How I self belay top rope with the Shunt

today I'm going to make a video that you guys have been asking for me to remake for a very long time a few years ago I made a video about how I do self dealing using the pencil shunt many of you watched it and liked it but there were a few things that I wasn't happy with about it and so I actually ended up taking it off YouTube in order to make again and because I think I felt that if I was going to talk about how I do self-being I wanted to have more of an in-depth chat about about safety because like all types of climbing leading torque roping soloing is a dangerous thing and there were some aspects of the previous video that I'd like to go through in a bit more detail one of those is actually the device that I use itself which is the pixel shunt and now there have been some really serious accidents with this where people have been self-being on a top rope with this device and they've actually managed to detach the device from the top rope altogether and have a full-on rainfall from quite high and be really seriously injured and obviously people have been having these accidents for years and years and years I've been using Pet Solution for nearly 20 years and was obviously aware of people having accidents with them as they do with older laces but given that they get shared more widely on social media these days people have sort of been asking me a few times since why do I still use this device so I'm going to get into that when we get down on the rope and talk about how I mitigate the risks of using this device and why I prefer it over other devices some people will still use things like the petso grigri other people will use other devices like a mini fraction or a title of two are going to some of the differences between them I haven't used all of them but one of the one of the main things I want to say in this video is that self-being climbing is dangerous it's hazardous and you have to mitigate the hazards with careful planning and knowing exactly what you're doing and knowing the strengths and weaknesses of everything about the system not just the device you use but the whole of the Rope system and a really critical point I want to make in this video is it's not just about the device it's about how you use it but okay enter devices and this device the shunt once we get down on the Rope but for now I'm going to set up a top rope obviously rigging the system with the Rope is slightly different depending on the size and angle and direction of the climb that you're actually wanting to work on so there's no set formula a lot of this is about being inventive and improvising as you go along within certain boundaries if you like so I'll just say something about what gear have actually brought with me so I've obviously got my harness I've got my static rope behind me there that's uh I've set up one ability just on a tree but as soon as we go over the edge I need to reposition the Rope both directionally I need to get it slightly more to the right and I also need to get it right in the right spot so I'm going to reveal it straight away as I go over the edge and that's one of the key aspects of doing this for Edge protection and also directional control over the where the Rope actually sits but I should say something about what I've got so I've got a grigri for upselling down I'm on a single rope I'm on a 11 millimeter static rope a very beefy solid rope uh mainly because I'm using the shot that's absolutely key and I'll get into that in a bit more detail later I've also got a jumar with a foot Loop which is about a meter long so that I can use it for moving up the Rope if I need to which I may well do because I'm going to be working some moves that I want to kind of do over and over or do a bit cleaning or whatever I've got a few beefy sport climbing quick draws which are just easy to grab and you'll see why um I like them for quickness of use when I'm reviewing I've also got a few extra screw Gates which I'll use for Marie Bailey we've got pixel connect which is actually just for hanging the camera that you're watching this on on the wall um and tightening it up against the tripod so that's not really relevant to the system itself I have got a wire brush for cleaning the roots put that on my right side doesn't need that yet and left handed I've got a handful of light quick draws which I can use for extending Runners and the reason I brought my kind of Lights try climbing quick drawers is because I'm not going to be grabbing these these are for for leaving behind above me on the Rope and I'm just minimizing weight two more screw Gates it's good to have plenty of them for making belays five is probably a lot more than a need though and then I've got a rack of cams normally I would obviously take some wires as well but they try to climbing but I've been on this route before and I just happen to know that I can do all the rigging with cams and that's just kind of quicker and easier most of the protection scams I need to actually suss out exactly which runners go where so I'll get these in my harness the last thing I've got that's important is a root protector um I think possibly arguably the most risky thing about top rope self-peeling is Edge protection frayed ropes above you when you're bouncing on the working moves repeatedly so I would always bring at least one of these and if I know I'm going to be going over a couple of edges I may even bring two or maybe even more um I've only got one today because it's really one pitch of this two pitch climb I'm going to focus on so I'm just going to hang out with my harness ready for the edge I think we're ready to go let's go down the Rope I'm just AB sealed over the lip of the Crag onto a small ledge that's just underneath the lip and the climb is right below me here it's actually slightly towards the camera here towards my right and so I need the Rope really to be about here and not a way over here where it is at the moment and so I'm going to do a revealing that's the simplest way to direct the Rope now I could just put in a runner in this crack in front of me here and just clip the Rope to it but then