[RyanCavanaugh]

The problem with the belay test as it exists today is that it tests whether you know all the peculiarities of each gym's beliefs around things like the exact order your hands should move when taking slack, whether tails on figure 8s are important (if so, how long, and what kind of knot may or must terminate them), whether the length of the belay loop matters, and so on. These things change seemingly on a whim and aren't always motivated by good evidence.

I learned to belay at Vertical World in 2005 and would fail Vertical World's belay test today, for multiple reasons, if I used the same method they themselves taught me!

Meanwhile, as you point out, no test can determine whether or not a person will be paying attention during an actual climb.

[blackguardx]

Standards change and improved methods are discovered. In the 50s and 60s the "hip belay" was the standard and considered safe. Once ATC/tube style belay devices became ubiquitous, the "pinch and slide" technique took over. The "pinch and slide" technique you likely learned is no longer considered the safest method of belaying. The AMGA belaying technique is now considered standard and for awhile gyms would still pass "pinch and slide" users but I'm not surprised they have stopped.

[jmpetroske]

Safety standards do change for the better, but insurance and legal risks do have gyms on edge. I think his point is that gyms tend to be overly strict in areas that do not matter, but are easy to regulate/check. I.e requiring you have an unnecessary “backup” knot above your figure 8, requiring 2 Tri-locking carabiners for autobelay in response to accidents where people simply didn’t clip into the autobelay, knowing your gyms mnemonic for checking your knot, and disallowing wearing a single earbud when autobelaying (saying you won’t be able to hear if there is an emergency). These are all things I’ve seen required in gyms that IMO do not actually improve safety. Having friends that work in gyms, I’ve heard a lot of these policies are due to demands by insurance companies.

Meanwhile, I very frequently see people belaying in manners where their climber would hit the ground if they fell (usually the first 3-4 bolts up). The difference is, this is much harder for gym staff to notice and correct. Furthermore, I’m sure most of these climbers are capable of using better technique and do so when taking a belay test, but then get complacent afterwards.

[rhombocombus]

There’s huge variability even in some of the gyms in the article, whether from site to site or inter-tester variability. Whether or not it improves safety, if it helps places like this stay open and solvent I guess that’s a win, but I wouldn’t rely solely on someone’s passing a gym’s test for me to let them catch me in a lead fall.

I’ve also been failed in seemingly spurious details that I was subsequently passed on with different testers at several gyms.

[snowwrestler]

You shouldn’t be getting downvoted, this is sometimes true. Most often what happens is a junior staff member is overly rigid in applying what they were taught.

I once almost failed a belay test because I did not know that gym’s particular trick for “counting strands” to prove the figure 8 was tied correctly. I just know what a correct knot looks like after decades of tying them. Ultimately I asked them to check with a manager, who passed me.

That said, I’ve also seen experienced climbers with terrible belay technique; catching them with a modern test would seem like a good thing to me.

[dilyevsky]

Had a young-ish gym employee berate me for not holding the brake strand with TWO hands when catching the leader recently… clearly against manufacturer instructions