and tiny female climbers out there – what do they do? Thank you for your thoughts and for being a climbing and writing inspiration!

Emily

Ps. Here’s a picture of my partners, Isaac and RB the dog – maybe a distant cousin of Cajun 😉

Hi Emily,

I never thought of your idea before, of putting rocks in your backpack, and it seems pretty clever. If you do still get yanked, though, it could be kind of unpleasant with a pack full of rocks on your back. But it did make me think it could be really nice to wear a weight belt to make yourself a little heavier while you belay, unfortunately this would only be realistic at a place like Rifle where you have a 4 second approach, because who wants to carry a 30 pound diving weight belt up to the crag.

Here are some thoughts for things you might want to consider trying:

-When I’m belaying someone significantly heavier who is likely to whip, I make sure I’m standing directly under the first bolt or piece.

-I also make sure I’m wearing solid approach shoes, laced up, rather than sandals or clogs.

-I think it’s a very good idea to anchor yourself (but it can be challenging to find an anchor that’s exactly where you want it: i.e., directly under you while you are standing almost directly under the first piece). Still, I would take an anchor that is a little off to the side or back over no anchor.

-I would recommend that your partner stickclip the second bolt when you are belaying him, to avoid a potential ground fall and the dreaded dingdong effect where he falls at the first bolt and pulls you up and you smack into each other.

-Use a grigri.

-Have someone stand next to you who is ready to grab you when your partner falls (requires full attention from both of you).

-Make your partner lose weight, and you eat lots of cookies 😉

I’d really like to hear from other small/big partner combos out there, to see what ideas other people have come up with too.

Have a great trip…and no dingdongs or groundfalls.

Steph