Since the 90s, there has been an ongoing issue of climbers making the dangerous transition from climbing walls to the outdoors, and later, from walls to outdoor bolted crags, and then to trad. The risks involved, and the need to rapidly develop the skills necessary to be safe and safeguard others (such as placing your own protection and building belays), don’t need repeating here. Most climbers are lucky enough to find more experienced climbers, be they friends or paid instructors and coaches, to make that leap less risky, giving them at least some foundation to build on as they progress. Luckily, all climbing skills needed for trad are intuitive and so require little to master, but mastered they must be.
One tricky aspect of this transition that I’ve noticed more and more, both with novice climbers and even climbers I’ve viewed as experienced, is the problem of using, or an ability to use correctly, double ropes. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard someone say something along the lines of “He/she can’t use double ropes, so we need to climb on a single”, or “don’t let X belay you, they don’t know how to belay”, which is code for “they don’t know how to belay with double ropes”. Then you hear the stories of people constantly being short roped, being stopped mid-crux while a belayer tries to take in on the wrong rope, or failing to feed slack as a crucial piece of protection needs to be clipped. Then there are the stories of people letting go of one rope (the one through all the protection), to take in on the other (that has no clipped protection), or letting go of both ropes, their brain processing power seemingly overloaded (this could also be an issue to do with a lifetime spent using GriGris). I also know people who have taken long falls, or falls longer than necessary, when someone is either not holding the ropes properly, or so distracted, fighting their belay device, that they failed to take in slack, or brake in time.
What’s worse about this is how common it’s become and accepted that people who can’t belay, or are unsafe, are just part of climbing. Someone belaying you on a climb, be that hard or easy, should not be a game of chance. Would you let them drive you to the crag if you didn’t think they could really drive (they said they could, but your eyes tell you they can’t), or let them cut your hair if they were all fingers and thumbs, or invest all your savings if they had a much higher tolerance for risk than you, plus it’s not their money?
I like parachute analogies, as parachutists have their shit together. Although it’s not the same as having someone you don’t trust pack your parachute, as a parachute has to open 100% of the time, while you might never fall, it’s more like having someone else you don’t fully trust pack your reserve.
It’s not so much the problem of shit belayers, it’s the problem of thinking that this is acceptable.
Worse, people seem to have this fucked-up notion that it’ll hurt someone’s feelings if they call them out on their lack of skill (“look mate, one of us is going to die here if you don’t get your shit together, and it isn’t going to be you!”), or refuse to climb with them. And then this is an all-too-common issue, where using two ropes is much, much safer for the leader, but only one is used, as two ropes are one too many for the belayer.
This has to change.
Why are two ropes better than one?
I’ll keep this short:
In any life support system, you want redundancy. If you only have one rope, and it’s cut over an edge, or chopped by a falling rock, you no longer have a life support system (if this happens during a fall, then you’re probably going to die).
If writing is a war against cliché, then climbing is the war against friction, and nothing beats friction better than two ropes.
A single half rope is far more dynamic (stretchy) than a single rope, meaning it gives a piece of protection more time to absorb the impact force of a falling climber. This is why people can fall on a sky hook rated at 250kg, and it can hold them when using an 8mm rope, but find the hook bends out and fails on a 9.5mm rope. When climbing trad routes with lots of marginal protection, such as small nuts, a double rope can make the difference between a placement that holds and falls, and one that fails (the rock breaks, or the wire snaps).
Two ropes can give you a form of real-world equalised placement you cannot produce by equalising placements using slings. By clipping two pieces on separate ropes that are close to each other, you produce a ‘baby bounce’ catch, where the impact force is shared to some degree by both pieces.
When climbing close to the ground, or above ledges or ankle-breaking features, a double rope system limits the length of fall if the highest runner fails, as with a single rope, the length of rope between the top and next runner creates twice the fall distance (at least), but a much lesser fall with two ropes.
If one rope is damaged, you can still climb on the other one.
Two ropes give you the ability to rappel down full-length climbing pitches if you need to retreat, or lower double that distance in an emergency (you can lower an injured partner 120 metres using a Monster Munter, then pull up the ropes and make two rappels to reach them).
I could go on, but I won’t. Yes, single ropes are simpler, less to think about, and people climb some crazy stuff on single ropes no thicker than dental floss, but they also place very little protection, don’t fall off, and understand the risks.
How to learn to use double ropes?
Even though the world has become increasingly ticketed, in that you need a ticket to do this or do that, to show you’re qualified (to own a ticket), one thing that climbing lacks is a rock-solid way to train and then demonstrate belay competency. We simply go on trust, even if our instinct tells us that most people we see climbing are not that trustworthy (isn’t the key to any climbing partnership, both that you can lead and follow, but also the rock-solid certainty they can hold a fall?).
Seeing as most climbers are now starting at the climbing wall, with the approval of the wall, the best place to start to learn to use a double rope system is there.
