- So the ultimate GriGri user question, if I hold a GriGri like this, or like this, or like this and I give slack, and the climber falls at that moment, will the GriGri lock or no? Let's find out. I've asked the same
question on my Instagram, and about 30% of my followers said, yes, GriGri will lock
during such use case, and I won't be able to hold the cam. Despite Petzl very clearly saying that you should always hold
the brake side of the rope, so many people use it in
so many different ways, (indistinct chatter) that I decided to make
a series of experiments to find out what happens
if you don't follow these recommendations. - [Ben] So you is the one who is falling. - Yes, we decided that,
that's maybe better. - You chickened out? - Yup, I chickened out. - Since you love falling,
it's going to be great no? - Yeah. (laughter) If I don't get older because
if this falls faster. - And before I begin a
quick and a bit scary story, which was the main motivation
for me to create this experiment, this video, and it happened about two
years ago in a climbing gym where I was teaching
two girls how to climb. And it ended up almost
in a fatal accident. One girl was about to clip while
her friend was belaying her and I looked into the belayer and I noticed that there is
not enough slack for clipping. So I advised, "Hey, give
a little bit more rope so that your friend can clip." And then I look up, the climber clipped, and then without telling us,
she decided to take a fall and that fall was nearly to the ground. And here is a picture from another angle of the same climbing gym. Notice the red line on the wall. It's about two and a half
meters from the ground. And the climber actually
fell way below that line. She actually stopped maybe one
meter above the ground or so. So luckily, I was actually holding the brake side of the rope as a backup, just in case, independently
that my belayer is belaying with a GriGri, who knows. And after the fall, my rope was tense. Meaning that I caught the
fall, not the belayer. Unfortunately I didn't
saw what was happening at belayer's hands during the fall. But my assumption was that
she just pressed on the cam without holding the brake side
of the rope because she had this bad habit from her previous teachers. And then I was just
left with the question, could GriGri have slipped or there was something else in that story? So the plan was to abuse GriGri- - Okay! Go when ready. - and have a second person as a backup and see what happens. The first experiment we did
was a top rope fall with relatively thin rope of 9.4 millimeters. And to be safe, of course,
we started with small falls and then we kept increasing
the length of the backup. (suspenseful music) (music continues) (suspenseful music grows louder) Until we reached some really big falls (suspenseful music) Then we also decided to try another very commonly used, or misused, grip on a GriGri. (suspenseful music) (suspenseful music continues) (music continues) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) So, a strong guy abusing GriGri while a small girl falling
on the top rope scenario would result into a ground fall if the strong guy would
not let the GriGri in time. Now what we if swap? Can a small girl hold the cam
while a big guy is falling? (suspenseful exciting music) - Oh! (exclaims) (laughter from below) Wow! (suspenseful music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) So, top rope scenario, even
a small girl can hold a cam while a big guy is falling. And it didn't seem that the
GriGri is going to lock in any reasonable amount of time. So the next question is, what happens during a lead fall? With the theory that during the lead fall, the impact is much greater and it should be much
harder to hold the cam. - [Ben] So how's your fear of falling? - No fear of falling in this way. This route. That's good. - [Ben] But you didn't
want to take a lead fall. - No. (laughing) So who is, who is going to
take at a lead fall then? - Powel? He said that
please! Dying to do it. - [Ben] Oh, you're dying
to do the lead fall. - Yeah, I'm dying. Literally. (Offscreen laughter) - You have good friends, Ben. (Offscreen laughter) - [Offscreen] Okay, one, two, three. (exciting music) - Wow! (suspenseful exciting music) (music continues) (music) (loud exciting music) (exclamations) (exciting music continues) (music) (music) - So we managed to do only two
tests with Anna holding the GriGri in such way, because she was not
comfortable of doing that. And it was slamming her hand. And in both of these tests,
the GriGri worked as intended, well the GriGri locked. But I was not convinced and
I decided to change her. (suspenseful music) (music continues) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (loud exciting music) (exclamations) So for me, holding the cam, no problem. I didn't even felt that I
need to press really hard. And for those of the
people who belay like this and they will say, that oh
I will just let go in time, take a look at real time
speed of the action. (suspenseful music) (music continues) (music) (music) (music) (music) So good luck trying to let go in time. - [Ben] So how was your fall experience? - Impressive. It's really impressive. (offscreen laughter) But it's nice. - [Ben] But the lead fall was like fast. - Yeah it was fast. I didn't have the time to sh*t my pants. (offscreen laughter) And now I'm back on the
ground so everything is fine. (laughter) - [Ben] You're next? You're next. - Really? Okay. - Good. So far we did all the
tests with 9.4 thin rope. So we decided to switch to a
thicker rope of 9.8 millimeters Mammut rope and see what happens then. The theory was that the thicker rope should grab the cam way harder. So first we repeated the top rope fall. (exciting music) (music continues) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) And there was no significant difference. The cam was still very easy to hold. And then the lead fall. - One, two, three. (screaming) (exclamations) (laughter) (exciting music) (music continues) (music) (music) (music) And the lead fall was impressive. Take a look at real time speed. (exciting music) (music continues) - [Ben] Do you think you
