Vertical caving terminology and methods > Ladders, climbs and older techniques
A device used by belayers to pull a lifeline through as a climber climbs, and to stop it from moving when a climber falls. An Italian hitch is far more common with caving, while dedicated belay devices are commonly used by climbers. The most simple dedicated belay devices are manual friction device, such as a basic belay plate or Sticht plate, or "ATC" devices. Dedicated belay devices can be auto-locking or self-locking, officially called an "assisted braking devices" (ABD), meaning that they do not allow the rope to pay out quickly in the event of a fall, unless the belayer explicitly allows it. Instead, they use some mechanism such as trapping the rope or adding resistance, if the rope moves in the wrong direction without a handle being held, or if the rope moves too fast. Most of these do not function well when mud gets into the moving parts. Semi-assisted braking devices function like a belay plate with no moving parts, but shift into a position where there is more friction if the rope rapidly pulls through them. These can be more reliable than assisted braking devices, when used in muddy places like caves. (Many designs, many brands, many names.)
In general, the minimum breaking strength of a belay device is largely meaningless, since many designs will not be able to grip a rope with enough force to break the device, because they are designed to allow the rope to slip through them at high loads, in order to absorb the shock load. As a result, they might only specify a working load limit. Some will only specify they can cope with a certain fall factor with a nominal load, such as 80 kg, which is required for their PPE rating.
In 1851, fire brigades in Ulm, German Confederation (now Germany) were using a ring attached to their belt as a descender, by wrapping the rope through it twice. By 1877, fire brigades in Austria, Austro-Hungarian Empire, were wrapping the rope through a carabiner several times, known as a carabiner wrap, to lower someone. The first known dedicated device was a carabiner with an integrated pulley and braking lever designed in 1882 by the German Lohner brothers, made for the fire brigades. It would automatically add friction when released, and reduce friction when a lever was pulled, just like a modern Petzl GriGri, and could be used for lowering people. The inventors complained about the pulleys falling off existing designs (which were not integrated within a carabiner), which seemed to also have a similar lever. No existing devices were described in a comprehensive manual from that region 5 years earlier, so the exact details of those earlier devices are not known. In 1897, Austrian inventor Zdzislaw Szpor created a dedicated belay device for self belaying, for use with rope access, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now Poland. The device was incredibly complex, and almost certainly had been through many years of development beforehand (it was definitely created in 1896 or earlier), though no previous versions were found. It could safely catch a fall, could be adjusted for different sized ropes, and could be used as a descender after catching a fall. Although it was clearly designed as a belay device, it was registered in the USA as a fire escape descender, and probably also Canada, so is likely to have been widely available.
In 1904, a lever cam device was patented by Austrian locksmith Michael Gayer, which he called a "clamping sleeve for climbing devices". This was sold as a "climbing device" by F. Turczynski Jagd- und Touristen-Asrüstingen, a mountaineering shop in Vienna, Austria, the city where Austrian mountaineer Karl Prusik lived, run by a member of the Wiener Alpenklub (Vienna Alpine Club), which Karl Prusik was also a member of. The design had a very limited range of rope sizes which it could work with, and used a fiddly bolt and wing nut to close a hinged section around the rope, which would have been very easy to drop by mistake. It was advertised only as a fall arrester in Austrian mountaineer E. Fink's Touristen-Vademekum publication in 1904, for self belaying when climbing up or down, for climbers, quarry workers, miners, construction workers, roofers and plumbers. By July 1910, German climber/mountaineer Hans Dülfer was using carabiners as a belay device, presumably using a carabiner wrap. Body belays remained the main approach in the climbing world. In 1910, Anwendung des Seiles, published by the Bavarian section of the German Alpine Club, suggested the use of an emergency knot when climbing or abseiling on a doubled rope. One strand of the rope would be fed through the climber's belt, and the two strands of the rope would be tied together 1 metre above the ground. If they lost their grip, they would fall until their belt slammed into the knot. This would probably fail, since the stretch would allow them to hit the ground anyway, the weak ropes of the time would probably snap from the impact, the climber would probably be severely injured from the abrupt stop, and even if nothing went wrong, they had to stop 2 metres from the ground, and with no hands available, untie the knot so that they could complete their descent. It was a terrible, terrible suggestion, but somehow was still being suggested in the 1942 edition. Throughout this time, that booklet also contained instructions on how to use body belays, both for top roping and bottom roping (both of which were first mentioned in the 1910 edition, with bottom roping being primarily used for traverses). German mountaineer H. Sixt proposed a lever cam device, which German mountaineer Franz Kröner then improved and manufactured in 1911, called a "climbing lock". It was intended to be used as a self belaying device while abseiling, but could have been better used as an ascender.
In 1920, carabiners were clearly described as being used for belaying using a carabiner wrap, in a German and Austrian climbing newsletter article by Hermann Amanshauser (later a Nazi SS officer). The article described how traditional belaying was too primitive, and that recently developed techniques made climbing dramatically safer. He described the modern approach to bottom roping with the rope running through multiple carabiners attached to anchors during the climb, and appeared to describe the use of half ropes, by saying that ropes can be used in pairs for big or difficult climbs. In 1922, Anwendung des Seiles showed that belaying was becoming more demanding, with bottom roping being used for lead climbing falls very slightly above the highest anchor. The use of half ropes had started, allowing one to be kept tight while the other was kept loose while being placed higher, but even so, the same body belay approaches were still being used. The publication mentions that it is hard to catch falls from above the anchors, and this should therefore be avoided. Karl Prusik claimed in 1931 that the "climbing locks" could not be used when the ropes swelled because they got wet, and while he did not clarify which devices he was referring to, it was probably the devices made by Michael Gayer and H. Sixt. In 1942, Anwendung des Seiles showed how a Prusik knot could be used between the descender and hand on the down rope, for self belaying while abseiling. This approach still remains in use today. The figure of 8 was invented in 1943 by Austrian doctor Max Pfrimmer, but its value as a belay device was not realised at the time.
