- Check harness buckles are doubled over (depending on harness).
- Tie figure-8 with a double fishermans as backup. The American gyms I have been to require backup knots.
- Use a palm down belay style, the gyms seem to prefer the sliding hand technique where your dominant hand is always your brake hand.
- Don't take your brake hand off the rope at any point! If you do it is an immediate fail.
I used a variant of the palm down technique that requires you to be able to catch a fall with either hand as your brake. They didn't like it too much but passed me anyway. The palm up, thumb down method is very common in America, but I think it is pretty ordinary for top-roping.
3 comments:
Not sold on that second belay technique. With an ATC it means you are holding the brake rope forward for a lot of time, which means it is not locked off. Would work well with a Munter hitch, maybe.
I agree, but for lead belay it allows you to manage the slack a lot better than with palm down, so I like it better for that. Always thought palm down was awkward when you have to take in some slack on lead belay since you don't have the nice taut top rope pulling your belay device up into a comfortable position.
I've changed my mind again. I'm back to palm-down for lead belaying. Caught a few lead falls palm-up and it sucks.
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