Have the trainee first belay the leader using a double rope system, but use it like twin ropes, with both strands being clipped into each quickdraw. This should help them understand how to separate each rope to prevent tangling. They start by creating two piles of rope that feed the belay device, then progress to flaking the ropes on the wall, in slings, or in knots. The climber should be able to feed the ropes through the belay device at the same pace and speed, getting a feel for it. Even if the leader clips one rope into the quickdraw at a time, one after the other, they should learn to feed the slack all at once, not to try to make fine adjustments by inches, but only by feet. For example, the leader pulls up one metre of slack on blue to clip the higher draw, and rather than only giving them blue, they keep the other rope (red) locked off; they simply give one metre of rope on both, as once the climber moves up, both ropes will be equal again. This fear of a ‘slack’ rope in your system, with the belayer constantly taking in, letting out, is one reason why novice climbers come unstuck. Just give the leader slack and enough rope to move, and worry less about fine adjustments (think feet, not inches). Once you master belaying, you will be able to take in on one rope while giving slack on another, but that skill comes later.
Once the novice has become comfortable with two ropes, and is not afraid of them, and feels confident they won’t tangle, the leader can begin by single clipping alternate quickdraws. They should start by clipping the rope close to their waist to reduce the work/stress required by the belayer, then gradually move to higher clips. Remember, don’t treat the rope as two ropes (yet), but a single rope. If the leader wants two metres of slack, give them two metres from both ropes.
Once this has been mastered, you can play around by no longer alternating ropes. Go blue, then blue, and then start to down climb back to a rest. Have the belayer take in on red while paying out blue. Then, take in on blue and pay out red as the climber climbs back to their high point.
If the wall is empty, try leading up two or three routes, snaking up one, then across to the other, using your two ropes to reduce the friction. Get a feel for the freedom two ropes can give the leader, and keep throwing in some curve balls for the belayer to contend with.
As with all belayer training, make sure you include some falls to demonstrate that the system works. Often, climbers fear they won’t be able to hold a skinny rope in a real fall, only to find that two ropes are easier to hold than one (two 8mm ropes = 16mm, while a 9.1mm rope is always 9.1mm).
The above is something that can be done in an evening, but could really give someone the skills necessary for transitioning into the outdoors.
Taking it outside
Once the novice climber has demonstrated they can belay with two ropes comfortably, they can transition outside, but this needs to be done with baby steps to begin with. By baby steps, I mean that the leader needs to understand the novice is still learning, and so they need to move a little slower, give a little more guidance, and keep the belayer informed about what they’re doing. This would include the basics of climbing calls (that many fail to do), which would be “clipping blue” or “clipping red”, as well as “give me slack on red” or “take in on blue”, rather than just yanking on the rope (if the belayer has their eyes on you, they won’t be looking down at their belay device, and see what rope you want).
If you lead like a jerk, rushing, yanking, pulling, shouting at the belayer to give you slack, then shouting for them to take in, then you’ll get what jerk climbers deserve, a jerky belay.
Learn all the little tricks of the trade, like always having the “red rope on the right”, so you can feed or take in without having to look down, as well as have your ropes stacked in the same way (red rope in right sling/pile/ropebag).
If in doubt, pay out (a little), with both ropes. Giving someone a foot more rope is more likely to solve a problem than failing to act, as you don’t know what rope to give.
When you’re leading, a 10cm draw can give you the impression you’ll not fall as far as with a 30cm draw, or 60cm sling, but the more you fall, the more you realise it makes only a fraction of a difference. The same is true when giving a little extra rope.
If you don’t know what to do, take in, or pay out, then lock off the ropes until you do.
Remember, the belay chain is not simply about the belayer. If they’re struggling or failing, half of the problem likely lies with the leader, or even 100% if they knew the person couldn't belay but asked them to do it anyway.
Conclusion
I think climbing has a tolerance problem, perhaps because it appeals to people with a positive mindset, with a can-do attitude, or who are simply willing to overlook dangerous and sketchy shit because they just want someone to hold their rope. If someone is going to hold your life in their hands, they have to be certain of saving that life as well; it can’t just be a throw of the dice. If not, they should not be holding your ropes. If that’s all you’ve got, then invest some time in them and train them up (modern climbers are terrible for seeing novices as nothing but a resource to mine at zero cost). I know I’ve climbed stuff many times with people who had never held a rope, let alone a fall, but I just climbed with them anyway, which was probably even more dangerous than soloing, as I climbed under the delusion that there was some chance they’d catch me if I fell. And did I fall? Yes, and they didn’t catch me, and I somehow walked away and got to laugh it off.
Probably the worst example of this tolerence was when I asked someone I knew didn’t know how to belay, to give me some tension, while I tried to French free acrosss a pitch of A0 climbing, only for them to take no tension at all, and just let me fall down the wall (luckily, someone esle at the belay grabbed the rope!).
I suppose, really, this isn’t just an issue to do with climbers and double ropes, and climbing’s normalisation of that deviance, as really, it’s just that the double ropes are the most visible part of the problem, which is the problem with belaying. Maybe, if we are going to be a sport full of tickets and badges and qualifications, that you can’t do X unless you’ve done Y, why is there no formal way to instruct or demonstrate one of the key fundamentals of the belay chain: how to belay, how to hold a fall.