Belaying

Thus, in a typical modern climbing setup, one end of the rope is fixed to the harness of the climber, most often by a figure-eight knot.

While the rope is locked off, the climber's fall should be arrested and they will be left suspended, but safe, somewhere below the last piece of protection.

If the climber falls, they free-fall the distance of the slack or unprotected rope before the friction applied by the belayer starts to slow their descent.

The belayer should stand near to the bottom of the route in order to decrease the angle of the rope through the first piece of protection.

The anchor arrests any upward force produced during a fall thus preventing the belayer from "taking off".

In this case rope management becomes more important, and the anchor is constructed in the traditional manner.

[6] Climbers now almost exclusively[citation needed] use a belay device to achieve controllable rope friction.

Belay devices are designed to allow a weak person to easily arrest a climber's fall with maximum control, while avoiding twisting, heating or severely bending the rope.

While the task of belaying is typically assigned to a companion who stays at the bottom, self-belaying is also possible as an advanced technical climbing technique.

A munter hitch is a belaying method that creates a friction brake by tying a special knot around an appropriate carabiner.

On vertical rock it is no longer used as it is less reliable and more apt to injure the belayer stopping a long fall.

[7] The Australian belay is used on many high ropes courses for supporting participants on vertical, as opposed to traversing, elements.

Additional participants can be tied into the loops or left free to help hold clipped in members of the belay team in place.

The Australian belay requires a clear runway back from the element almost double the height of the element in order to allow the belay team to support climbers all the way to the top.