The Trango Cinch is an auto locking belay device, alongside its similar counterparts such as the Petzl Grigri, or Edelrid Eddy. As far as I am aware the Trango Cinch has been available in the UK since early 2009, though it has been popular in the States for some time now. It is probably fair to say that the Grigri is still the most prolific of autolocking belay devices in the UK. I wanted to see how the Trango Cinch compared to other autolocking devices; to see whether it will permanently find a home with my sport climbing kit.

WHY AN AUTO LOCKING BELAY DEVICE?
Whilst initially they seem rather expensive and a bit faffy for a belay device (Trango Cinch at time of writing £55), they come into their own when belaying someone who is working a route, or for times when your climbing partner is hanging around for ages a top rope. Unlike a standard belay device, such as an Black Diamond ATC or DMM Bug, there's a moving part (a cam) which traps the rope; holding the climber in place when they weight the rope. This means that you don’t need to keep as firm a grip on the dead end of the rope, as the autolocking device will be taking the load.

They are not recommended for Traditional Climbing as a standard belay device will let some rope slip through to reduce the impact on the runners.

IN USE
The Trango Cinch is designed to work with ropes of diameter 9.4mm to 11mm, which is quite interesting as a Petzl Grigri is designed to work with ropes 9.7m to 11mm, so something to bear in mind if you tend to climb on a skinny single.

Top Rope Belaying –
There isn’t much to say here, apart from it works like the majority of autolocking belay devices, so there should be no issues here.

Lead Belaying –
At first this felt a bit odd, but it soon becomes second nature. You hold the Cinch in such a way that it pivots. When you feed out slack to the climber you simply pivot the Cinch meaning that the rope is in a near straight line through the Cinch giving a very easy feed out motion. But what is clever is that whilst still in the motion and with the positioning of your hands you still have control of the dead end of the rope.

I much prefer lead belaying with the Cinch compared to my Grigri. The main reason for this is that it's easier to quickly feed a bunch of rope through for the leader; a feature that is especially useful when they're making clips. The Cinch is easier to operate by the fact that you just pivot the device rather than the pressing the handle down on a Grigri.

Holding A Fall –
The mechanism seems to lock up well when the climber takes a fall, and I have seen no evidence of the rope slipping through after it has caught either.

After some reading around some people have suggested that when the belayer is pulled off the ground it is sometime hard to release the mechanism, so they can get back to the ground again. Though I didn’t find releasing the Cinch a problem I do think that the cam handle is too sensitive which leads me onto …

Lowering –
This is the aspect I like least about the Cinch. I find that it is hard to smoothly control the rate of descent when lowering a climber, especially if they are hanging in space (I am also lighter than my climbing partners). There doesn’t seem to be much range between not lowering or lowering very quickly. I have done a little searching around on the web, and it seems that this is a reasonably common occurrence, possibly due to the compactness of the device and therefore the range offerered by the handle is not that great.

I did use a breaking carabiner on my leg loop to help with the control as suggested in Trango's Instructional Vid (see later). This did make a considerable difference, as you would expect, however I would rather not have to resort to this. At first I thought this might be due to me using a relatively new 9.8mm rope, but I still noticed this effect on a furry 10.2mm rope.

At no point did I think that it was dangerous lowering off the climber, but it does require more attention and feel than the Grigri by comparison.

VIDEO
Here is a worthwhile video showing the Cinch in action from Trango.

SUMMARY
For those already with a Grigri I probably wouldn’t rush out and get one, however if you are looking at purchasing an autolocking belay device then I would happily recommend the Cinch, its pros in lead belaying balance out with it lowering downsides.

LINKS
Trango Website
Buy the Trango Cinch here.