I'm Adam Sanders, here at Triangle Climbing Gear.
I'm going to tell you about the Virgo Ballet device.
The Virgo is actually designed to be used.
What I mean by that, most devices are meant to grab a rope.
This device is designed to catch a climber.
We actually have a PhD in ergonomics on the project from day one for both the usage method
and the geometry of the device itself.
We really focused on how people interact with these devices and how that affects their performance
in real life.
The most pleasant way to use this device is the safest way, so you're not tempted to
make these exceptions and overrides and stuff like that.
It works on a variety of rope sizes, super smooth lowering.
It'll retail for $99 and weighs 190 grams.
The Virgo is targeted at climbers of all ability and variety of styles, so indoor, outdoor,
trad.
One of the great things about the Virgo as well is that if you're using it on a multi-pitch
climb at a belay station to bring your partner up, so here's the climber side.
The rope actually doesn't slide back through, it captures every inch that comes through
it.
It's also really easy to lower someone in that position.
If you use the Virgo, just open the faceplate, swing the handle out of the way, load the
rope, clip your locking carabiner on.
You'll see this icon here that says left, that's to remind you which way to clip it
on your harness.
It's actually opposite of how a grigger would be clipped on, so you'll see that the rope
going to the climber actually comes out from the bottom of the device, and then you're
going to hold it flat like so.
We do that for two reasons.
One, it makes this position feel really natural, you're actually going to be feeding horizontally
primarily, and then also with this added twist in it, it's actually more likely in spite
of you not paying attention, just pull it out of your hands and lock up.
What we wanted to do, we wanted to provide a safe way for the belayer to touch the device,
so they're not actually overriding it, but they are in contact with it, because people
are always going to want to touch these devices.
As you can see, it says thumb here, and then a nice thumb print right there to make it
really clear.
Then your index finger lays in this comfortable groove right here, have your back three fingers
on the rope.
In this position, you can see this cap here that your thumb lays on is actually mounted
through this hole, so it allows the front plate to move independently.
Even if you squeeze that really hard, it can still move and lock up.
So the handle is mounted to the back plate, so it provides some extra safety if someone
is using it incorrectly and they put their hand over it or they're touching it in some
odd way.
It shields the ability of those two plates to move relative to each other, and so in
that position, it can still move most of the time.
There certainly are ways to override, but we tried to shroud it against most of the casual
common ways people might hold the thing wrong.
Then to feed slack, you just feed horizontally like so, take it back in.
One of the really nice things about it being so tactile is that when you take in slack,
like so they clip the bolt and they're top roping for like two feet, when you're in that
process you have to take slack back in, removing your hand from the device, but you can come
right back to it without ever looking at the device because it just confirms you're in
the right spot.
Then if you do short rope your buddy, catch you off guard, to momentarily disengage it,
you just put your palm on this little fin, put your fingers on the rope, close your grip,
and now it's wide open, you can feed to them.
Do that one more time.
So they short open, holler at you for slack, palm there, fingers on the rope, close your
grip, feed the slack.
Even if they fall when you're right here, you're holding the rope that goes to the climber
and so it pulls you right there and locks up again.
So you're not actually overriding it, you're just momentarily disengaging it.
That's a huge benefit so if they're sketched out at a clip and you short roped them and
you're feeling bad and you have to get it to them quickly, then if they do blow it,
you're not holding it open.
Lowering is super simple, straight forward.
I'm taking my hand off the brake hand right now to pull here but in real life you would
not take your hand off the brake hand.
Just swing your handle around like so, you can modulate really smoothly and it's very
easy to control lowering at this device.
