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climmerbuy's Experience
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ExcitedOkuninushi's Experience
climmerbuy's Experience
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•••climmerbuy's Experience
ATC-style feeding is pretty much impossible above 9.8mm ropes, and even thinner ropes require prepping before the climber pulls slack out. Petzl recommended lock-defeat-belay technique is tiring for the left arm if the rope isn't perfectly stacked and flaked, as you cannot use your right hand to assist. Lowering with this device is fun. See More
The easiest belay device to use incorrectly. People who don’t know what they are doing use these without holding brake end of rope all the time because they falsely believe it is “auto-locking”. Some tension in the rope through the device is actually required to ensure it locks- this means never letting go of the brake strand. See More
Simple, light, assisted-braking belaying. Can rap on two ropes. See More
Requires very specific criteria for the belay carabiner. With the right carabiner--I recommend the edelrid slide lock w/ belay catch--you can feed out slack almost as easily as a tuber, or feed out at maximum speed by lifting the nose. Catches are dynamic, and the rope does not slide even a mm when your climber is hangdogging. Top down guide belay is A+, as smooth as a grigri2 when using my 9.5 mammut infinity. Rappelling is a C+ for multipitches >5 and an A for anything less. Extremely convenient to weight the rappel and understand that you are safe, somewhat tiring when doing endless rappels. See More
While it typically feeds slack better than a Grigri, so the Grigri "fast feed" technique is not necessary, it can still sometimes get jammed. The "fast feed" Grigri technique of putting fingers under the metal lip and pressing down on the cam is not as easy to do on the Lifeguard as it is on Grigri. See More
"It doesn't like stiff ropes or fat ropes for this application, nor was it designed as such. I had the best luck with malleable Sterling ropes such as the Nano and Helix, and it also performed extremely well on the Mammut 8.7 and 9.2 ropes. Anything 9.8 and above, and performance starts to suffer significantly, as it's pretty hard to get rope to feed through the device smoothly." See More
"unlike other mechanical assisted locking models, it boasts a gradual camming action that produces a dynamic catch and can reportedly reduce impact forces by as much as 40%." "This isn't particularly relevant if you are squared away with modern dynamic soft catch techniques as a lead belayer, but it is extremely relevant when you are belaying directly off an anchor. " See More
"stiff ropes feed very poorly. 9.7 and above ropes feed poorly for lead belay. Soft and supple skinny ropes don't lock as abruptly. Half ropes in the 8-8.5 range DO NOT LOCK FULLY with the proper edelrid strike biner" https://www.reddit.com/r/climbing/comments/6aoipn/nonjerky_method_for_rapping_with_mega_jul_in/dhh1vvx/ See More
Smoothest feed of any device. You can actually engage the autolock once you've manually caught your climber by holding the brake end of the rope with one hand (hand A), and use the other hand (hand B) to hold about 9" lower on brake rope before raising hand B holding the rope tightly, and releasing the rope in hand A completely. The rope elasticity and gravity will activate the revo after just a single rotation (0-5") before locking. Bad for bumping hangdoggers as you can't pull in rope super duper fast without it locking. Also sort of sucky for lowering fat climbers. See More