Redirect the Grigri brake strand for extra friction
When top rope belaying with a Grigri or similar auto locking belay device, you may find you need extra friction when lowering.
This could be due to lowering a heavy partner, skinny rope, slippery rope sheath, wet/icy rope, cold hands, gloves, or some combination of the above.
One crafty way to do this is to redirect the brake strand through a second locking carabiner clipped to your belay loop.
You can use a normal locking carabiner to do this, or the more specialized (and expensive, and strange looking) Petzl Freino carabiner, which has a secondary “braking spur” designed specifically for rope redirect and extra friction when belaying or rappelling a single rope strand.
Note: there are two flavors of the Petzl Freino. Recreational climbers will almost always want the Freino, shown below on the left. The “Z” version is made to use with Petzl caving descenders, and is a very specialized piece of hardware.
Be sure you order the right one, because climbing gear is nonrefundable!
Like with all lowering techniques, the effectiveness of this depends greatly on the variables mentioned above: rope diameter, how slippery the sheath is, if the rope is wet / icy, weight of your partner, etc. Practice in a controlled environment before you try it in the real world.
Karsten posted two nice photos on his Instagram, which pretty much sums it up.
Method 1 - SOME extra friction - brake strand redirected through the gold locking carabiner.
photo: instagram.com/karstendelap/
Method 2 - a LOT of extra friction, with the brake strand redirected through the locking carabiner AND passed back over the Grigri.
photo: instagram.com/karstendelap/
