“I had some really good, famous, climbers come in and fail the belay test,”
Climbers still complain about the belay test, especially older climbers who cut their teeth outdoors and same late to the gym scene. But most gym accidents involving top roping or lead climbing are going to come down to a failed safety check or a mistake on the part of the belayer. And a failed safety check is at least partially a belayer failure.
Experience level doesn't necessarily correlate with safe technique. Beginners can be highly conscious of the consequences of a fall, where more experienced climbers can get complacent and sloppy when the negative consequences fail to materialize.
For example: the coach of an internationally competitive athlete dropped his climber on a grigri because he was casually chatting with someone on the ground and failed to control the brake strand.
I indoor climb with a friend semi regularly using a grigri, and it is important to be intentional about giving the climber your full attention and never taking your hand off the rope entirely [1]. Very similar to how the person qualifying you during a check ride for your private pilot certification will attempt to distract you on a final approach to see if you take the bait. If you don't want to or can't pay attention, that's what the auto belay [2] is for.
The technique with Grigri is easy to learn compared to some other tools especially during its initial release, and TBH I don't recall ever saw anybody using it incorrectly since it would always prompt a strong reaction from anybody else just passing by. But it has to be learned, it doesn't come somehow magically on its own. Its not fully auto-blocking, if angle of outgoing rope is 'right' it doesn't block at all.
What that guy did on the video looks absolutely ridiculous from first second. Zero visual contact, too much slack (so that he doesn't have to look up), very little safety even without actual accident. When in practice there should be 100% visual contact, or at least 95% and fully covering all non-easy parts. It strains the neck massively but for that there are those cheap periscope glasses, I got mine for 10 bucks on aliexpress and they work fine enough for 10 years.
The basic technique means rope is 100% held by either hand at correct angle regardless what you need to do apart from holding it.
The grigri in particular is a bit of a mixed blessing. Because it has an auto brake, it's harder -- though not impossible, as you indicate -- to just totally fail to brake the climber on top rope. If you let go of an ATC, there is no braking and the rope just runs through, which is obviously very bad. By contrast, if you just let go of an grigri it will lock, arresting the fall.
However, when lead belaying, you need to pay out rope, which means disengaging the auto brake. If you do this buy holding the handle and the climber falls at the wrong time, it's easy to react by just holding everything tighter, at which point you're holding the grigri open, at which point the auto brake isn't doing anything. By contrast with an ATC or other tube-type device you never have to touch the belay device and so you always can keep your brake hand in the brake position, so if the climber falls, your reflex action -- assuming you have practiced -- should be to pull harder with your brake hand, thus arresting the fall.
Aside from belay devices, some other practices I've seen gyms do to try make indoor climbing safer:
- Captive grigris on top rope so that you (1) have to use a grigri and (2) can't screw up putting them on and off.
- High friction toprope anchors (e.g., wrapped several times around a pipe) so that even with no belay device at all there is still some friction.
- Requiring people to tie in with a trace eight rather than a double bowline on the theory that the trace eight is harder to screw up and easier to check.
The GriGri does not have an autobrake. Petzl is very intentional in saying it is an “assisted braking device”, not auto braking. If there is any tension at all on the rope (even just lightly being held), then the GriGri will likely brake, but if the rope isn’t being held at all then there is no guarantee it will brake.
See this video, around the 10 minute mark where there’s several examples of the GriGri not locking at all: https://youtu.be/We-nxljgnw4?t=605
This is perhaps an even greater issue than what you pointed out because people misunderstand the GriGri a lot, and assume it will always catch them even if you aren’t holding the rope. It won’t.
If you get a chance try out the NEOX. It's basically a GriGri with smoother rope feed, so you almost never have to defeat the cam when lead belaying with a proper dynamic technique. They've been polarizing to some people but it really feels like a "fixed GriGri" to me. You still need to mind the brake side, but at least feeding doesn't have an intrinsic design flaw where you have to temporarily disable the safety device.