above me it's still running over all those rock edges at the kind of rough ground at the top of the Crag and I don't want that so I want it to still be attached to the belay here but I don't want it to be rubbing as I'm half sealing or jogging up at the end of the day so I'm going to put a runner in there and we'll be late to it I'll just show you how to do that green camel in there probably right in the back very good this all happens that the edge of the Carabiner is not kind of over the lip there so I'm just gonna extend it a bit that just takes it over the edge that's why these extra quick drawers are kind of useful so now I need to attach the Rope to it with a knot I'm still doing a quite a good ledge here so I would confidently fill up the slack and take slack here and do it standing on the Sledge such that if I were to lose my balance and fall off I'd fall down about however many six feet but I wouldn't go all the way so I'd be confident enough to do that but if you're actually hanging and you can't stand with your weight off the Rope that's where the sport climbing quick drawers come in I clip a couple of them to my building I'm going to take all three of them actually and then I'm going to clip myself direct to the runner but not to the bit I'm going to make the Norton because I need to keep that free and then I can put my weight on the actual Runner itself and that allows me to unweight the Rope I'm not gonna unclip myself in the Rope just going to unweight it but before I actually slacking off the Rope I would give that a right good bounce test I mean I'm absolutely certain that's a good cam and and if it wasn't I'd back it up and make it like an actual UA with multiple placements but I know I don't have to do that so what I've done there is just clove hitched the Rope uh to that Runner and the Rope above and I'll just pull that bit potato yeah actually is virtually tight but not quite there's just a smidging of slack in it so that if that single piece where to pull out then I'm not going to drop anywhere I'm going to drop like a few centimeters hardly anything and but obviously I would only do this if I knew that this was sold I'm actually just going to extend it a tad more over that edge so the rope's not rubbing on anything there we go that's better right now I can tighten back up my Gregory just check that I've got the amount of slack that I'm happy with here and I can uncut myself still we put drawers and I am ready to keep Absalon down so I've just I've sealed down the wall and you can see I've swung a bit to the left and I've grabbed onto a couple of jobs there and then I've just made another review because I need to move the Rope a bit to the left so I've been a car in a horizontal break there as you can see and I could have just clipped that uh directly into the Rope I'm breathing but because it's running over an edge up there which have not got the road protector on I don't need to bring two all I can do here is I can just do another reveal it so I've clove hitched it the Rope above it's not tight but it's not far away from it so it's not going to be rubbing on that edge so I've used slating the cool effect sketch you just to write an attention such that if I was abseiling or something below and that can work to come out I'm not going to drop anywhere literally going to be a centimeter or two just on the stretch of the Rope so just as I've absaled down the sled system a little bit further and looking over the edge I've realized that I do actually need to be slightly further to the left again but I don't really need to make another reveal it because that one's already taking me over the edge above I feel like I just really need a directional to hold the Rope a bit to the left so there's a little crack just in here I'm just going to place a cabinet there and I'm gonna clip one second I'm just going to clip the Rope directly into it if I swing around you can see that that Runner it's just holding the Rope to the left and now I put this rope protector to protect that if I was bouncing up and down on that thing that would destroy my rope very quickly one of the most dangerous things about doing this and now I'm directly above where I need to be for working the Crux moves of the spine and that's the plan for a minute all right so I am hanging on overhanging terrain now and I'm starting to swing away the moves that I want to work are down there you can see the chalk pools and I'd prefer to be up tight against The Rock but this is the problem with working overhanging roots in general that's why in general you would work supporters on the leads rather than on top rope because it's just easier to stay in contact with the rock so I've actually put in a little Cam and a flake here and I'm going to clip my rope above my grigri into that just to hold the rope in against the wall but I'm actually going to clip it in short directly into the loop there and I'm going to clip that straight into my rope like so okay and now I'm hung right against the wall which is where I want to be but I'm still happy that my rope is not rubbing over any edges above I can still see that rope protector and I've got it on a cinch to make sure that it can't move up or down so we've made it to the foot of the root and the rain's come on but not to worry if the wall should be overhang enough that it's not a problem and so now we've got the Rope set up I know that I can bounce it on this rope for hours and the edge above is protected it's in the right place it's pulled into the wall with directionals and I'm ready to climb so the next and one of the most important things to consider is the actual self belay device itself so for self-feely climbing for about 20 years I've used the petrol shunt it's not designed as a self-belay device and it's not recommended I'm not recommending you do either and one thing I definitely do strongly emphasize is that all self-being um whether with this device or with others is pretty hazardous and there are ways to make it go wrong such that you might have an accident however I think that if you know the limitations of whatever device you use I don't see this as being any