My housemate has recently purchase this new ClickUp belay device by Climbing Technology. Marketed as an alternative to the Petzl Gri-Gri, i decided to take it for a test drive at LPT sports climbing today. What I found was a fairly simple and effect device for belaying on sports climbs.
The device operates by a fall making the carabiner its attached to move upwards, and unsurprisingly ‘click’ into place. When it has clicked it essentially locks the rope. What I found was that when someone pulls back on after they have been climbing the route, you can pop the carabiner back to the belay position, and carry on using it like normal.
I have to say I didn’t use it as a totally ‘auto-locking’ device, but even the Gri-gri isn’t really sold as such. What I like about the device compared to the gri-gri, was having never used it before I was expecting the potential stop-go-stop-go of a novice trying to use a Gri-gri and failing to co-ordinate the right tension on the handle and dead rope. With the ClickUp this simply can’t happen, twist it as much as you want, it still feeds the rope out nice and slowly.
My only disapointment was that it was near impossible to clip it to my harness with the lightweight HMS carabiner I was using. However with a full weight HMS this isn’t a problem. All in all on first impressions a nice little device, where you can easily pay rope out, take it in, and lower someone without the potential of dropping them that has occurred in the past with a Gri-gri, as you ‘thumb’ it.
(I only tried the device with a 10.5mm rope)
