Year of publication 1960 - Fell and Rock Climbing Club

John C. Lyth 45The rope is laid as in Fig. D, i.e. curled round and taken ahalf turn round itself. The karabiner is then snapped onto the doubled part of the rope, as in Fig. E, not through thesingle loop only. It is immaterial in which direction the hitchis laid with reference to the rope, as when the karabiner isheld and either end is pulled, the hitch adjusts itself throughthe karabiner.The advantages of the braking hitch are:(1) It is used with an ordinary karabiner.(2) It provides enormous braking effect without danger ofover-heating metal, which could lead to melting of nylonrope.(3) The braking effect can be varied at will.(4) It can be applied in an instant at any point in the rope,without threading either end.(5) It costs nothing!I have thought it worth while to publish details of thisbraking hitch, which I designed some ten years ago, becauseof the many serious and often fatal accidents to climbers,resulting partly from the inability of the second to hold afalling leader. It is manifestly impossible for a woman orsmall man to do more than slightly check the fall of amoderately heavy leader who has come off even a few feetabove. The gadgets on the market intended to brake such afalling leader are fairly expensive, some heavy and not easy toapply quickly. In fact, of the thousands now climbing (inBritain alone), not many will carry them. But nearly allclimbers have a karabiner and sling; and if adopted as a matterof course, perhaps this braking hitch would help to solve theproblem of the weak second; and the belaying of the leaderwould become more than a psychological demonstration.POSTSCRIPT—THE LYTH HITCHBY J. ROBERT FILESJohn Lyth has demonstrated the value of his braking hitch inabseiling and as a safeguard used by a leader in bringing up hissecond man. He saw that a more important use might be to save afalling leader but could not find a climbing friend sufficientlyco-operative to prove the point.On his suggestion we joined him to carry out some tests using aten stone sack of stones as the 'leader.' This victim was pushed overthe edge of an old slate quarry in Borrowdale and allowed to fall