CU Belay Glasses
- May 2015
- Climb Gear Reviews
Belay glasses are fast becoming a necessity for me at the crag–I’m starting to wonder how we all lived without them 🙂 It’s not just the relief of neck pain from bending back and looking up: the reality is that you can’t stare straight up at your climber the whole time, so you need to take breaks and put your head down. With belay glasses, you can watch your climber like a hawk every second of the entire climb, and that matters to me because I take my belaying very seriously!
At this point I have 3 different pairs of belay glasses, and I love them all. The CU belay glasses were one of the first ones to appear on the market, and they definitely nailed it with the design. The CUs are still the lightest and lowest profile belay glasses I have, which is really important to me, though they do seem the most delicate. That being said, I’ve been using mine for almost 2 years now, and they have held up quite well. I am careful to stow them away in the foam-lined hard-shell plastic case between every use, or keep them hanging around my neck or my belayer’s neck.
Above all, these glasses have excellent optics. Now that I’m becoming a connoisseur of belay glasses (!) I’ve started to notice the slight difference in optics: the CUs have no blur or division line in the sight line across the front view, and they also are very clear and free of blurring or peripheral metal outside of the view. This makes it very easy to look around them while wearing them, and also makes the sight picture non-distorted and easy on the eyes.
The CUs are slightly spendier than some other options for belay glasses, probably because the protective case is definitely part of the unit and is well made and sturdy. But I would have to say for the amount I use them, I think they’re worth it.
I’m using the CU glasses as well and I’m very glad about them too. 🙂
One additional thought about the usage scenario, though:
Following a hint from a friend, who had her climber falling low in the route and loosing sight of him, I consequently start using the glasses from the third bolt onward (in well bolted routes, the second might do when the route is more spaciously bolted). This way I hope to never loose sight of the climber in case of a fall.
I don’t like to wear them either until the climber’s up past the first bolt–it’s visually kind of confusing until they’re up higher.