UKC

This topic has been done to death, but as the Summer holidays are here when families hit sunny European destinations, please remember many hire shops give out equipment to just about anybody and sometimes poor advice, the equipment is not safe for little bodies, most VF are designed for adults, children can be unpredictable particularly when frightened and any parent would be devastated if their child was hurt as a result of misunderstanding VFs as a glorified ropes course.

I bailed out a parent doing a high mountain lift accessed " Facile" VF today with an over confident 12 year old competition climber and her two terrified/crying brothers of 6 and 8. All were trying their first VF, which was recommended to them by the hire shop next to the cable cabins in Serre Chevalier.

We are currently in the Dolomites hitting the end of our trip. We have a 10yo and 7yo doing their first VF trip. They have taken to it very well and had a ball BUT as per other discussions and advice we have supplemented kit with sections of short rope for additional safety and this has not only given us more confidence but has clearly been safer.

Safe trips all.

I have done a few VF with my 10yo daughter. I *always* take a short length of rope and a gri-gri, and "micro-pitch" anything vaguely vertical or potentially dangerous.

Regardless of how much you trust your kid to manage lanyards correctly, all lanyards require a minimum weight of 40ish kilos for the "shock absorber" to work effectively. So if they fell, even with both clips on the cable, they might seriously hurt themselves.

Keeping them on belay removes this risk.

Could you elaborate a little on this technique, please? Are you belaying them just off your grigri off yourself (attached to lanyard), or off other gear you're taking up (cams, nuts etc?)

Usually you can anchor to the bolts that hold the cable, carrying a couple of slings is handy but we've never felt the need for nuts etc. 

We keep things light by using a locking friction plate rather than a grigri, this could also be used to abb a short section if we need to abandon a route. Oh and we just use a short half rope as well, it's a bit stretchy but a lot lighter/smaller.

No, this would fairly dangerous.

All VF designed for children/beginners is covered with ironmongery, so no need to take your own gear. Just clip the gri-gri directly to one of the anchoring bolts (of which there are many) and belay directly off of that. I also cows-tail a sling to my harness and clip that in to an anchor bolt to make sure I'm safe too, even though I'm out of the system.

Oh and one more recommendation. I find it very useful to run up the VF on my own before taking my family up it.

My reasoning is that if I can't sprint up it in 15 mins without having to think about it, then it's probably too difficult and/or long for my daughter (at the moment, at least!)

Two days ago we did the first VF established on Saxony sandstone. Several pairs including teenage children did it without equipment. Not sure how I felt about this to be honest; the likelihood of a thunderstorm was high, the exposure considerable but the technical difficulties low. My view is if you're pulling on a wire handrail you may as well clip into it as we did.

It's completely up to them and/or the people responsible for them. Maybe they were all climbing-wads who warm up on 8a and have a good soloing head?! In which case their perceived risk was low.

I haven't been on a single VF that I wouldn't have been happy to climb without gear. Though I stay clipped in most of the time because, as you say, why not? Rock breaks, material breaks etc.

I was descending the path down beside the Agatha VF in Thones last week. Like many I didn't bother to clip the rail on the descent just nipped down. 

Suddenly a block the size of a football whizzed through the air above our heads with no shout. 

I suddenly felt the need to clip the rail after all...