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[quote=Anonymous]In general, adults do find climbing partners by showing up to climbing gyms, but I'm not sure I would want my 13 y.o. to do that. It would be awesome if you could find a trusted adult that likes climbing who could take him, or talk to the gym and see if they have some community suggestions.

But I also think you should learn to belay, simply because it'll give you a better idea of what your son is doing and the risks involved. I'm 5' and weigh about 100 lbs, and I've belayed men close to twice my weight in outdoor climbing settings. That's not an ideal situation, because a large fall will likely mean both climber and me getting whipped around...but from a safety perspective you can stop a lethal fall even with a large weight differential. In fact, I've seen men allow way too much slack for other men so that falls become scarier than need be.  By contrast, I'm hyper-vigilant while belaying because I don't want there to be a lot of slack since it will make it harder to stop the fall.

It might depend on the type of self-belay device, but generally speaking self-belay requires additional climbing skills which he may not yet have. I know climbing gyms have fancy contraptions, though, so maybe they would have something that mimics having another belayer, but I can't think of how that would work.[/quote]

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