> when lead belaying, you need to pay out rope, which means disengaging the auto brake. If you do this buy holding the handle
What the hell are they teaching kids these days. I've NEVER needed to hold the handle on a grigri unless I'm trying to lower something. The correct technique is hold the cam down with your thumb leaving three to four fingers in contact with the rope at all time. The left hand is used to pull rope through the girgri to give rope to the climber, the climber already has to pull up a bunch of rope through a maze of carabiners and don't need the extra work of trying to pull it through a grigri.
Important point. It's not actually all that trivial to give a good and safe lead belay with a grigri. I see folks wrap their thumb over the Grigri cam to pay slack all the time. It is extremely dangerous when combined with not paying much attention because a surprise fall will cause the belayer to seize their grip on the device and lock it open. Heart breaking example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBGkKqLhM8Y
All that said, I still prefer to be belayed with a grigri.
I supervised a small climbing wall for one year in the mid 2000s. I was really strict about our belay test, but we had some flexibility built in. If you had experience climbing, you could show us your technique and we'd pass you if your technique kept the climber safe at all times.
It didn't happen often, but there were a number of people who had over a decade of experience, who didn't realize they were leaving the climber vulnerable to a catastrophic fall in some of their transitions. Those people had just never had anyone fall at that point in their belaying.
They were momentarily embarrassed, but to their credit everyone I had to call out about technique appreciated not being given a pass because of their years of experience.
It would be interesting to compare the accident statistics with European climbing gyms where belay tests are not common.
The coach in the video has some of the worst belay technique I have ever seen. Unfortunately, this is somewhat common among older climbers who learned using the first generation Grigri in the 90s. Petzl's recommended technique back then is very safe (essentially using the Grigri like an ATC), but does not allow giving slack quickly. This made it completely useless for any kind of ambitious sports climbing, and people started coming up with often extremely dangerous workarounds. Petzl has upgraded their recommendations a long time ago, but some people are resistant to change ("it never failed for me"...) Hopefully this video can convince at least some of them to finally adopt the proper technique.
It was a big story a while back that someone noticed that climbing deaths increase with experience, and the blame was ultimately attributed to equipment wear, especially ropes.
Once you start trusting the rope and the belay, you better be sure you can trust that rope, and your partner.
This sounds like more correlation than causation to me. There’s a similar statistic people like to quote in regards to backcountry skiing - that you are more likely to be in an avalanche if you have taken an avalanche safety course. Sure, there’s a correlation. But when basically everyone who backcountry skis regularly has taken such a course, and the people who backcountry ski infrequently are less likely to have taken a course, you can imagine why such statistic is true. Furthermore, advanced backcountry skiers are way more likely to be venturing into more complicated avalanche terrain that has more inherent danger.
It would be better to measure the accident rate in a more controlled setting, like accidents per gym route climbed. I can only surmise on what the results here would be. I don’t doubt that experienced climbers get complacent, but new climbers also are new to it and likely lack some knowledge to keep things safe.
I suspect that with experienced climbers, they are probably climbing way more frequently than inexperienced climbers (which you would need to account for to suggest causation), and also doing more dangerous routes. New climbers are less likely to do alpine routes where you encounter climbing when fatigued/sleep deprived, weather concerns, rock fall hazards, complicated descents, etc. And brand new climbers are hardly ever climbing trad routes, especially with marginal protection.
Side note, but as someone who nerds out on reading accident reports, climbing accidents are hardly ever caused the gear failing. Even old ropes damaged by the sun are super strong, and it’s typically quite obvious when gear is wearing out.
This sounds rather dubious, my impression was that climbing deaths are extremely rarely due to equipment failure. Also rope failures.. really? In normal use climbing ropes tend to fail by desheathing, dramatic but not necessarily that dangerous. Catastrophic rope failure only really tends to happen due to slicing over sharp edges under load, unrelated to wear and tear..
