Hi! My name is Jason Montecalvo with Sportrock Climbing Centers and today were learning how to climb safely in an indoor rock climbing facility. Remember, climbing is inherently a dangerous activity and requires you to seek professional help from certified instructors prior to engaging in this.

Now, I would like to talk to you about how to create the correct belay stance and how to ground anchor yourself as a belayer. If youre belaying somebody equivalent to your weight or heavier than you are, see you dont get pulled up into the air, if they were to fall. What I will need for this is a separate locking carabiner. I will take this locking carabiner and I will take this directly to my belay loop. This carabiner will be placed below my belay device carabiner and at this point, I can go ahead and reach for a ground anchor. I want to make sure, I choose a hole on my ground anchor thats appropriate from my height, meaning that I would like this to be tight with no slack in the ground anchor. I will also need to screw my carabiner down making sure that its locked. In order to do this, again, I will squeeze my carabiner. At this point, I want to make sure Im in the correct stance. If I am a left-handed belayer I will have my right foot forward, my left foot back, right next to the ground anchor. I do not want to straddle the ground anchor nor do I want to stand behind it putting slack into the anchor system. I want it to stay tight and essentially Im trying to create a direct line from the ground, all the way up my rope, all the way to my anchor at the top. If I have done this correctly, I have two checks for the anchor which are again, making sure that it is tight and making sure that my carabiner is locked. I am now ready to belay. Next, I would like to talk about doing our 10 safety checks.