Important practice for climbing calls which helps climbing safety and communication.
Taught to me by Nails, these should be known by belayers and climbers:
“Nails I’m safe" and "take"
When calling “safe" (for multi-pitch or trad where you are into a SRENE anchor and actually want to be taken off belay) make it a sentence e.g. “Nails I’m safe". This is to differentiate it from the quick one-syllable “take” which means a totally different thing. You don’t want to be taken off belay when you’re pumping out and yelling “take” because your belayer thought you said “safe”.
“Give slack"
Say the two-syllable “give slack” not just “slack” to differentiate it from “take". You’d be surprised how these three calls can be misheard. Also, never say “take the slack”, that’s clearly confusing, the belayer will probably hear “slack”.
Names
Always use names for the important calls of “Nails I’m safe”, “Nails on belay”, “Nails off belay”. This is so the correct climber at a crag gets taken off belay etc.
Other options
Another option on calls, you can say “tension” for “take" and “secure” for “safe” as some people do since they are clearly different sounds.
Cleaning a sport climb
And an important additional note, at the top of a sport climb (as further described in the below post), you are NOT “safe” if you plan to stay on belay and be lowered. “safe” means I’m into a SRENE anchor and you can take me off belay. So instead, at the top of a sport climb you can say “I’m in hard” which means I’m temporarily clipped in, or just say nothing and skip to saying “give slack” so the belayer simply gives slack while keeping you on belay.
In summary, the calls should be:
- “Nails I’m safe” or “Nails I’m secure” - take me off belay
- “take” or “tension" - take in the rope so i can weight it
- “give slack” - give more rope
- “in hard” - temporarily clipped in to an anchor
- “Nails on belay” and “Nails off belay” - self explanatory
Cheers, Brendan