In 1944, French caver Henry P. Guérin suggested using a cows tail which was clipped to the rungs of a ladder as a method of self belaying, though this does not actually satisfy the safety requirements, and can damage the ladder. The Cave Research Group from Britain published some early devices. The Slipgrip, a crazy-looking canister which hides the fact that the real magic is simply a helical friction hitch, was created by British caver W. H. Little in 1955 for self belaying. Another self belaying device from 1955 functioned the same way as an Alpine clutch, though it involved a box with moving parts. It was created by British caver W. E. Clarke. French caver Paul Courbon used an ascender made by French caver Bruno Dressler as a self belaying device, which was used to descend the Puits Lépineux shaft of the Gouffre de la Pierre-Saint-Martin, in France/Spain, using ladders in 1965. Swiss mountaineer Franz Ruso is said to have first proposed the use of the Italian hitch with a carabiner as a belay device in 1967. The French approach of using an ascender for self belaying while using ladders was described in Britain in the Westminster Speleological Group Bulletin Jan/Feb 1969, referred to as a brake-blocker. This was further described and widely advertised in Descent 10 in 1970, as a useful feature of the relatively new Petzl Basic ascender, clipping into the hole at the top of the ascender so that it moves more easily. It was described as being very useful when ascending, but fiddly when descending, requiring the same action as reverse prusiking to disengage it. Because it relied on someone bottom weighting the rope while ascending, the last person needed to be belayed more normally from the pitch head, using a pulley and ascender for capturing progress, as with hauling.
Belay plates were the most basic belay device, invented in 1969 in Germany by Fritz Sticht, and first sold by German company Salewa. The figure of 8 was recognised as a potential belay device some time during the 1970s (something it is no longer recommended for, as it can break the gate of a carabiner if it is shock loaded after not being loaded). Petzl released the Shunt in 1972 as a self belaying device to use while abseling. Although it has a slightly different lever arrangement, it is used in exactly the same way as the previous climbing locks. In 1972, British caver Guy Talbot and Cambridge University Caving Club researchers developed and tested a fall arrester which used the exact same fixed bobbin and rotating cam arrangement as the Stop but failed to get the idea working. The intention was for it to be used as a descender, like a Stop, after catching a fall. They also tested a tubular device which relied on kinking the rope when catching a fall, and could then also be used as a descender. It could optionally have a lever cam fitted into it to make it grip more when initially catching the fall, which could be disengaged by tilting the device. Finally, they also tested a more basic lever cam device, which could not be used as a descender. After the Italian hitch started to be used for belaying in the 1970s, the HMS carabiner was introduced in the 1980s. Tubular belay devices first appeared in 1983 with the Latok Tuber, designed by Jeff Lowe and sold by Latok Mountain Gear. The auto-belay, a device often installed at climbing walls that belays climbers and gently lowers them to the floor after a fall or at the end of a climb, was developed by German inventor Markus Lehner in 1989. Several more designes, using different approaches to provide a slow descent, appeared during the 1990s.
Through the previous decades, many people patented lever cam devices as fall arresters for self belaying, but these all operate on the same principle which had been used at the start of the century, and most did not deserve a patent. In 1989, Canadians John Stephenson and Ian McGuffe patented a device that used a tooth wheel which allowed it to move up and down the rope freely as long as it did so slowly, but which used a governor inside the wheel to lock the wheel when the rope moved too fast during a fall, causing the wheel to lock up. The wheel then acts as the face of an eccentric cam ascender, and moves upwards to jam the rope, catching the fall. This is now sold as the Petzl ASAP, but that only appeared on the market in 2004, 5 years after the patent expired. The first auto-locking GriGri, extremely similar to the Lohner brothers' design, was developed between 1989 and 1991 by Petzl, as an adaptation of the Stop. The 2011 version added panic detection so that pulling the handle too far would cause it to lock off again. Tubular belay devices earned the name ATC after American company Black Diamond released their Air Traffic Controller in 1993, a reference to how the belayer controls the climber. In 1995, Italian company Sistemi Di Sicurezza Europa patented a fall arrester in several countries. This appears to have introduced the rocker lever, an approach which is now used by almost all guided-type fall arresters, since the patent expired in almost all countries after 10-20 years. This original patent shows that it also used a spring loaded lever to improve the catch time, which is lifted away when it is hanging from the carabiner, just like the Camp Goblin and Climbing Technology Easy Speed/Move, both made in Italy shortly before the European patent expired. Unlike either device, the patent shows an optional lever which could be used to progressively release the rope, so that it could be used as a descender after catching a fall. The first semi-assisted braking device was Swiss company Mammut's Smart, which appeared in 2009.
This history section only covers belay devices. This article also has a detailed history of many of the other devices and techniques that are used for vertical caving.
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