UKC

I'm pretty new (and distrustful) of auto belays at Indoor climbing walls.

I had it drilled into me while in the army to always tie in through leg and waste  loops and the belay loop was for belaying only.

These days I Personally prefer indoor lead climbing (multiple clips for protection and  figure of 8 through 2 points on harness) and a bit of outdoor boulder action near my House.

My 10 year old daughter on the other hand has learnt on auto belays with school and this is the only thing she trusts.

Surely clipping into your belay loop is more of a risk as you only have one failure point! If the stitching breaks on belay loop you're gonna fall!

Just wondering what your thoughts are and wether your would add an additional safety feature as a back up to take all the strain off the belay loop.

It doesn't matter how well the auto belay is serviced, if there's a slight defect in belay loop there is only one point of protection.

This has never bother me until I've had a 10-year olds life in my hands.(possibly, maybe.)

Any  advice is welcome.

Exuse my grammar. I've been on the JD, still awake at 6:33 a.m and this issue has been bothering me for week's 

DAVE 

Belay loops don't really ever fail. I'm aware of 1 case with someone who was repeatedly told their harness was way too worn out to be safe.

If the stitching breaks on your belayer's belay loop what happens?

They just can't break, so they are built not to.

Generations of climbers in the Netherlands and Germany have been taught to clip into the belay loop while top-roping. It's fine. 

Same could be said if you are belaying your daughter though. If the loops snaps she would fall. There are actually loads of single points of failure in climbing if you think about it

If you had to write a safety case for an auto belay to demonstrate its safety, I'm fairly certain you could could make an "incredibility of failure" argument for the belay loop. You can do this if a component is so over engineered that there are no plausible modes of failure and the risk of failure is negligible, but not zero.

The same can't be said of the autobelay machine itself, we know these have failed, but it is such a rare event that the risk is considered tolerable.

I would imagine it would be fairly easy for a safety case to demonstrate that an autobelay is considerably safer than the alternative, ie top roping.

I've never seen a formal safety assessment for an autobelay system, it would be interesting to get hold of one.

Do you not abseil by clipping to the belay loop?

The biggest risk of the auto belay is not clipping in to the auto belay. 

I'm similarly wary of auto belays. But they do work and clipping into the belay loop is the least worst way of attachment. 

I would treat it like fall training and do a few sessions of ARC type training doing (boring) laps on an auto belay for 3x sets of 12-15 mins with 10 mins rest between. That should help condition / reduce your response to them, with a small bonus of a bit more aerobic capacity gain.

If you're really unhappy then add a second 'belay loop' by tying some 7mm static cord in a double (or triple) fishermans, and then clip into that and the belay loop.

But honestly, you're mitigating against a risk that never actually comes to pass.  Auto belays do cause accidents, surprisingly often, but the mechanism is people not clipping in.

As others have pointed out, there are lots of single point failure situations that we need to accept in climbing. Another similar example would be the tape of a quickdraw (or the 2 krabs). I've had similar feelings about the strength of the super skinny modern slings. Even though I know they are extensively tested and certified, there's still something in the back of my mind that doesn't quite believe that something so skinny could stop a fall.

Watching some of the kit testing videos, easily found on YT, might help you overcome some of these concerns I think from a "seeing is believing" angle. When you see kit tested to destruction and the high built-in safety margins along with when they prove that performance against the realistic worst case scenarios you realise that you'd have to be going far out of your way and majorly mistreating your harness for it to fail. Either that or it will burn an image of breaking equipment into your mind which may be counter-productive. A different fear, but I still find it disturbingly unnatural leaning back and trusting that an auto will catch me, especially if it's been a while since I've used one but repeated exposure does lessen that fear and build that trust.

I've always done a "buddy check" before climbing on autobelays. I clip in, climb 3 metres, and jump off as confirmation that I'm clipped in correctly.

I've always found it strange that I almost never see anyone else do the same, given that it's how most autobelay incidents occur.

It's easy to think that you could never forget to clip in. But by the last set of a power endurance session, my brain is barely functional.

I forgot to clip once and made it halfway up the wall before realising; I'd been bouldering and decided to do laps of an easy route to warm down, and must have still mentally been in bouldering mode. It was a bit sobering to think that but for a strange "something doesn't feel right..." in the back of my head, I could have easily cruised to the top of the route and lobbed myself into space. I was warming down on an easy route too, so the scaredy-cat overwhelming urge I get to check my knot when the climbing gets hard wasn't particularly overwhelming.

Hopefully it's at least a bit harder now with the prevalence of the big triangles.

Yeah,  *years* ago I gave a little TRA instruction and you tied in leg and waist. The teaching then was it was an abseil loop (you'd tie in and belay from your rope tie in loop, so not even belay loop), my first harness never had a loop and still some like BD Alpine BOD don't, but that's a rarity these days. The teaching back then was they were weaker or untrustworthy single point or just new-fangled and suspicious somehow.