At a gym I used to climb, there was also a Grigri "failure" where a lighter belayer was pulled up the the first clip, which then unlocked the Grigri until the climber hit the ground.
Pretty sure there were no major injuries thankfully.
This accident analysis doesn't seem correct. A GriGri sucked into a draw will automatically unlock the cam; there has to be a differential force between the top and bottom of the GriGri to hold the cam down. Some critical details are missing here, but nobody should come to the conclusion that a GriGri unlocks automatically if sucked into a draw.
This can only happen if the belayer takes their hand off the brake strand. When unlocked, the grigri has the same braking force as a regular ATC. This essentially was a belayer error. One can't take their hand off the brake strand even if violently jerked around.
The problem with the belay test as it exists today is that it tests whether you know all the peculiarities of each gym's beliefs around things like the exact order your hands should move when taking slack, whether tails on figure 8s are important (if so, how long, and what kind of knot may or must terminate them), whether the length of the belay loop matters, and so on. These things change seemingly on a whim and aren't always motivated by good evidence.
I learned to belay at Vertical World in 2005 and would fail Vertical World's belay test today, for multiple reasons, if I used the same method they themselves taught me!
Meanwhile, as you point out, no test can determine whether or not a person will be paying attention during an actual climb.
Standards change and improved methods are discovered. In the 50s and 60s the "hip belay" was the standard and considered safe. Once ATC/tube style belay devices became ubiquitous, the "pinch and slide" technique took over. The "pinch and slide" technique you likely learned is no longer considered the safest method of belaying. The AMGA belaying technique is now considered standard and for awhile gyms would still pass "pinch and slide" users but I'm not surprised they have stopped.
There’s huge variability even in some of the gyms in the article, whether from site to site or inter-tester variability. Whether or not it improves safety, if it helps places like this stay open and solvent I guess that’s a win, but I wouldn’t rely solely on someone’s passing a gym’s test for me to let them catch me in a lead fall.
I’ve also been failed in seemingly spurious details that I was subsequently passed on with different testers at several gyms.
You shouldn’t be getting downvoted, this is sometimes true. Most often what happens is a junior staff member is overly rigid in applying what they were taught.
I once almost failed a belay test because I did not know that gym’s particular trick for “counting strands” to prove the figure 8 was tied correctly. I just know what a correct knot looks like after decades of tying them. Ultimately I asked them to check with a manager, who passed me.
That said, I’ve also seen experienced climbers with terrible belay technique; catching them with a modern test would seem like a good thing to me.
Ah yeah I saw that video before, so bad. If I saw someone belaying like that I'd immediately call them out and tell them to hold the brake strand. Lucky this was even caught on video to prove what the error was. It's disturbing to see how his right hand still appears to just hold onto the gri-gri while the climber falls (rather than grabbing the rope). Inexcusable IMO, especially for someone who isn't a total beginner. There's no "people make mistakes" caveat here, that was straight-up dangerous technique, like driving a car with no hands on the wheel or with a blindfold on.
Shouldn't matter, they should be expecting you to fall at any moment, as that's what happens when climbing
If it's a planned descent, usually you say "take" or similar to have the belayer hold the rope securely and then you ask to "lower" so the belayer lowers you in a controlled fashion.
PSA: Most modern gyms have "autobelay" devices that let you climb on your own without a partner. This makes gym climbing a super fun and accessible exercise anyone, even beginners, can do by just showing up to a gym at your convenience.
(If you're a beginner you should still take the 1 hour class first and you will have to pass a belay test. And yes, if you can make the schedule work out with a friend so can belay each other, that's even more fun)
You still need to be careful. I'm an avid climber. Most autobelay accidents happen because people don't clip in properly. However for me the auto belay cable broke after catching me. Resulted in five minor spinal fractures.
So from my experience I would say at least Google what are the common auto belay manufacturers and only use gyms that have them. True Blue and Perfect Decent are the only auto belays I will touch now.