more dangerous than leading with a partner or actually even top roping with a partner because the thing is other human beings as a belay device are hazardous as well and have their weaknesses actually my worst accident with climate involved being dropped by mobilia accidents happen so initially I used to use the peso grigri as a sale clearly device and it doesn't really work that well it's not designed for cell viewing either obviously it's designed for viewing a leader so with the pets of grigri you know you just clip it into your harness as you normally would have your screw gate done up I would probably use a meal one rather than a screw gate because that screw gee if it if it's moving around can get undone and if you're using the wrong type of Carabiner you can end up with a grigri on the gate and Levering it open and actually opening the device so if you're using the grigri to self-belief then obviously as you're actually climbing up you have to dig a hand off every so often and peel the Rope up which is fine if you're claiming on not so difficult terrain but I would almost always be using this on difficult terrain that precisive why I need it is because I need to actually practice hard moves before a lead and I don't have access to have um abelia or constantly I don't live in a place where there's lots of climbers and so in order to get enough practice time on projects that's actually why I'm doing it in the first place so the obvious weakness with the pits of Gregory although it's used by thousands of people all over the world all the time is that you're only ever pushing that part of of the locking mechanism down for it not to walk and it's less likely to happen if you're using a big thick beefy static again it's an 11 millimeter static rope that I'm using but then if you claim and you don't actually take it in for too long you don't really want to be taking a big fall into a static rope anyway but anyway a thick rope is going to help but there are a number of ways where this can go badly wrong and one is that the lever which is very easy to move can get caught either it can get pulled sometimes by the dead rope like that and then if the dead rope somehow hooks hooks over it or that part gets caught in your clothing or something like that and then you fall innovator won't walk or if you fall off and push the device like that in panic it won't lock and it doesn't take long to drop uh 20 30 feet you know high enough to actually hurt yourself and before you actually realize what's going on and take your hand off often especially for climbers who are not super experienced and a little bit nervous the instinct is to panic and keep panicking and not to really think I need to take my hand off it that is a little bit counter-intuitive but easy to get wrong when you get afraid and you've actually just fallen off that also obviously happens when you're dealing another climber and I used to coach a climber who had very seriously injured himself when um his beelia at the climbing wall had panicked he fell off and immediately got pulled forward and just out of instinct did that and the device didn't lock and he dropped to the floor and it hurt himself very badly I've also seen um someone forget to clip into both leaves of the actual grigory itself so the out of quirkness they clipped and like that but I had only clipped in to one leaf of the grigri um and it just it just sits here quite the thing they climbed up the route got to the top sat back on the grigri it still works fine it still will even hold you but will open like that and you can see that there's nothing holding that rope in and thankfully as they sat on the rope and the Gregory flicked up they noticed and grabbed back onto the beeley so there are ways to get yourself killed was a grigri as well then it's the title of two I'm not brought that with me today but for every second I might talk about the past love too and why I don't use it this device is the Tesla 3 and a lot of people really like it for top rope soloing I still favor the shunt over this device for four or five reasons which I'll just tell you about now the first of them is kind of insignificant it's just that the device is a bit heavy and I do like my climbing you have to be light especially for climbing on hard routes but that's a that's a minor thing it's not really important the more important reason I should also just first say that the major advantage of this device is that when you solo and you climb up the rope and then you weight the device it has a handle so that you can abstail back down so you never need to change the device for the Gregory so that does have a safe safety aspect to it as a positive because you're not having to change devices so that's a an opportunity to make errors and however there's a couple of things that I'm not so keen on with this device and specifically related to how it actually engages so if I just open it open the device up see it's got two leaves and if I just bring it over so there's two uh metal uh cinches that when the Rope is running up the way it runs through them and when the device is weighted it rotates to put that turn in the Rope and that's what actually makes it look there's also a third piece which is this plastic cleat here which is just gently spring loaded so that just puts a bit of pressure on the rope that just creates a little bit of friction as the Rope slides up so there is a little bit of friction there even with the Rope sliding up that will pull on you as you climb but it's not that much but that is also important in encouraging the device to rotate as you weight it and then and then lock so one thing is that that plastic cleat could wear down but the other thing is that if I just do that can you see that it it catches on the metal piece below and it remains open so there's not that friction and it's sliding up and down the rope and I'm not really too sure if that will affect its ability to actually catch you in a fall but the base of it just protrudes slightly out the the back the device there because that's underneath my screw gate and I can't see it I can't easily check it with the the little