Dave Macleod provides an awesome overview of how he approaches self belay with a Shunt. One of his excellent vlog series.
Dave’s intro:
Subjecting your climbing partners to long belays might be okay on a sport climbing trip, but for everything else, it might be better to just go and work moves on your project on your own.
I’ve been using the Petzl Shunt to work my projects for 20 years and its facilitated working countless trad, sport or even big wall projects in some remote, cold and generally hard places to drag a belayer to for days at a time.
In this episode, I show you how I do it. I go through the common problems folk have with setting up the rope on overhanging, diagonal or otherwise awkward routes, avoiding getting your rope cut from bouncing it on edges, avoiding disaster if your shunt doesn’t lock etc.
Note that I’m NOT ADVISING anyone copies me or takes this video as advice. I’m just showing you what I do. Self-belay climbing has some inherent dangers that you can manage but not eliminate. Further, there are some trade-offs between usability and safety and not everyone might want to make those in the same way that I do. But hopefully the video will at least show you that its possible to work on projects of all shapes and sizes when you don’t have a climbing partner