would be able to let go the GriGri if such fall would happen? - I hope yes but probably no. It's just a hope. It happened like in
the half of the second. So it's a lottery. - [Ben] Hmmm. Sounds good. (laughter) - Sounds scary. Sounds scary. Like you're falling for half of a second, another half of a second and
I would be on the ground. So again, maybe it's possible,
but maybe one time in the 10, it will never happen. - So to be clear, it's not a problem to press on a GriGri cam. The problem is that people do not hold the brake hand of the rope. If you hold the brake hand
of the rope the GriGri locks. If you don't hold the
break hand of the rope, GriGri doesn't lock. And if you don't believe me, test on your GriGri on your rope. Maybe if your rope is super
thick and fuzzy, it will lock. However, the day you
will switch your rope, you might get surprises. So giving the slack like this, while you hold the brake side
of the rope in your hand, which goes through a little tunnel, you don't need to press hard on the rope. It goes very gently between
your fingers. It's totally fine. And it also has another benefit. Let's say your climber is about to clip and you're giving him slack. And now your climber
decides that he can not clip and let's go of the rope and you need to take the slack quickly. Well, guess what? You already have the rope in your hand. The only thing you need to do is take. Now in the case where you don't hold the brake side of the rope, let's say you hold a GriGri like this. You give slack and now suddenly you need
to take slack quickly. What do you do? Take slack with the other
hand, this is uncomfortable. Let this go, and then try to grab the rope and take? This really sucks. Okay. Let's say you hold like this. You give slack and now
you need to take, now, this is a little bit faster, cause you kind of can just
move your hand forward and drag like this, which
is a little bit backwards. The hand is backwards. So
it's a bit more awkward. While in the proper use case
you give slack, you take slack, it's super comfortable. So. Most of the time belaying
like this works very well. And I use it most of the time. However, in some situations
it's not that easy. For example, if you are on a multi-pitch
and you have long loops of rope on sides of you, the brick
side of the rope will be heavy. So you will have a lot of friction to drag through the belay device. In that situation, belaying the GriGri the
same way you would belay with tubular device works better. So you would drag the rope
up and feed to the GriGri. Drag the rope up and
feed through the GriGri. This would work better. Okay. So far so good. Now the question is, what's wrong with this,
with no hands on a GriGri? Well, there is multiple
things that can go wrong. For example, if my climber is hanging on the rope while I'm sitting like this, and then my climber would
decide to pull on the rope. My first reaction is actually
to grab onto something. And then if my climber
falls at that moment, he would fall, the rope
would run through my hands. That would create extra friction. And it could be that it will be not enough friction
for the GriGri to lock. So I would probably burn my hands. Then let go. And then
maybe GriGri will lock. So keep your hand on the rope. It's very easy to do so
if you're just chilling, you can do like this. It's totally fine. If you really want to let go
of the arm, just tie a knot. Like so. That's it. If you mess up
something in this case, the knot will get jammed into the GriGri and then good luck untying it. I'm actually surprised how easy this rope goes through this GriGri. So no hands belaying. (whistles) Good. I'm almost sure you know somebody who needs to see this
video. So please share it. And also this video is part
of Belay Masterclass series, where I teach belay
and climbing techniques in great details. So if you want to learn more, check those videos out
and if you want more-er consider subscribing. And special thank you for Mammut and for everyone who is supporting me in creating these videos, it helps a lot. And if you want to join that, here is the link to my website
with all the information. So thank you. Thank you. And enjoy climbing.
So, you can still kill your climber with a Grigri if you're motivated enough?
I don't really get it – surely it's obvious that holding down the cam will prevent a grigri from locking? It's mildly hard but definitely possible to override the cam when a climber is hanging on a locked grigri, so preventing a cam from locking is pretty easy.
This is a very good video. I think it's well worth watching to anyone who uses a gri gri. Even if you have been climbing for many years it's well worth it to watch.
Tl;dw they do some testing with various sizes of people and fall lengths and show that if you grip the grigri without a hand on the dead rope (even using the petzl recommended thumb over method minus the hand on the rope) then the grigri will not lock. In all cases the rope shot through the device.
Lol @ the condescension in these comments. As a newer climber I personally love this series because it helps reinforce everything I've learned in person at the crag. Sure, it isn't delivering groundbreaking conclusions - it's exploring basic grigri usage - but hearing things in a few different ways is good for retention.
Awesome video!
So basically don’t hold the grigri in a way that we have always known you shouldn’t hold it if someone is falling. Genius
So they tested 'what happens if you hold down the locking mechanism' rather than 'what happens if you don't hold the rope'...I'm interested in knowing how likely it is to have the GriGri fail to engage without manual intervention (IE is the 'assisted brake' vs 'auto-brake' distinction anything more than their legal department covering their asses?). Seems obvious that a sufficiently determined person could hold the cam shut, which is all that they demonstrated.