plastic cleat engaged there I run the device up the rope and then it will stay there and if I wait the car to be done as in a fall it's essential that the device rotates round in order to actually engage and catch the full so if I just in if I just catch that plastic cleat on a bit before you can see the device just drops really down the Rope that might be different if you're actually catching a fall like that it will still look however it doesn't take much of a force like if you were falling kind of forwards onto the Rope so that even if I wait the Caravan but I just push it down it still Falls very freely down the rope without engaging it has to be a slightly outward pull on on the rope for it to actually engage so I just feel that that's just not Like You Feel It Go immediately as soon as that thing releases then it catches much better I just feel like that's just a little bit easy to not catch you you really has to have that outward pull the other aspect to it is that both leads are not a closed eye for the carabiner to connect and and that just allows you to um for rope access purposes and that allows you to always leave the device and clipped to your belly Loop and you can't drop it so when it's actually weighted like that if you press that lever and try if you just have probably easier I was hanging in my harness doing this but if you actually try to release the leaf and rotate it out while it's weighted it won't do it it has to be in that orientation but that spring-loaded button is very very easy to push in and I just kind of wonder if if it's between your legs and let's say you had a cam or something that rotated into the the inside of your leg and just pressed on that that it could just release it I mean I don't think it would but it's quite easy to to release and um I don't know I just kind of would rather that was a close look which is actually where the old version of this device had the other aspect to it is that um because it needs to rotate in order to engage if the device is on your Billy Loop and it's down between your legs if you actually close your legs together it won't engage in your drop that's slightly analogous to the shunt which is if you grab it with your hands and don't allow it to engage then it'll you'll just drop but with the possibility of both legs or one leg holding the device in that orientation and allowing it to go down and I'm not so comfortable with now you can get around that by using a chest harness and holding the device right up here and but for working hard routes that becomes a little bit more impractical if you're wanting to do kind of the more athletic moves that you would do on hard Roots which is why I'm using the device in the first place so many people love this device and really trust it and I just don't favor it myself and overall I favor the Pet Solution although both have their pros and cons with respect to safety and usability there's also the mini traction I've never used that for self-healing partly because I've just got into the habit of using the shunt and getting to know this device very well so I can't make any comment about that my preferred device is the pencil shunt it's very simple it's not designed for self-peeling so this is off label I'm just showing you what I do I'm not recommending you do it it is dangerous I always connect it to the Rope with a meal on a big Jiffy meal one rather than a screw gate because it's very easy for a screw gate to get undone and it's also easy for the shunt to turn with the screw gate sideways like that and if the shunt is sitting on the gate it can lever the gate open if you fall and unclip you so I always use the meal one and I always use an 11 mil an 11 millimeter rope because it's less likely to actually disconnect itself from the Rope the shunt can disconnect itself if it's upside down so obviously the way the mechanism of the shunt works as you climb up the Rope it pulls the lever arm up the way it just gently releases the spring this is spring-loaded here and it allows it to slide up the rope without a border but if you then wait the lever arm because that's what's connected to your harness then it locks it and to actually detach the shunt from the Rope you push that lever arm up and you just keep pushing it all the way through such that this Gap at the bottom opens and you can take the shunt out however there's a way for this to happen when you're actually connected to it which is to get the shunt upside down it's not particularly easy to do but if you flip this on that way can you see that the Rope actually jams in there um and if you then fall off and pull you're now pulling the lever arm up to open the shunt as you fall off and that opens that just enough that if you're using a skinnier rope or actually with enough Force even an 11 mil rope it can detach the shrink completely and there have been accidents with this over the years so the absolute key thing is to not get the shunt upside down ever and that does take a little bit of vigilance so there's a few ways where this can go wrong I'm going to show you one which happened to a friend of mine using this shunt with a screw gate I don't actually know if I can even reproduce it you've got the screw gate to flip over the top of the shunt I don't know what it must be a different shape from this one so that it held the lever arm jammed open and fell and dropped to a stopper knot there's also another way which is that if you fall off again if you instinctively grab the shunt you're opening the lever so if you grab it it just won't lock and you'll just drop um to your stopper nut or to the ground so you obviously when you fall off you have to instinctively let go of the turn which seems a little bit counterintuitive some people also instantly grab the Rope I sometimes do that as well um f as a gentle fall and I actually know that I'm strong enough to grab an 11 mil rope and hold on but I also still push like that and what that does is it it allows the shunt to look so it just actually helps helps me to also see it as I fall off and make it look I want the Rope to go away from me that's what I don't want to do is to get the head