What happens if GriGri gets trapped in the first Quickdraw?

If a light Belayer gets trapped in the first Bolt can this unblock the GriGri?

Because that makes a big difference and is the main reason that allows me do this project!
Deep Thanks!
Ben

♫ Music for my videos comes from

[HardIsEasy]

Should have mentioned that in some cases it's a good idea to unclip the first bolt to avoid this and have more freedom while belaying ;)

[studious]

Excellent video as always. Grigris are typically safe but in no way foolproof like many people believe/assume them to be. Always practice good belaying techniques. Thanks for all you do

[ultraseal]

This is so needed in the climbing community. I regularly use your well researched videos to solve disputes between climbers!

[ugurali]

Gri-Gri and its replicas has the highest accident rate because people relax too much with the comfort of 'self blocking' (eventho it is written otherwise in the PETZL manual :) ) . Very nice video to show this possible scenarios and consequences! Cheers!

[thevanities]

Thank you for putting in the work and helping keep people safe.

I think I noticed a something about the way they were catching the lead falls that caused the gri-gri to release. Specifically that it seemed that trying to give a dynamic catch and using the belayers body to help cushion the fall (as we are trained to do) allowed the gri-gri to get pinned open briefly. At 2:15, we can see that most of the belayers weight looks to be on his feet, as he stands up into the catch. I would agree that the gri-gri may fail in such a scenario - but I don't agree that it is quite so similar to the scenario of a belayer being dragged up 8 feet to the first bolt. I believe the gri gri will be cammed up and under bodyweight tension by the time it will arrive at the first draw and it won't be so easy to defeat.

Watching carefully the catch starting 2:10 we can see the gri gri initially cams and then starts pulling the belayer up. Belayer gets pulled out of a sitting position, and as the gri-gri hits the first draw the belayer begins to stand, pushing his hips up and in toward the gri-gri. This is when the failure happens. The belayer starts to break with his right hand and as his hips start to move back he regains control of the device. In fact I will even go so far as to suspect the gri-gri may lock even without a hand on the brake rope after about 2-3m as the belayer falls back down in his harness, not that you should ever let go of the break rope I am sure.

[seanisaac]

And one of the many reasons why we mainly use (and teach) fixed-point lead belay and gloves for multi-pitch lead belaying!

[alesmo]

Hi Ben, I would have made a knot as backup to your backup hand, just in case. If your hand was sucked into the Grigri maybe you would let go. But nice video, many people are not aware of the fact that this could happen

[crimsonraen]

Thanks for another great video! It's really disheartening seeing SO many people out there belaying so poorly with gri-gris. -_-

[iacamigevaerd]

Cool! Thanks for doing all this testing. I think another good practice is to just do a mule knot in the rope itself as a backup whenever the situation is sketchy and you might need both hands to protect yourself.

[gwaddy]

Excellent demonstration/experiment. This is very interesting, thanks for testing. Your channel content is really good. Keep up the great work.
Thank you.

[Denis_Bobrov]

Very important information! Thank you.

[iacamigevaerd]

For the ones thinking this is way too hypothetical, I've seen it almost happening once, climber was past the second bolt, the first one was kinda low and they took a fall which would mean decking if the Grigri had slipped a meter or so. The belayer was considerably lighter but still, falls with little rope in the system tend to raise the belayer easier.

[ace-kzzd]

I've been wondering this for ages, thank you for this video

[catsaur]

Wow I was just thinking of this scenario. Thanks!

[thejfactors]

Did you back up the climber on another rope? I know it's not super likely that you'd experience full rope failure but when testing strange error states, and sudden rope pinches on parts of gear or surfaces that maybe weren't meant to be loaded or act as a locking mechanism... Probably wouldn't hurt to throw an extra slack rope in there haha.

[TrueHelpTV]

This company needs to commission you to write a warning pamphlet for every grigri sold. Or consider a mandatory brake backup lol

[PeregrineBF]

It'd be interesting to see other belay devices tested like this. The Click-Up/Alpine-Up design is another assisted braking device, but with a very different mechanism of action from the GriGri. I wonder how it would fare.

[tonelli]

Nice one. Would be really interesting to see what happens with other semi auto belaying devices. I could imagine the Wild Country Revo would unlock itself even easier.

[leoingson]

Great video, I was afraid of that situation, too.

[NoclockMinecraft]

Maybe I'm wrong but I think in real condition (which would already be quite hard to get into) your weight would pull you back down and the grigri would lock again?
Good example on why weight can be a important factor in belaying tho because at a 30kg+ difference you might just get jammed into the quickdraw for a good while...
Great video as usual, thanks for testing what we are not willing too!