After a short introduction to the two most popular bolts, let us consider one of the key aspects of the climbing route equipment:   the belay fitting. As the belay is the critical element for route safety, it's the part on which great attention should be focused on. But too often it's not.

First, it would be necessary to emphasize that the topic we are discussing is the belay of a sport route, aimed at lowering down the climber. In this series of articles, we don't deal with mountain climbing.

The rules that have to be respected are the following:

• Prefer, whenever possible, preassembled belay kits with a single ring (Fig. 1), or a double ring (Fig. 2), or a carabiner (Fig. 3). The international reference standard for each single belay element is the EN 959 of 2007.
• Use only materials suited to the place of use and to the characteristics of the rock.
• The belay anchors have to be placed at a distance of 20/30 cm and have to be connected or always used in pair.
• The belay has to be suited to the lowering down of the climber: thus it has to be placed on a compact rock, sufficiently far from edges, arêtes, cracks, holes, and in a manner that avoids excessive rope friction.

This recommendation is important particularly when you want repeatedly climb top rope the same line; in this way you will use the ring or the carabiner of the belay only once, that is only at the last top rope climbing (Fig. 6). continua...