UKH

For the last few years we've worked on figuring out everything about Soft Catches in Climbing falls:
youtube.com/watch?v=bnJnduOQNAY&

Let me know if you have any comments / questions as we're still working on Continuations to this project.

Enjoy Climbing,

Ben

This is really interesting; thanks for sharing. Could you comment on how much rope age/compliance would impact on the catch? 

Hey, I only did, one test comparing forces on Old vs New ropes in this video:  youtube.com/watch?v=5gyt46i4c4E&

So not good to generalise out of one test, but even tho older rope performed slightly worse - the difference wasn't actually that big that you would feel in practise.

But I would be curious todo more such testing

As a relative newbie, your videos have been extremely helpful in my climbing journey over the last two years - Thankyou!

From a trad perspective, I suppose that I'd love to know how this affects the forces on the last piece of protection, if you think that might be different to the forces on the rope, or affect the chances of gear popping. I suppose it would be hard to draw conclusions from, as placement is overwhelmingly the bigger factor.

Be interesting to see the effects of rope drag on the forces involved at various points and if there is any benefit in trying to give a soft catch when there is more drag than usual

Fantastic work btw well done

As always, really great stuff. Thanks for posting the video here. 

Nothing that I didn't already know or at least suspect after nearly 3 decades of climbing, but it is always amazing to have hard data to back up otherwise subjective opinions. 

Good belaying is hard, really hard. The more stuff that puts out that message along with information on what climbers can do to improve, the better.

Like most climbing instructors, on general courses I never have the luxury of enough time to specifically coach and perfect belaying. However, I always try to get people to understand that 99% of climbers are not truly expert belayers but that's not a problem if they accept it, reject any complacency and are always trying their best to improve and perfect their skills.

The main points that I took away (from this video & your follow on video) and that I will now be more confident in disseminating are:

- practicing soft catches is crucial (for all climbers). 

- a small amount of slack (where appropriate) likely improves the ability to coordinate a soft catch. 

- all methods work to give a soft catch, but jumping may be easier to correctly time than stepping in. 

- proactively bending the knees (which is something I have done for years) can improve soft catches when other methods face limitations. 

Nah, it isn't. It seems that your average Brit thinks it is, but it really isn't.

Is it a skill, yeah of course, it's just not that hard.

Could it be that you’re one of the very small minority who‘s already achieved the necessary skills and reflexes, through learning by doing or otherwise? Most of us don’t practise this actively, and since some of the conclusions drawn from Ben‘s data are counter-intuitive, it‘s unlikely that we‘d ever have been made aware of them otherwise. So I‘d go along with Mark‘s summary, with many thanks to Ben for his hard work on this and all his other videos.

A very small minority? Really? Maybe I just climb in different circles.

Yeah I've belayed thousands of times and held hundreds and hundreds of falls, it's just not rocket science to be safe and effective.

Which bits of data do you think are counter intuitive?

I think Ben's videos are great, my comment is no reflection on them.

You are correct, if you're holding literally 100s of falls, it's really not that hard to get good at doing so. 

The issue is that the vast, vast majority of UK climbers just don't do that, for a whole variety of reasons including the prevalence of trad climbing, our climate, style of crags and a move to training indoors on blocs/boards as opposed to routes. Few climbers (and I'll include myself in this currently) are anywhere close to holding the number and frequency of unexpected falls that are necessary to acquire and maintain great belaying skills.

For example, even at moderately hard and popular UK sport crags (e.g. The Cornice in good condition with 30+ climbers there) I never see a massive amount of falling off happening. Conversely at many steep crags overseas it is instantly noticeable that you'll see far more people taking multiple or large falls. 

So what you think is normal absolutely depends where and who you climb with. 

It is also even rarer for people to have held enough large trad falls to become a confident belayer in that regard. Big falls are infrequent and often noteworthy enough to make the news on here https://www.ukclimbing.com/videos/categories/trad_climbing/james_mchaffie_f...

Have you done any research on the use of an Ohm? Does it simply simulate having a heavier belayer? Does it have any special risks?

I did, I'm still planning todo more testing before making a video.
But yes it can help a lot with big weight differences, at the same time it has it's own annoyances:
Sometimes it's hard to disengage it after the climber wants to continue climbing.
And if the belayer is too far from the wall it can grab so hard that the climber will have reaaaaly hard catch.

Never had to hold a trad fall in all my years of climbing

That doesn't make it difficult though.

So you are strapped to a full on hanging belay in the dolomites say. The bolts are 20' apart. How do you give a soft catch?

The only way i can see is by using a  figure of eight to belay with. So perhaps the problem is really that autobelay devices jam too abruptly. 

Another Excellent video! Great work as always!

Naturally that will be harder than when you stand on the ground. But similar principles apply even here. You have the correct amount of slack, and you also ”jump” to give a softer catch. Easier said than done, but still possible (EG. Pull up from your tether). Also, one thing to Note is that people tend to hang really close to the belay, ergo no ”slack” in the system. If you were to extend your tether say to 1-1.5m below the anchor, you have much more possibilities to more (up) towards the belay and the first qd clipped on the climbing rope. Naturally this approach also has it’s own problems, but there are also ways to migitate them.

How not 2 did some of these measurements. It was mostly about the for es on the climber. But I do recall that they also measured the peak force on he top bolt. And also simulated rope drag and so on.