My understanding is that our local climbing gym sees most of its non-bouldering accidents from people not clipping into autobelays before they start climbing.
They lower the grade by cca 1 level by pulling you up, at least till 6a/6b in french scale. In higher levels I can imagine they also interfere with careful balance and body weight shifting training you away from actual skills, thats why I never saw them on anything harder than maybe 7b and even there it was like 1 or 2 routes in whole gym.
But for easy grades and cca beginners, if you lack a good partner for whatever reason, they are great IMHO.
I was top-roping in a gym once, about 40 ft up, my belayer said “one sec” so I stopped and looked down, they had __unhooked__ their belay device, fucked with it for a bit, and reconnected it.
I downclimbed, not the route just whatever holds were easiest, and left. I’d known this person for a few months and was convinced they knew basic safety. I was always kind of anal about safety, with everyone, so it wasn’t a vibe I was giving off.
That was my last time on a rope. Strictly bouldering now.
* And why? Was it because something was uncomfortable (and somehow they thought fixing that was more important than your safety?) or because they suddenly thought the belay device was...not clipped into the harness right to begin with or something? Was it right when you cross-checked them prior to climbing?
* And in saying "one sec" rather than a clear "belay off", they were minimizing the event at additional risk to you. No integrity there.
I guess the only good thing I can say is that even if the belay device wasn't clipped into the harness, as long as the rope was wound through it properly, someone could still yank on the brake side and stop you. But obviously not take slack as you continued to climb, and from what you're describing I doubt they had their hand on the brake side as they futzed with the harness or whatever. So pretty weak comfort overall.
I had the opposite experience once: while climbing in a park, my belayer sung a song that went something like "you're off belay, you're off belay, if you fall and die it's not my fault because you're off belay". I was pissed but what you're describing is a million times worse. My belayer was clearly being a dick but not so much that he actually stopped belaying and risked my life. Lyrics aside, he always used correct technique from pre checks through the whole climb, had practiced stopping someone from the ground if they lost their grip while repelling, came with a thoughtfully stocked first-aid kit, set up the climb properly with redundant webbing at the top, etc.
Good thing you werent about to fall off the route!
The older i grow the more I've come to realize that its not uncommon for people to lack awareness about risk and consequences. These days it takes me many outings with a climber partner to truly trust them. This is why it always blows my mind when i see people going out on multi pitch climbs with people they've never climbed with before.
>I got no positive reaction from the [climbing] industry at all
This was my experience trying to create a climbing tech product in the last few years.
The market for climbing is built through reputation, tradition, & thus a visceral rejection of new ideas & methods. This is very interesting, since many climbers work in forward-thinking tech companies.
Companies often resist growth to stay small. There are dirty secrets and bad blood among many competitors.
> The market for climbing is built through reputation, tradition, & thus a visceral rejection of new ideas & methods. This is very interesting, since many climbers work in forward-thinking tech companies.
Maybe moving fast and breaking things is not always appropriate.
> The market for climbing is built through reputation, tradition, & thus a visceral rejection of new ideas & methods.
Every climber I meet is lovely, but there is your standard sports equipment elitism at play as well, not to be confused with the very real brand loyalism that comes out of trusting something with your life.
I think if you are bringing a product into the climbing space you would do well to lead with a low risk product for brand reputation, something like a hangboard or training equipment perhaps.
We hoisted the weight way overhead in the field house on a pulley system. One pulley was for the hoist, and another simulated the anchor point that the leader was falling past. The weight was held by a releasable clamp, and when release was triggered, you got a simulated leader fall: lots of slack and lots of potential energy. The rope burn eventually healed...
My family has a unique history with the climbing gym boom of the 90s. In the early to mid 90s my dad was operating a "co-op" called "The Barn" between Madison, WI and Dodgeville, WI. It was literally a retired barn that he had built climbing walls and a small apartment for himself to live in. I guess he eventually got in trouble with the authorities or something because it had to go away (likely code related, but I'm not sure), but he and some of the members ended up founding a legitimate business that stands to this day: Boulders Climbing Gym in Madison. He ended up leaving the business around the time I was born in 1997, but was still somewhat involved for a good chunk of my childhood.