efficient caught in my clothing or in anything else so I keep other paraphernalia on the harness away I don't like having anything else on my belay Loop to complicate things so I think the real risk with a shunt and I'm going to move it back to the meal one since I would never be using it with a screw gate the good thing about this is it takes ages to do up you have to do it all the way but then you know you've not forgotten to do it because you've got this process that if you've not gone through the laborious thing of tightening it up you know you've not done it so that never happens so as you're climbing up a risk is that the shunt gets caught in it'd have to be the real risk would actually be in my right leg because the shunts on the left rope so if I rock over if I put my leg up like that rock over can you see that the head of the shunt can get caught there um and flip upside down now it wouldn't normally stay upside down because you're waiting tail end it should normally sit back like that but if you've either not got enough weight on the dead end of the rope and we'll talk about wait a second or the Rope itself is too thin like using I don't know like a 10 mil or even less than 10 mil sport rope which is pretty light then it can be just not heavy enough to force the shrimp to keep in the same direction then it can easily flip so it shouldn't really stay flipped upside down but you'd really have to stay vigilant that you're not getting a shunt flipped It's not catching on anything it could catch on the rock it could catch on your leg but what you want to avoid make sure you avoid as you you don't ever end up in that position again like it's quite hard to actually get it to stay there it should flip back round but if it happens dynamically enough as you come off or if you were to grab it like in that position and and then therefore keep it held upside down then you'd be in trouble the basic rule is at all times it has to stay upright I'm not relying on a shunt ever I'm relying on my own vigilance to make sure that it stays orientated like this however the risk of you still making a mistake um and causing the shunt not to look it's never zero and that's something that I accept so before I start climbing I need to weight the Rope and I'm going to put quite a lot of weight on it to make sure so I'm going to tie an overhand knot in it and then all the spare rack that I don't need the best part of half my rack on there already and I'm going to put my shoes on there as well and then if that's not quite enough I might uh coil up the rope and use the tail end of the Rope as well to weight it and what that does is it just means this should see that's not enough weight yet I need more so you should choose what device you're happy with all of them that I know of have their hazards some would prefer them more than others my preferred one is still with shown in part because I know it very well um and it's very simple so the ways that you can get it wrong are pretty simple and mainly getting upside down or grabbing it and I've practiced over a long time first of all in the safety of the ground then with a backup and then on its own so I don't use any other backup device and so I recognize that if anything goes wrong with this system then I'm going to fall to the ground and so that's a hazard that I'm happy to take on and I'm happy to mitigate that with my familiarity with the system and a very strict discipline to make sure that the shunt stays in the correct orientation and I don't make compromises elsewhere with things like the Rope or the waiting of the Rope or anything else this first section of the route goes diagonally away from me and so what I've done is I've put in a couple of cams here at the base this could also be further up through it doesn't matter and and I'm going to clip the Rope too then such that the Rope is going diagonally there's a couple of ways you can do this you can either close it direct to the Rope which keeps it tight that has its own difficulties because uh because the Rope is then taut it makes it much more difficult to transfer onto a grigory to Absol back down you would actually have to down playing with the shunt which I'll show you how I do in a moment and another way is just to clip it as a runner but then make a stop or not I don't know if you can see that but uh I've put in an overhand just below the runners so that I'll swing away but not that much so that's gonna those Runners are gonna keep my rope pulled in to the right here so that I can't swing too far to the left now I'm just going to get my Roshes on and let's get some climbing done so these moves at the start are actually quite difficult and I could probably just climb through there if I really wanted to but that's actually not my goal here my goal is to work for them so they're easy I need to get them dialed The Rock's not particularly clean and I need to suss out the sequence there's not a lot of tension in the Rope to keep it the holes are over here I want to be here and but I can get over there by just rocking over onto my dead rope and just almost kind of sitting on it and then I can inspect the holes that's not very good and see what I want to do and just give it a clean I don't really let a minute go past without just having a visual check on the shunt is that meal one still done up is everything cool with my harness yep that's all fine and I'm just checking I can still see that rock protector up there just to double check on the system because at this point this is where you get absorbed in the climbing and so I just thought it's just a habit you get into I'm just checking is the system still fine before you disappear back into concentration again I'm not trying to come a bit lower now but as you can see my day drop has grown horizontally so I'm actually gonna use my jog as a handle I'm going to pinch the shunt drop it down a bit slide it to the right I'm actually going to put my leg over the Rope to help me get it back down oh okay done if the Rope is going straight down then I couldn't just release the shunt to drop down and try to move again I'd have to put my Jug on and hang off that in