Rock Climbing Safety and Rescue: How to Escape the Belay
(Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links I’ll receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. This helps support the channel and website and allows me to continue to make content like this. Thanks for your support!!)
We started this series on rock climbing safety because - well - we have to be pretty serious about it. Frankly, I believe every climber should be serious about it, but it becomes even more prominent in my mind now that I’m getting my kids out in the vertical world.
Of course, there is the emotional component of being a parent and wanting to keep your kids safe. But there is also just the practical issue that the kids aren’t really equipped to be active participants in mitigating their own emergency situation (if that should ever happen). So, it’s on me, right? The layers of safety are all on me. That starts with being conscious of the environment I put them in, choosing he right crag, lessening the outside distractions, etc. All the things we talked about in our first video in this safety series.
And like we talked about in our videos about ascending and transitioning to descending the rope, we can use some basic skills to further create a positive and supportive environment by creating the ability to “meet a child” at a tough point on the climb to coach or even just be a reassuring presence. Sure, the kids will eventually need to be able to gather themselves on the wall without that support, but that doesn’t need to be forced. They will want to do that anyway as they push their comfort zone further and further out.
But my responsibilities don’t stop there. They continue all the way to being able to deal with an injury or other emergency situation, even if it happen on the wall. This latest video takes us through step one of that unfortunate scenario. And step one is getting me free from belaying duties while also keeping my climber secure on the rope. This is where my “nice to have” elements of creating a supportive climbing environment for my kids collides with any climbing partnership. Every climbing group should know how to at least do this step: get out of the system so you can go get help.
Sure, we may want to add in additional skills in rescue and first aid, but at the very least, we all need to be able to go get help, and this is how you do that. Nothing else can get done without this step, as the rescue sequence is:
Escape the belay (get out of the belaying system without putting the injured climber above in any greater risk)
Ascend the rope
Transition to descending the rope (without putting the injured climber or you in any greater risk)
Get the injured climber on your descending system and take them down with you.
As always, you need gear that you can rely upon to do these things, and I’ve covered a number of impressive and versatile items throughout this collection of videos, including these which I personally use:
Petzl Grigri+ (new version)
Petzl Tibloc (new version)
Sterling Hollow Block (19 inches)
Mammut Dyneema Contact Sling (120 cm)
Mammut Togir 3 Slide Harness (new model)
So, we continue walking through these emergency steps and the skills that go with them. They might be skills we never want to have to use, but we have a responsibility to each other to be capable if they should ever be needed.