The parts about the belay test are burned into my brain as a result. I had no idea that the industry had its roots in Silicon Valley!
Never thought I'd see Boulders Climbing Gym mentioned on HN! I loved going to the downtown location as a college student and everyone I met there was so nice and helpful.
Wow, what a cool piece of Madison history. I spent a lot of afternoons at Boulders in the mid-2010s but never knew that it had a predecessor like that.
A Entreprises wall went up at the University of Alberta in 1989, which was pretty early for North American indoor walls. The Verdon Gorge was the hot shit place to climb at the time, and the Entreprises (a french company) wall textures and holds emulated the small technical limestone features that are commonly found there.
I wasn't allowed to climb there until I was 16. I cut my teeth as a climber traversing back and forth on a cobbled bridge abutment local climbers would train on before the U of A wall went up.
The second Gym to open in my home city, Vertically inclined, in 1994, was designed by Christian Griffith. It is still in operation today. Griffith also designed my original chalkbag, which I bought with allowance money and still have. I'm sentimental about that chalkbag.
Around that time a local climber was dabbling around with hold making and went on to found Teknick climbing hold company, which set off a trend towards the big fat holds you see in climbing gyms today. Teknik is now a venerable old company and the second biggest supplier of holds in the world. He was a way better climber than me back then, and he still is.
Interesting article! I climb at Berkeley Ironworks which is the successor to City Rock, but didn't know all of the history.
The story ends in 2000 when Ironworks "represented the next generation of climbing gyms", but the trends have continued. IW is now old and grungy (I say as a complement) compared to the modern gyms targeted towards even more casual users.
Readit News
Climbers still complain about the belay test, especially older climbers who cut their teeth outdoors and same late to the gym scene. But most gym accidents involving top roping or lead climbing are going to come down to a failed safety check or a mistake on the part of the belayer. And a failed safety check is at least partially a belayer failure.
Experience level doesn't necessarily correlate with safe technique. Beginners can be highly conscious of the consequences of a fall, where more experienced climbers can get complacent and sloppy when the negative consequences fail to materialize.
For example: the coach of an internationally competitive athlete dropped his climber on a grigri because he was casually chatting with someone on the ground and failed to control the brake strand.
https://youtu.be/WBGkKqLhM8Y?si=p58XDsgOG5O2dbJP
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAxY-BBSlGc
[2] https://www.verticalendeavors.com/auto-belays-pros-and-cons/
(my climbing venue monitors and scolds you if you aren't paying attention while belaying, ymmv)
What that guy did on the video looks absolutely ridiculous from first second. Zero visual contact, too much slack (so that he doesn't have to look up), very little safety even without actual accident. When in practice there should be 100% visual contact, or at least 95% and fully covering all non-easy parts. It strains the neck massively but for that there are those cheap periscope glasses, I got mine for 10 bucks on aliexpress and they work fine enough for 10 years.
The basic technique means rope is 100% held by either hand at correct angle regardless what you need to do apart from holding it.
However, when lead belaying, you need to pay out rope, which means disengaging the auto brake. If you do this buy holding the handle and the climber falls at the wrong time, it's easy to react by just holding everything tighter, at which point you're holding the grigri open, at which point the auto brake isn't doing anything. By contrast with an ATC or other tube-type device you never have to touch the belay device and so you always can keep your brake hand in the brake position, so if the climber falls, your reflex action -- assuming you have practiced -- should be to pull harder with your brake hand, thus arresting the fall.