That was 30 years ago, and possibly wrong at the time. If the loop and rest of harness is in good condition, it is definitely not the weakest link of the chain, it's absolutely fine to use

Times have changed, you inspect the loop for wear and provided they are in serviceable condition they are very strong, one of the strongest links in the chain, stronger than your spine for sure. Even in this example of a harness too old and worn and being retired, the loop break tested at >19kN, pretty strong stuff

youtube.com/watch?v=j6r7jWWXHdk&

Yeah,  *years* ago I gave a little TRA instruction and you tied in leg and waist. The teaching then was it was an abseil loop (you'd tie in and belay from your rope tie in loop, so not even belay loop), my first harness never had a loop and still some like BD Alpine BOD don't, but that's a rarity these days. The teaching back then was they were weaker or untrustworthy single point or just new-fangled and suspicious somehow.

That was 30 years ago, and possibly wrong at the time. If the loop and rest of harness is in good condition, it is definitely not the weakest link of the chain, it's absolutely fine to use

Times have changed, you inspect the loop for wear and provided they are in serviceable condition they are very strong, one of the strongest links in the chain, stronger than your spine for sure. Even in this example of a harness too old and worn and being retired, the loop break tested at >19kN, pretty strong stuff

youtube.com/watch?v=j6r7jWWXHdk&

I know where you're coming from here  but genuinely believe your suggestion would make it less safe rather than more. You're just adding unnecessary complexity for no actual practical benefit.  For example, you're increasing the risk of the user just clipping the 7mm loop by mistake.

And probably increasing the risk of cross loading the Krab or getting something stuck in the gate...

Total non-issue. There has been precisely ONE well known case of a belay loop failure in the entire history of climbing harnesses, and that was one that was obviously visibly worn out & well past replacement time

If the stitching breaks on your belay loop while you’re belaying your partner dies. Which has also never happened. 

By clipping into the belay loop the carabiner is in the correct 2 way pull orientation. This is as the manufactures instructions. The way you are proposing introduces a three way loading risk and is against the instructions. Your daughter is correct for clipping in.

Belay loops have failed (I remember an abseiler dying as a result) but it was because of a really old harness.  If you think your harness is worn, damaged, old or has been exposed to chemicals such that you don't trust the belay loop, retire it.  Because if you don't trust it to keep you safe on an auto, you really shouldn't be trusting it to belay someone else from.

As others have said it's perfectly safe to tie in through a belay loop,  some Germans do it.  The reason it isn't the norm is that the tie in points are thicker fabric to avoid the rope causing wear, so your harness will last longer.  Of course on an Alpine harness they are one and the same, and so the combined loop is thicker to avoid said wear.

The main issue that I have come across when clipping into the abseil loop with young people is that they often don't have the core strength to keep themselves upright in a fall and the slightly lower attachment point of the belay loop can, in certain circumstances, lead them to invert.

This might work, comes with 2 belay loops, not sure if they are easy to get in uk

https://www.metoliusclimbing.com/safe-tech_trad.html

When loaded, the leg loops and waist of a threaded harness will come together at a point. This is the effective attachment point.

When the belay loop is clipped and loaded, it will act in precisely the same way to load the leg loops and waist belt together at the same point.

It may not be intuitively so, but in terms of effective attachment point height, the two situations are identical.

30kg girl. No shock loading. 50% chance of survival I reckon. 

The belay loop attaches in exactly the same place a knot loop does.

Jk

30kg girl. Massive shock loading when she says "why can't you do this route dad"  100% chance to be out climbed by offspring. I have

And there's only a 60% chance of that! 

There are multiple single points of failure when using an autobelay - the device itself, the tape that runs from it, the locking carabiner at the end of the tape, the waistband of your harness, the buckle on you harness etc.

I know if seems odd clipping in to the belay loop, but it's the strongest point of your harness and it, and all the other things I've mentioned just don't break.  There's really no need to back up the belay loop, it's not going to break.

This! Always do this. And if you're teaching someone else how to use an auto-belay then teach them to do it too.

It'd be good if inductions at walls did the same - I've done them in a few places and only one has suggested a test fall every time you clip in. Most of the time with a group, walls get each person to do a single test fall at the start of a session, but that's more to reduce your chance of a refusal at the top. However in those sessions you've got the instructor and the participant there who can both see the clip so you already have a kind of buddy check.

I'd normally go more like feel around 2m rather than 3m - If you've screwed up somehow (not clipped at all, clipped into your chalk bag, etc) then probably best you don't land on your backside from too high (you'll not end up in the orientation you expect, because you were expecting the auto-belay to catch you). I'm not 100% at remembering to do it, but I do try to do it every time I clip in so it becomes automatic.

3m is probably a bit higher than I go too. I go until my hand is at maybe 3m, but maybe a bit lower so might be closer to 2m. So my feet are only 1m or 1.5m above the ground.

High enough for the autobelay to engage but hopefully low enough to avoid injury if you've messed up. The local wall has rubber matting which might do a little bit too help too.

The carabiner is a single point of failure. The tape going to the autobelay is a single point of failure. When taking a lead fall, your rope is a single point of failure. 

Nobody said you had to have a perpetual backup.