The Organic Climber – Vegetarian running, cycling, swimming, rock climbing and raw foods.

My first reaction to the emails flying around my inbox amongst climber email lists I’m a part of was, Oh GEEZE; stop discussing this and just trade in your GriGri for a new one. I was forwarded the recall notice several times via email and Facebook. But after a while I stopped getting annoyed with it because I saw how beneficial the message was to ALL climbers, even the ones that don’t use a GriGri.

The reason the message is so important is safe climbers always climb with a partner, sometimes in groups and people are always exchanging belays (belaying other climbers). With so many different people belaying it’s important to know if their equipment is safe. How would you like if an owner of a recalled GriGri2 was belaying you and the equipment malfunctioned? According to PETZL the device could become stuck in the open position, thus the break would not work, and you could be dropped to the ground (if the person was not paying attention and breaking as if using an ATC device).

Not that anybody would do this intentionally, but in the off chance the owner of the device did not know about the recall, you the climber can always ask the condition of the device. If the belayer was unaware of the recall you can simply ask them to change to a traditional ATC just to be safe. The multiple postings by just about every climbing website out there is HIGHLY NECESSARY in order to maintain a safe climbing community. The more channels the announcement is broadcasted in the better. That way nobody is missed, and if by some chance somebody did not get the message other climbers can make sure the device they are being belayed with is safe before proceeding with a climb.

The reason for the recall on this device was that the break lever could potentially become stuck in the open position, thus causing the auto breaking function to not work. Even though manual breaking would still work, an unobservant belayer could potentially drop the climber. So, knowledge of this malfunction is a must know amongst climbers of all experience levels.

I would encourage you all to forward any climbing recall notices to your other climber friends. Just becuse you don’t use the particilar pice of equipment in question doesn’t mean your partner doesn’t. Here is the official announcement by Petzl on the recall.