Aside from belay devices, some other practices I've seen gyms do to try make indoor climbing safer:
- Captive grigris on top rope so that you (1) have to use a grigri and (2) can't screw up putting them on and off. - High friction toprope anchors (e.g., wrapped several times around a pipe) so that even with no belay device at all there is still some friction. - Requiring people to tie in with a trace eight rather than a double bowline on the theory that the trace eight is harder to screw up and easier to check.
See this video, around the 10 minute mark where there’s several examples of the GriGri not locking at all: https://youtu.be/We-nxljgnw4?t=605
This is perhaps an even greater issue than what you pointed out because people misunderstand the GriGri a lot, and assume it will always catch them even if you aren’t holding the rope. It won’t.
What the hell are they teaching kids these days. I've NEVER needed to hold the handle on a grigri unless I'm trying to lower something. The correct technique is hold the cam down with your thumb leaving three to four fingers in contact with the rope at all time. The left hand is used to pull rope through the girgri to give rope to the climber, the climber already has to pull up a bunch of rope through a maze of carabiners and don't need the extra work of trying to pull it through a grigri.
https://www.petzl.com/US/en/Sport/Belaying-with-the-GRIGRI
All that said, I still prefer to be belayed with a grigri.
Deleted Comment
It didn't happen often, but there were a number of people who had over a decade of experience, who didn't realize they were leaving the climber vulnerable to a catastrophic fall in some of their transitions. Those people had just never had anyone fall at that point in their belaying.
They were momentarily embarrassed, but to their credit everyone I had to call out about technique appreciated not being given a pass because of their years of experience.
The coach in the video has some of the worst belay technique I have ever seen. Unfortunately, this is somewhat common among older climbers who learned using the first generation Grigri in the 90s. Petzl's recommended technique back then is very safe (essentially using the Grigri like an ATC), but does not allow giving slack quickly. This made it completely useless for any kind of ambitious sports climbing, and people started coming up with often extremely dangerous workarounds. Petzl has upgraded their recommendations a long time ago, but some people are resistant to change ("it never failed for me"...) Hopefully this video can convince at least some of them to finally adopt the proper technique.
In Austria, the gyms I went to you just had to sign a form that you know how to climb top-rope, lead, and how to belay.
This effect in some fields is called "Normalisation of Deviance". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalization_of_deviance
Once you start trusting the rope and the belay, you better be sure you can trust that rope, and your partner.
It would be better to measure the accident rate in a more controlled setting, like accidents per gym route climbed. I can only surmise on what the results here would be. I don’t doubt that experienced climbers get complacent, but new climbers also are new to it and likely lack some knowledge to keep things safe.
I suspect that with experienced climbers, they are probably climbing way more frequently than inexperienced climbers (which you would need to account for to suggest causation), and also doing more dangerous routes. New climbers are less likely to do alpine routes where you encounter climbing when fatigued/sleep deprived, weather concerns, rock fall hazards, complicated descents, etc. And brand new climbers are hardly ever climbing trad routes, especially with marginal protection.
Side note, but as someone who nerds out on reading accident reports, climbing accidents are hardly ever caused the gear failing. Even old ropes damaged by the sun are super strong, and it’s typically quite obvious when gear is wearing out.
What are you referencing?
Pretty sure there were no major injuries thankfully.
I learned to belay at Vertical World in 2005 and would fail Vertical World's belay test today, for multiple reasons, if I used the same method they themselves taught me!
Meanwhile, as you point out, no test can determine whether or not a person will be paying attention during an actual climb.
I’ve also been failed in seemingly spurious details that I was subsequently passed on with different testers at several gyms.
I once almost failed a belay test because I did not know that gym’s particular trick for “counting strands” to prove the figure 8 was tied correctly. I just know what a correct knot looks like after decades of tying them. Ultimately I asked them to check with a manager, who passed me.
That said, I’ve also seen experienced climbers with terrible belay technique; catching them with a modern test would seem like a good thing to me.
If it's a planned descent, usually you say "take" or similar to have the belayer hold the rope securely and then you ask to "lower" so the belayer lowers you in a controlled fashion.
