Photo credit: diagram by Andy Kirkpatrick, used with permission. From his excellent book “Down”, highly recommended!

Note - This post discusses techniques and methods used in vertical rope work. If you do them wrong, you could die. Always practice vertical rope techniques under the supervision of a qualified instructor, and ideally in a progression: from flat ground, to staircase, to vertical close to the ground before you ever try them in a real climbing situation.

If you use a plaquette style belay device such as the Petzl Reverso or Black Diamond ATC Guide, it’s important to know how to lower someone if needed. 

There are many ways to do this. Lots of them are somewhat complicated, and can increase the risk of accidentally dropping your partner, so learning one or two techniques inside and out is important.

Here’s a lesser known, but simple, way lower from a plaquette - transfer the load from your belay device to a Munter hitch.  (It's similar to the Load Strand Direct or “LSD” lower, which we cover in this article.)

This method requires that your second can give you a tiny bit of slack for just a moment, which should be possible the vast majority of the time. 

1. Tie a third hand/autoblock backup to the brake strand.  (Adding a “catastrophe knot” a bit further down your brake strand is a fine idea as well.)

2. Clip an HMS locking carabiner to the anchor. 

3. Tie a Munter hitch in the brake strand and clip it the HMS carabiner. 

4. Ask your struggling second for just a few cm of slack, for a moment. When you get it, it unclip the blocking carabiner from your plaquette. Nice! The load smoothly goes from the plaquette onto the Munter, and you’re ready to lower.

Finally, here's a nice video that shows the technique. (Demo starts about 1:20)