order to slide this hunt down but sometimes actually claiming on overhanging terrain is easier the Rope is held in horizontally from a piece of gear because it's going sideways but it would also be the same if I was on a very steep overhang so I can actually put a leg on there lean back a bit so I'm hanging off the the top rope part and then pinch this on and just drop down like that and it makes it really straightforward to go back down and try a section again okay so now I've finished working those first few moves I'm going to move the camera and myself a bit higher up to the Crux and I'll talk a bit more about using the shunt I'm at the Crux of this first picture of the route when I come up here I've double checked that my I can still see my rot protector and everything is cool with the Rope above me it's not running over any edges which in my opinion is the main danger with doing this type of climbing and I've actually rather than cleaned up because of the camera with me I've just jumped up the Rope so I've just um stood in my foot Loop like that push the joomer up I've taken the shrimp ready to pinch it like that if you can see that and then as I stand up in the foot Loop a pinch up in the front and just slide it up then to open the shunt slide it up that's how I've jugged up and to go back down I just pull the trigger on my joomer drop it down a bit get my weight in the footwork pin to shunt drop back down so that's how I move up and down the Rope easily if I want to switch to the grigory to add seal back to the floor I'll just show you how I do that so I would get my quick drawers I placed two of them on the top side of my daily lift there clip them into the base of majuma and just slide that up a bit and then add slacking off the shunt so that I drop down onto my weight onto there and then all I would do with our attached my grigri obviously before I take the shunt off that's pretty crucial because that's still what's keeping me safe here so I'd get the screw gate ready on my fuel it from my Billy Loop sorry but attach the grigri so put that in screwed up the screw gate so now I'm good on the grigory and then I would take off the shine and cut myself from the tumor and I would have seal down to where I want to go but because I I've set up my system to just move up and down this sort of 10 15 foot section I'm not going to bother doing that I can very quickly move up and down just using the shunt that's just if you want to finish take a break or get back to the ground for whatever reason but I'm actually not going to go to the ground again today I'm going to work this section and then I'm going to go up so I'm back on the shunt before I do anything else I'm just going to have another double check that I'm happy with everything in my system and then I'm going to just slide that up a bit come off the gym or get these quick draws out the way because I don't want anything interrupting my system here can you see that below me I've left a runner clipped into the rope and all that's doing is just hold it just pulling me in slightly if I take my feet off you can see that it holds me in if that Runner wasn't there I would just drift away from the wall slightly that just allows me to inspect this bit of rock use the Crux move on this project and try it repeatedly um but obviously when I'm finished trying it I'm going to move up the way then I'll take these Runners out and I'll just continue to climb um the other thing I'm going to do before I start claiming is put in a stopper knot in here but it just gives a layer of protection in case there's anything that interrupted the shunt and if you fail onto it and it didn't look and you dropped you'd be dropped well you dropped to that Runner um no it's possible that the shunt would still actually break because it's not designed to take a dynamic fall I mean I don't know if that would happen or not efficient hasn't walked then you're dropping that's disaster stations that's something you just don't want to ever be possible the name of the game here is not to ever let that happen in the first place by keeping your system nice and Simple and Clean and that's actually one of the reasons why I don't use a backup because there's that gives the downside of you relying on one device one thing I mean I'm relying on one rope anyway so even if I have a backup I'm still on one rope you could also have a second rope I have done that once or twice when there's lots of edges that I can't protect but it gets to be a bit of a faff most of the time uh the trade-off of safety that I like is to have one rope one device that I know very well and there's no complication so it takes me a nanosecond to look at that and see that everything is fine with it and when and I do that all the time constantly when I'm actually claiming so every time I do I'm moving I look at my feet I look at this shunt as well I do it so often that I don't even realize I'm doing it and but if I ever look down and I see that shunt just caught in my trouser or my harness or something and it's just pulling it slightly to one side then I discontinue the move or a correct to shunt before I keep moving up as we described earlier we never ever want to get to a situation foreign okay so let's see if we can do these moves and just to reiterate um aside from vigilance two things that are preventing that shrink from being able to go upside down as I'm claiming are one the 11 mil beefy heavy rope and two the amount of weight on the sun below me so I've got quite a few kilos on there I've got my boots and more than half a rack and I've got the tail end of the Rope coiled up I would definitely not use a thinner rope like a thin sport rope you know or even a medium sport rope [Applause] ah that's Savage that crimp oh no man no no no oh nearly [Applause] okay so my camera ran out of battery this is actually dead to move I don't know if it got it or not but I did manage to do that Crux move and then I've moved up I've stripped out all of my rebellies and the wedges down below me there um and I've come up to try the cropped moves of the second finish foreign to get friction it just can't be bothered getting The