Can Tunnel-Up belay method Fail? Testing the Limits

all right so here is the question if I'm taking out the slack while using tunneling method where I loosen my brake hand to keep sliding it up the Rope what would happen if the climber would take a fall at the moment I'm bringing my brake hand up would I react in time and grab on the Rope to catch the fall or imagine a distracted beginner using this method [Music] how sketchy is that now an interesting fact is that in some countries this tunneling method is a big No-No while in other countries it's actually the way you learn to blame so to find out how risky or maybe not risky this method is I needed to push it to failure it's like if you want to know how safe the Carabiner is you break it to maximize the chance of failure we used a skinny 9.0 rope combined with a massive whipper and I tried to time my Brig hand moving up as they saw the climber falling down [Music] I quickly realized two things first that it's really hard to precisely time my hand going up as I see the climber is falling because the things happen really fast and also if I see the climber is falling it's very easy for me to grab on the rope and the chance of failure is pretty much zero So to avoid me fighting my instincts I decided to not look into the climber so I will be not looking I will be just moving the hand okay sorry for the hard catch that's okay that's okay so we did a multiple of these Falls and I can say that it still was hard to make it fail because I could clearly see the Rope dropping down in front of me during the fall kind of giving me a heads up with the fall is coming and intuitively I was already prepared to grab on the Rope so I kind of tried to resist grabbing on the rope and just keep moving my hand up and down up and down until the very very last moment but still no fail then we came up with idea to imitate a clip drop where my climber was tugging on the rope and taking a fall so I wouldn't be sure when the fall is happening however it still was pretty easy to catch them all because I could still distinguish when the Rope is being wiggled and when the actual fall is happening so I decided to do something that I wouldn't recommend doing and loosen up my brake hands grip to make it a bigger tunnel as I'm tunneling up thank you and this time my hand was moving up in a perfect moment when the fall happened and my hand was pulled up quite a bit yeah this time I felt that my hand was going up when the fall happened and I felt a little bit of slippage from my hand so a little bit more sketchy this time but still in control there is no way I would drop you here no because it's like it slips a bit and then it slows down like yeah so it gets easier and easier yeah it gets easier and easier yeah okay so that was my experience and what was more interesting is to change me to somebody less experienced and belaying with tubes how long have you been climbing uh three no yeah two years and a half ah so you've been climbing for two years yeah yeah yeah one of six most motivated all right so we started with a small normal fall where she was looking into the climber and as there was no problems here we moved on to our experiment we started with medium sized fall and the catch was okay however if we look into slow motion you can notice the Rope slipping through her hand three times until she finally manages to establish a full control and here is another one and the same story real life catch looks okay haha however slow motion shows ropes slipping through her hand which is a little bit worrisome but no fail so far my face is gonna be how was that I was dead so since that was good we increased the size of the Fall [Music] so despite the fall being bigger the catch looked very similar to previous Falls and the ropes lippich looked also very similar it could have simply been the result of her getting used to these catches you notice them the Rope going down yeah so you know it's coming but when it's coming it's very now because we do a lot of times I I can know more when it's coming so it was time for a clip drop or a rope wiggle and fall [Music] this time the catch had a little bit of panic and again a little bit of rope slipping through her hand however she still did a good job and managed to catch the fall it was tricky like yeah I don't know but well then you're holding the Rope so we did multiple more of these Falls and the worst of them was this one where the Rope was slipping so much that entire backup slipped through until the hand reached the knot so chances are it could have slipped even more yeah this is so was the Rope sliding through your hand or no yeah a little bit yeah that was the pulse good oh so good nice to know that the stopper knot was there we're rolling rolling have you played with this thing uh no no never something similar but not a chew back what's the similar thing you believe with um the cubic which well this is a too big yeah um yes once or twice once or twice yeah so he is going to be going out that way and I'm the B layer so I'm here the only thing is I don't know which side to be using okay I have it like this did you felt the Rope slipping through your hand or no I feel like I did so it seems that she did a great job at grabbing on the rope in time and the Rope was not slipping through her hand however her hand was pulled up towards belaying device a lot that is worrisome but you still have all the backup in front of you also I did but yeah I think I caught it like if it was slipping maybe the slightest bit and I just grabbed it like that so yeah okay wanna try again sure you can tell I'm much more prepared now for this inevitably it didn't slip [Music] okay didn't slip through my hand I caught it that's the thing you hear it yeah you hear it sliding through here in your hand or my hands grips already a smile you're already having fun yeah it is fun but it's like towards the wall and I'm like oh yeah the fall is big so yeah it's because I don't use these usually I feel a bit more confident right now going through this experience and knowing that yes I can react in time now before we go to even sketch your experiments I wanted to say a special thank you to Mahmoud for supporting this video and also I will be visiting their headquarters or their lab and be testing some interesting stuff with climbing ropes so if you have any questions about climbing ropes write down them to the comments and I will pass those questions to The Experts and now back to our experiment and when he falls can I take it yeah when he falls do whatever you want to do foreign [Music] [Music] I don't even know very well but I tried to grab but my hands slid up hit on the device and then I tried to still grab it but it was too fast it was already on the knot and so we had a fail which would be catastrophic in real life scenario however before the war happens in my comments maybe you want to consider hearing my takeaways so first of all we pushed this experiment really far way more far than I expected that it's gonna be needed because normally in real life if you would see the climber starting to fall you would grab on the Rope way before the impact would happen even if you're a very slow person because the time it takes from the moment the climber starts falling to the impact is between half a second to maybe even a full second on a bigger Falls now for those cases where you cannot see the climber experience plays a big role all and here are a couple of tips how to make this safer so first of all don't make it a big tunnel actually it should be as small as possible and you should feel the contact of the Rope on all sides of your palm when you're sliding the hand up also if you just took a lot of slack out tunneling method is really not comfortable and you would have to open your hand way more to do the tunneling however if you take small amounts of slack now you barely need to open the hand and this is way more easy also if you're in doubt or you're a beginner as I already mentioned in my belay devices video using the pull break under slide method it's really great way to learn the feeling of sliding the hand up and once you do this many many times maybe at some point not bringing the left hand down and simply just sliding the brake hand up is gonna be already very natural for you so if in doubt use any other method to make it safer another important thing with tubes is that they grab harder if you bring your brake hand closer to yourself because that tilts the device and creates extra friction so if the fall happens you want to bring your hand close to yourself and push it down this is very strong position in other words if you're caught in this position do not try to fight this pull of the rope in the belaying device instead bend your bicep and push it down so you want to go this way now where tunneling method really shines is in combination with assisted playing devices it basically allows me to do less hand movements as I'm playing and give small amounts of slack take smaller amount of slack so it's way more comfortable and precise in contrast to doing something like this and then if mid here I need to give now the slack so to close I'm neither encouraging nor discouraging the usage of this bling method I simply wanted to share with you my findings and you can decide what's best for you and if you cannot decide what's best for you maybe it means that you need somebody experienced guiding you and also don't forget that you just watched the YouTube video I'm not a team of experts I don't know every single thing and yeah take everything you've seen with the grain of salt and be kind in comments section because I read all the comments and you guys fight a lot there

Channel: Hard Is Easy

Views: 115,151

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Id: 03ext7Dahxo

Length: 13min 49sec (829 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 17 2022