Belay from the top with an ATC | (and Lower)

[@travispbriscoe]

🫡 Johny the faithful camera man

[@jrhernandez74]

Great video! Appreciate the work and time put into it. The additional camera angles are perfect!

[@forestmenke-thielman8825]

Never knew about the second method of lowering with the carabiner! Super easy and innovative. Thanks!

[@Zolodar]

It's literally mentioned exactly like that in the Petzl Reverso user manual

[@chavenord]

You need to redirect the brake strand if releasing the plaquette. It's dangerous otherwise.

[@summitseekersexperience]

The Third hand is one way to mitigate that risk. Redirection would be another but I've been taught to utilize the third hand in this specific application.

[@Zolodar]

​@@summitseekersexperience I would also prefer to redirect the brake strand in addition to the third hand - especially on the very last method where you control tilting the ATC with your body weight. With the redirected brake strand you'll make use of the friction teeth on the ATC, rather than just having quite minimal added friction from the rope running around the carabiner. With a heavy climber, you would probably end up either needing a lot of force with your brake hand in order to control the lowering process OR you would have to kinda "balance out" the device angle by putting your entire body up and down by quite tiny amounts. That setup doesn't seem to be great for such nuanced adjustments in my opinion. Like if for any reason you somehow lose your balance at the anchor, you would be likely to end up "falling" into the sling that tilts the ATC into the fully open lowering position and the brake strand not running over the friction teeth to assist the manual braking. So in the absolute worst case scenario the climber who is being lowered would be held almost exclusively by the third hand, as the ATC provides only a very small amount of friction when the rope goes through the device pretty much in a straight U shape. Those are just my thoughts about it - trying to provide some constructive feedback on the matter. Feel free to disagree - maybe I'm just being overly cautious or I'm just overthinking it. Nonetheless I think overall the video is great and informative! Thanks for putting in all the effort!

[@stuff2climb102]

very good advice and excellent video!

[@dylanbistany6498]

good video. for lowering with plaquette style device, AMGA standard is LSD method.

[@summitseekersexperience]

Thanks Dylan!

[@cjdsc5]

I appreciate a lot your vids but would advise to redo this one. ( Tip one: get non active strand out of the way/ sight by tucking it away, for example through your belay loop Tip two ad in both last situations immediately a third hand before using leverage). Keep up the good stuff

[@summitseekersexperience]

Thanks, I'll consider these comments whenever I go to remake this video... which I'm sure I will.

[@gabrielcotton4858]

I’m in a similar boat! Love your vids but the redo might be a good shout The lack of a backup when using leverage is not safe, especially when using other tubular devices like the DMM Pivot With enough momentum the rope will stop the device from locking and the climber will fall

[@paulmorrey4298]

Thanks

[@climbing200]

As I've watched your videos, I've noticed you're a huge advocate for the Grigri. I think that's awesome. I personally use the edelrid giga juul, as I find that it has some of the same benifits as a Grigri, as well as the ATC. I was just curious if you have had the opportunity to use the gigajuul and if there were any big reasons you are such an advocate for the Grigri? Thanks for the great content!

[@summitseekersexperience]

For sure, A couple reasons: 1. Everyone knows a gri gri. I climb with a lot of different people and for me it's almost mandatory you belay me with an assisted breaking device. So I like having a gri gri on hand which minimizes education. 2. Many rescue systems in AMGA utilize the gri gri as a progress capture (although they do use other devices as well). There are other guides that like the giga juul, kong gigi, beal birdie, etc. but these are the main reasons I prefer this.

[@akaTheDevil]

Could you also put it back into regular belay mode and redirect the brake strand to lower the climber?

[@summitseekersexperience]

only if you could safely unweight it and have the climber safe as you unattached the ATC from the masterpoint. I would not recommend this. The other option would be to defeat the ATC with another carabiner and lower with a third hand in place (don't defeat the ATC without a third hand backup). I might make a video on how to do this.

[@370HSSU]

DMM Pivot is better than Black Diamond ATC Guide in every way 💪