Top belaying with a GriGri has its place for redpointing
We tend to think of a GriGri as a sport climbing belay device, but on multipitch routes it can be useful for much more: lead belaying, rappelling, emergency ascending, haul bag lower-outs, and even giving your partner a chance to retry a difficult section.
That last one is especially interesting when you're trying to “redpoint” a multipitch route as a team. Lowering a follower is discussed extensively in relation to emergency lowering with an ATC Guide, but what if you fall while following a difficult pitch and want to try again to redpoint it? This is very difficult with an ATC Guide. It is becoming more common for climbers to try to redpoint entire multipitch routes, which likely means retrying sections regardless of whether leading or following.
Wait, did you send the pitch if you only followed it?
Fair question. But when both partners are trying to redpoint a multipitch route together (think dream teams like Babsi and Jacopo or Tommy and Alex), there are some unwritten rules about who leads and who follows certain pitches.
A multipitch route usually has a few standout crux pitches in contrast to other more moderate pitches. You and your partner may both want to lead the pitches at or near the crux grade for the full redpoint challenge.
But on easier pitches, it often makes sense for just one person to lead while the other follows to keep team progress moving up the wall. After all, if you are both leading every single pitch, you may as well trade support days rather than try to both redpoint on the same day.
Yes, those top-roped pitches might have been a tiny bit easier than leading them, but I much prefer the shared team redpoint experience over the fully supported single-climber's redpoint ascent. It simply feels different to have someone jugging behind you compared to sharing the challenge with a partner.
Top belaying with a GriGri has a quirk to watch for
If you've top belayed with a standard GriGri, you probably noticed the rope can slowly feed backward through the device if you aren’t holding tight on the brake strand. This is not necessarily a safety problem, but it means you need to give a more active top belay than with an ATC Guide.
This is where the GriGri+ has a surprisingly useful feature.
The GriGri+ has a dedicated Top Rope mode.
In this mode, the cam behaves differently, with lower spring tension that allows it to lock up more readily. In practice, this significantly reduces the amount of rope that can creep backward through the device while top belaying. And, you can still lower with the handle.
It’s a small feature, but it is an incremental improvement for hard multipitch climbing. You could use the GriGri+ as the dedicated top belay device, then swap it between leaders as you climb, with just a regular GriGri for the lead belaying.
The GriGri+ TR mode is really only a fun-fact tangent to mention. My main takeaway is to consider each partner having a GriGri while redpointing multipitch climbs - the "Gri" is really an all-around tool for being on a wall!