Jug off your harness for just two seconds to go up like half a foot then it's just a quick way of doing it always work the top out I just was trying to move to the hole here and I pulled it off in the hand as I was reaching for the top of the crack but then not only I would have taken an absolute monster so yeah always get the top out wired or the easy bit or whatever saves your life a few times that's better before we move on I just want to show you how I set up the Rope on a few other routes with different logistical challenges that people often ask me about as with the rest of this video and rope solving in general I'm not recommending you do it the same way as me the hazards involved would not be acceptable for some and they may not have the necessary skills to mitigate them the first example illustrates this well this is my root name a sign on Ben Nevis which I made an episode about last year here I'm trying to smoothly link the whole claim without resting in preparation for leading it a couple of people commented that my last stopper note in the Rope below me is a long way down and they felt this is risky to link the pitch in one I'm not able to take a hand off for long enough to tie an overhand knot in the rope and so I do it without it's certainly a hazard that if I fail here and the shunt did not look falling all the way down to that distant stop or not would not be good however the presence of the north isn't the only way to mitigate this I simply don't claim the same way as I would if the stop or not were right below me I'm even more Vigilant than usual that the shunt remains unobstructed and is in the correct orientation and would tend to climb the moves in a conservative manner with a margin of control similar to her would if it were leading and this is the more important point I am preparing to lead the claim which has almost non-existent protection with a significant chance of dying if you fail on lead in this case the very modest increased hazard in linking the climate one on the shunt without tying backup notes is massively outweighed by the need to be certain that I can claim it comfortably on the lead with our margin this illustrates perfectly the trade-offs in risk management and Track Climbing and mountaineering working with a small hazard in one part of the process with mitigation in place allows you to reduce your exposure to a much bigger Hazard elsewhere in the process your judgment on that may be different from mine and I hope that your judgment would be not declined name at all it's not something I'd recommend for all but the most committed of climbers this claim is called Keystone another claim that I made an episode about last year here I've clove hitched the Rope to Runners at the back of the roof and also at the lip with a rope protector on the lip as well and the Rope clip to some but not all the runners in between with a bit of trial and error I can find the right amount of tension in the Rope so that I can climb the moves freely without the Rope pulling me but also not drop down too far if I sit on the road coming back across the roof to try again is pretty simple to strip it all out at the end of the session I just switch back to the Gregory and aired across the runners in the roof to get out if there were any runners on the roof I could lure myself out from a runner at the back of the roof Pull the Rope through and then retrieve the runner from below all a bit more advanced and again I'm just showing you what I do not recommending it finally this was working an overhanging 9A sport route called hunger it's about 70 degrees overhanging I needed lots of days on it and it's not easy to find partners for this crack and so I went to some extra lengths to refine my rigging here I've clove fetched the Rope below me to a bolt with a carefully adjusted amount of slack to strike a balance between falling too far away from the holes to be able to pull back on but not too tight that the Rope pulls you and next declining impossible this also took a bit of trial and error as I got closer to linking the whole thing I even set up a transfer from one shunt to another to get around the risk of swinging outwards and hitting a boulder that's just out of shot if I had been on a single Lane which was not keyed in below me that's the only time I've ever used a shunt without the malion to connect so instead used a black diamond gridlock screw gate this took a fair bit of thought and fast to get right and it's not something I would do routinely I just wanted to show you how you can get arraigned logistical challenges with rigging and still make the climbing at your limit feasible again though there are plenty of ways to get this wrong and I think lots of climbers would rightly consider it not suitable for them so last drop of the day it's getting kind of dark I've just come back to my last rebelie so I'm doing this one-handed so sorry if this is a bit shaky I'm going to connect a quick draw to myself and now I've got my weight off the Rope so I can undo this full Fetch and carry on so I'll quickly undo the core Fetch with two hands okay so with that done let's close hitch out my rope's going back to my tboa just over the lip of the cragler and all I need to do now that my weight's back on the front is strip out that Cam and top it so that's getting pretty dark here I'm just heading home for a cup of tea again I want to reiterate that I don't recommend you do this any more than I recommend you do leading or free soloing or anything like that you've got to know that your system that you're happy with both the limitations of it and the risks of it you can try and mitigate those stress to a certain extent but not completely and there are other people who do who use different setups specifically different devices from they shouldn't here and but I still favor the shunt in part because that's what I'm used to but I do like it but whatever system you use whatever device you use make sure to practice it carefully make sure to check everything all the time and and know where it is likely to go wrong and really protect against that so be safe and enjoy your top ropes all the way

