Belaying: Protecting The Leader
By Don Graydon.
The severity of a fall-and the difficulty you will have in stopping it-depends partly on my weight but also on the amount of friction created as the rope travels through pieces of protection and around obstructions (the more friction, the easier it is to stop the fall) and on how much I bounce and slide down the rock rather than falling freely.
The severity of the fall also depends significantly on something called the fall factor - the ratio of the length of the fall to the length of rope between belayer and climber.
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