Using a "Running Belay" to Simul-Climb on a Glacier has Pros and Cons

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I (try) to make it a point in the video to explain that a running belay has it’s place on a mountain but that it also has downsides. n my experience, the technique has been over used on climbs with either a misunderstanding or disregard of the risks that it places on a team. I think this often has to do with how a team, if on a glacier, often approaches steeper (but still moderate) climbing with a rope already connecting the group.

Imagine this situation: the team crosses a glacier in order to gain a ridge back. The team is roped up to cross the glacier. Now on the ridge back, there are no more crevasses as the ridge falls away on both sides. The rope team stays roped together and continues to climb the ridge.

This could be a good thing or a bad thing, and it all depends upon how the team uses the rope. There are basically three options: 1) we do nothing with the rope, it just keeps dragging between us; 2) our ridge has some rocky outcropping and we purposefully snake the rope from one side of the rocks to the other as we pass by; 3) we place our own protection (pickets or rock pro).

Both the second and third options are a form of a running belay. If we pass the rope over the left side of the rocks and then walk on the right side of the rocks, should we take a fall, the rock is acting like a friction device and is helping our other climbing teammates arrest the fall. If we place our own protection and clip the rope into them, we are providing the same benefit. If we do nothing with the rope, that is we aren’t clipping it through protection or weaving it around natural anchors, then all we’ve done is create a situation where a fall by any one climber could pull off the other climbers.

The downsides of the running belay options are lost time. That will be minor if using natural protection. It will be major if we are placing our own gear. But if we don’t want to lose the time, we’d be better off un-roping and climbing the ridge as independent climbers than staying tied together and not using anything to help a fall by one become a fall for many.

Now, let’s go away from the extreme example of already being on the ridge. What if we cross the glacier, start heading up the ride, cross the bergschrund, and are climbing steep but still moderate snow before we gain the ridge back. Well, we’re past the bergschrund (the place where the glacier is peeling away from the mountain) so crevasses are below us but not on the terrain we are climbing or on the terrain above. Is there any reason to stay roped up? If it’s so steep that falling is a real risk, we probably should be pitching out the climbing. If it’s not so steep to create an exaggerated fall risk, then do we need to add in the multiplier of a mistake by one will lead to a fall of many?

Of course, the alternative is a running belay, placing our own pickets in the snow to clip through as we go. But, again, the cost is time. A lot of time. So, we are balancing the risk of keeping us all protected from a fall versus the risks of being out and exposed to hazards and ice/snow melt and weather and the like by moving slowly.

It’s not a clear call. But too often I see teams just move right into the running belay without ever having the conversation about if putting the rope away is the better risk mitigator for the circumstance.

In the video, I mention that we used a running belay for some hard snow sections while climbing Denali (20.310’/ 6190m). The intersecting issues were that we were still worried about crevasses (we hadn’t crossed the bergschrund), and we had very hard snow on steepish terrain that would prevent a person from arresting a fall. The former meant we wouldn’t unrope. The later meant that we had a very real risk of one slip pulling down the entire team. So, we placed pickets and used a running belay. Keeping in mind that after placing our limited number of pickets, we would have to bring the team together to give the pickets back to the leader, we were moving very slowly: 250 - 300 vertical feet (up to maybe 100m) per hour. That’s too slow to do for long.

So, take a look at the video and keep in mind all the options when it comes to a running belay. It is sometimes a very appropriate tactic. It may not always be the right answer for a particular circumstance.