In reply to Chris Craggs:
My recollection is fairly certain (as above) that the group of climbers we were with in Llanberis started using the Salewa Sticht belay plate in the summer of 1970. It had come out earlier in the year, and reached the main British climbing shops during the year. I think the precise reason we started to use the Sticht plate in August 1970 was that they had just arrived at Joe Brown's shop in Llanberis, and the first climbers to use them (like John Syrett) found them to be a fantastic step forward. I'm fairly certain that they similarly arrived in the main London shops (eg. Tony Willmott's YHA and Blacks) around the same time. I went to Cardiff University in 1969 and am fairly certain they were available at the main climbing shop in Cathedral Road by the autumn of 1970 (It would be interesting to hear recollections from any of the old timers in the South Wales Mountaineering Club about this). When I moved to London in autumn 1972, and started climbing with the Imperial College MC and the London MC, I have no recollection of them being behind the times with this.
For Alpine climbing (depending on the route) where we did not use double 9mm ropes, and where there was snow and ice, we used figure of 8 descendeurs for a while/about a couple of years (but not for long, because they caused very bad rope twisting), and good old waist belays on easier pitches or while moving together/ belaying for the odd obstacle. The early Sticht plate gave problems with frozen or snowy ropes, and was also problematic for abseiling for the same reason.
I held many leader falls with no problem at all with the old-fashioned waist belay (sometimes not even using belay gloves) between 1968 and summer 1970, particularly from autumn 69 to summer 70 when I was climbing with Tim James, who fell off a lot – he was very bold. The most extreme I remember was when he fell off Noah's Warning on the Cromlech in the sleet in March 1970, and his sole runner came out and he ended up about 25 feet below me with the impact coming straight on to my waist.
Post edited at 09:28