This One Belay Technique Helps Prevent Ice Climbing Accidents

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Lead belaying from the anchor - often called a fixed point lead belay - happens a lot more in Europe than it does in the United States. So, for one segment of my audience, it’s very familiar while for another segment it may be very unfamiliar. It’s that duality that has honestly made me hesitant to do a video about it even though my family and I use it quite frequently. Whenever we are introducing an advanced concept, with new principles of safety that lead to new “do this not that” type of considerations, it gets hard present a digestible amount of material that is still comprehensive enough to avoid having people misapply the techniques and maybe put themselves or their climbing partners at risk.

So, where I landed was, rather than compete out in the information marketplace with other videos and how-to presentations (like write-ups and slide decks, etc.), reference the comprehensive stuff and use this is a teaser that might call out some of the considerations we need to consider without getting into all of the available options and options to be avoided - again, that what the comprehensive stuff is for.

We have this problem when we get exposed to something new that we don’t know what we don’t know, so we typically can’t even ask the questions we need to ask in order to get the answers we don’t know we need. This video is an attempt to chip away at that problem, knowing what questions to ask, rather than answer all the permutations of each question.

For example, I give to reasons to use a fixed point lead belay: when the lead climber dramatically outweighs the belay and when the route starts out as a traverse, meaning a fall will create a sideways pull that will spin the belayer into the anchor/wall. Hopefully, this leads to a viewer asking themselves the question, “When else might a fixed point belay make sense?”

I talk about the anchor setup choice we made and why. Hopefully someone asks themselves, “When might other anchor configurations be better and what are the must haves of any anchor setup when using it as the belay point, exposed to forces of a lead fall?”

I talked about the belay method (Munter hitch, in this case) and why. Hopefully someone asks, “What methods are appropriate and which are not?” so that they avoid making mistakes like using a brake assisting belay device (almost all models are NOT recommended for use in a fixed point lead belay).

The comprehensive videos I refer to, I link to freely - here (see below), and on the YouTube page, and in social media posts. I’m not trying to “keep people on my channel and in my content.” I am trying to help people make informed choices about their climbing techniques so that they maximize both fun and safety. Sometimes it might be someone else’s content that meets that need best.

So, use my video as a starting point, but then check out this three-video series done by AMGA guide Ryan Tilley. Here they are, in order:

• Ryan Tilley – Fixed point belay: introduction

• Ryan Tilley – Fixed point belay: anchors

• Ryan Tilley – Fixed point belay: belay methods