Channel: Dave MacLeod

Views: 74,503

Keywords: self belay, self belay top rope, self belay technique, shunt self belay, taz lov 3 self belay, taz lov 3, minitraxion self belay, rope solo top rope, grigri self belay

Id: q4N2WGcABLo

Length: 48min 0sec (2880 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 07 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/Altitude3003]

This is a great video, I would never in a million years use a single Shunt like he does but he outlined very clearly all the potential failure modes and how he mitigates them (also for other common devices). The important thing to note is that he is an elite athlete that climbs E11 trad, so he definitely has way above average ability to keep in control and vigilant on the equipment at all times while climbing. With a setup like his, you are just one little mistake or panic moment away from taking a ground fall (e.g. grabbing the Shunt, or having it catch in clothing or rotate upside down).

I am nowhere near his ability (and neither are 99.9% of climbers) so I would never climb without a backup device, personally I use a Trango Vergo with a MicroTrax backup.

Both devices have potential failure modes (the Vergo works by rotating an pinching the rope similarly to the Taz Lov3 shown in the video so it the same potential issues with forward falls or getting caught between the legs, and can have some potentially fatal interactions with carabiners as shown in this Yann Camus video, while the MicroTrax can fail when clothing or debris gets between the rope and the teeth) but the likelyhood of both happening simultaneously is low enough for me to feel safe while climbing and allow margin for mistakes or freak accidents.

Even with redundant setups and backup knots, as Dave said in the video it is very important to understand the potential failure modes of the equipment you are using and remain vigilant.

Even if I would never use his setup I am glad he uploaded an improved version of the original video that got taken down, as there is a lot of useful information about rope management, working on overhanging terrain and moving around on the rope.

If you TRS it is definitely worth a watch even if you don't (rightfully!) intend to use the Shunt.

[u/TrollStopper]

There are so many many different TP belay setups and devices out there; this clearly has worked for him and he's got two decades of success (or should I say lack of failure) to back it up.

I will argue this though, all the potential hazards he listed using a Grigri can be simply mitigated by having couple of catastrophe knots once you're a few metres above the ground.

In terms of taking the slack out, if you can't free up one hand for a split second every metre or two, the route is probably too hard for you. How are you supposed to place gear and clip draws?

The downside is obviously you'll have to use a dynamic/semi-dynamic rope and it could stretch too much on a long route.

[u/[deleted]]

The channel Yann Camus Blissclimbing has some videos on the shunt and how it has failed in real life, as well as some alternative devices to use. We can probably learn just as much from the mistakes of the average climber as the expertise of a pro climber :)

Peronally, I use a combination of grigri and petzl asap for lead rope solo, and either a jumar and microtraxion or a jumar and grigri for top rope solo. I will sometimes LRS up an easier route to then traverse into my project, build an anchor and then TRS the project. It's a hassle compared to having a belayer, but it works :)

[u/andrew314159]

Thought folk here might find this interesting. Also interesting Dave still uses a shunt. I can imagine some here TRS when working a project. This is a new video since he took down the old one.

[u/notmydrugdealer]

Reading these threads has made me realize I am willing to take quite a bit of risk compared to other climbers on this post. I might have to reconsider the risks I'm willing to taking. I only say this because I have done 100s of laps(mostly slightly overhanging terrain) on a Petzl rescucender and i'm interested to hear what people think about using it for a TRS setup.