Ok, yeah after posting this I went waaay down the rabbit hole, and that’s what I learned. I’ve now pretty much circled back around to an atc with an auto lock and there doesn’t really seem to be a huge weight penalty that route. I want to do a tether and rappel on one rope, now I’m working out a fail safe for that line since the end of my tether isn’t going to stop at my saddle.
Having slack in the system, or taking the load off the device.
I’ll let you know but at this point I’m right there with you on the inexpensive ATC and the auto block, which I already have. It’s easy to attach, and doesn’t have any moving parts. Honestly the more I went down the rabbit hole the less good I felt about using a descender for pretty much anything lol and I literally can’t use the lifeguard, I’m not going to be under tension the entire time. It would be a recipe for disaster to rely on just that.
I tried the Giga Jul and Mega Jul. The Giga Jul would not lock on any rope/carabiner I have. The Mega Jul will lock on some carbiner/rope combinatons. I would not trust them as far as I can throw them. All of the mechanical devices I have tried I would trust. I have used GriGri, Lifeguard and Safeguard a lot. I tried Beal Birdie and Trango Cinch a little. The mechanicals would not have been sold for a long time without recall if they were prone to failure.
I've used both extensively and feel very safe with either. The warnings on the Lifeguard are WAY overblown. Prusiks are much more dangerous, IMHO.
What you see above is what you get. Backup for a mechanical belay device is also WAY overblown, IMHO. Look at all the videos of rock climbers using them with no backup and they could be dealing with a 100 foot fall onto rocks not 10 feet onto leaves.