(If you're a beginner you should still take the 1 hour class first and you will have to pass a belay test. And yes, if you can make the schedule work out with a friend so can belay each other, that's even more fun)
So from my experience I would say at least Google what are the common auto belay manufacturers and only use gyms that have them. True Blue and Perfect Decent are the only auto belays I will touch now.
update: they use trueblue
I'm really averse to the autobelay because I can't feel the "pull" of a human belayer, so this is a nightmare scenario for me.
Then again, I'm sure that the autobelay is safer than the average human, even so, except I really trust my belayer.
Climbing is unique among sports in that you have to trust a random person to keep you alive through the most common action within the sport (falling)
Given its rising popularity, the sport should be safer by default.
But for easy grades and cca beginners, if you lack a good partner for whatever reason, they are great IMHO.
I downclimbed, not the route just whatever holds were easiest, and left. I’d known this person for a few months and was convinced they knew basic safety. I was always kind of anal about safety, with everyone, so it wasn’t a vibe I was giving off.
That was my last time on a rope. Strictly bouldering now.
* Duh, you don't stop belaying mid-climb.
* And why? Was it because something was uncomfortable (and somehow they thought fixing that was more important than your safety?) or because they suddenly thought the belay device was...not clipped into the harness right to begin with or something? Was it right when you cross-checked them prior to climbing?
* And in saying "one sec" rather than a clear "belay off", they were minimizing the event at additional risk to you. No integrity there.
I guess the only good thing I can say is that even if the belay device wasn't clipped into the harness, as long as the rope was wound through it properly, someone could still yank on the brake side and stop you. But obviously not take slack as you continued to climb, and from what you're describing I doubt they had their hand on the brake side as they futzed with the harness or whatever. So pretty weak comfort overall.
I had the opposite experience once: while climbing in a park, my belayer sung a song that went something like "you're off belay, you're off belay, if you fall and die it's not my fault because you're off belay". I was pissed but what you're describing is a million times worse. My belayer was clearly being a dick but not so much that he actually stopped belaying and risked my life. Lyrics aside, he always used correct technique from pre checks through the whole climb, had practiced stopping someone from the ground if they lost their grip while repelling, came with a thoughtfully stocked first-aid kit, set up the climb properly with redundant webbing at the top, etc.
Dead Comment
This was my experience trying to create a climbing tech product in the last few years.
The market for climbing is built through reputation, tradition, & thus a visceral rejection of new ideas & methods. This is very interesting, since many climbers work in forward-thinking tech companies.
Companies often resist growth to stay small. There are dirty secrets and bad blood among many competitors.
Amazing sport, hard fought market.
Maybe moving fast and breaking things is not always appropriate.
Every climber I meet is lovely, but there is your standard sports equipment elitism at play as well, not to be confused with the very real brand loyalism that comes out of trusting something with your life.
I think if you are bringing a product into the climbing space you would do well to lead with a low risk product for brand reputation, something like a hangboard or training equipment perhaps.
The parts about the belay test are burned into my brain as a result. I had no idea that the industry had its roots in Silicon Valley!
I wasn't allowed to climb there until I was 16. I cut my teeth as a climber traversing back and forth on a cobbled bridge abutment local climbers would train on before the U of A wall went up.
The second Gym to open in my home city, Vertically inclined, in 1994, was designed by Christian Griffith. It is still in operation today. Griffith also designed my original chalkbag, which I bought with allowance money and still have. I'm sentimental about that chalkbag.
Around that time a local climber was dabbling around with hold making and went on to found Teknick climbing hold company, which set off a trend towards the big fat holds you see in climbing gyms today. Teknik is now a venerable old company and the second biggest supplier of holds in the world. He was a way better climber than me back then, and he still is.
The story ends in 2000 when Ironworks "represented the next generation of climbing gyms", but the trends have continued. IW is now old and grungy (I say as a complement) compared to the modern gyms targeted towards even more casual users.