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Late last night, I was sitting around playing with my ropes and crabs and other climbing gear, and I realised that "guide plates" (Kong GiGi, BD ATC-Guide, Petzl Reverso etc.) are pretty much just ratchets (when used to belay from the top). So, I figured, why not use a garda hitch and save all of $20 instead?

So, yeah, the monetary savings are ridiculously small, so maybe that's no good reason to use it, and of course the garda is no good for belaying a leader, but is there any reason *not* to use it for belaying from the top?

The one issue that I'm aware of is that it's tricky to feed rope out of a loaded garda hitch. Are there other problems?

guhj wrote:Late last night, I was sitting around playing with my ropes and crabs and other climbing gear, and I realised that "guide plates" (Kong GiGi, BD ATC-Guide, Petzl Reverso etc.) are pretty much just ratchets (when used to belay from the top). So, I figured, why not use a garda hitch and save all of $20 instead?

So, yeah, the monetary savings are ridiculously small, so maybe that's no good reason to use it, and of course the garda is no good for belaying a leader, but is there any reason *not* to use it for belaying from the top?

The one issue that I'm aware of is that it's tricky to feed rope out of a loaded garda hitch. Are there other problems?

Another problem is that the garda (or Munter) hitch works partly by twisting the rope as it passes through the 'biner, which results in a very kinked rope by the time you're near the end. Apart from the annoyance factor associated with this twisting, it will probably reduce the rope's lifetime quite a bit if you keep using it, which is another reason why this method is not used on a regular basis.

guhj wrote:Are there other problems?

It twists rope. It can unscrew a carabiner's gate if you tie it on a wrong side.

On a plus side: unidirectional; allows instanteneous swicth from follower to leader belay; you can't loose it.

bdynkin wrote:On a plus side: unidirectional; allows instanteneous swicth from follower to leader belay; you can't loose it.

You must be talking about the munter hitch, right? 'Cause the garda (being a ratchet) sure doesn't switch from taking in to paying out; that's the whole point.

I've never noticed any twisting of the rope using the garda, but I've never run a full rope length through it either. So, now I know what I'll be doing tonight.

Well, it turns out the garda hitch twists ropes really bad. I've only ever used it for a couple of meters before and not noticed it, but after 10 m with a nicely flaked rope I had a bunch of kinks on it. Not good.

So the garda hitch is out of the game.

I started experimenting with a biner brake with the load strand coming out on top, but that seemed to depend too much on choosing the right biners to be useful. Difficult to get easy taking in of slack while making sure the brake couldn't flip around and do something stupid.

Oh well, at least now I know.

guhj wrote:

bdynkin wrote:On a plus side: unidirectional; allows instanteneous swicth from follower to leader belay; you can't loose it.

You must be talking about the munter hitch, right?

Oops, sorry. Yes, I meant munter hitch and I thought garda is just another name for it.