Posted by 
Up periscope! Dave tests out the well priced glasses from Y&Y to see if they can relieve his Kilnsey neck.
Y&Y belay glasses can help belayers to avoid raising head for long time, in order to relax muscles at neck area. Let them feel smoother and more comfortable. Say NO to belayer’s neck!
Performance *****
Style****
Value*****
I was an early adopter of belay glasses using the CU glasses as soon as they came out. My local sport climbing crags are very steep and belay sessions can be an arduous affair. I’ve had plenty of mates that have accrued quite severe neck and spinal injuries over the years and I’m pretty sure belaying has been a contributing factor. So I would always recommend buying a pair when chatting to beginner and intermediate climbers. Advanced climbers should know better!
The Y&Y Belay Glasses are a smart, stylish and well priced pair of belay glasses, as you would expect from a French company. For those who are new to the concept they work exactly like a periscope except you are looking from horizontal to vertical and not the other way around.
The details of the glasses are worth mentioning as they are very well made, using high quality materials. The bows (arms) are made from SMA (shape memory alloy) this material retains its original shape even after deformation. The actual frame itself is made from stainless steel and the prisms are very high quality. All in all a very good quality pair of glasses, they are very light so you won’t notice them in your pack when you have to hike them up to Ceuse.
The box contents includes a cord retainer (so you can look like a senior citizen with them hanging around your neck), a lanyard, a hard case and even a small screwdriver for adjustments. I never needed to adjust them as they fitted and were useable straight away. The hard case seemed a little over designed with velcro flaps and a full zip as well as a carabiner for clipping onto your harness, etc, it even had a belt loop! There is also options for nose sizes with the removable silicon nose pads.
In use they were great, perfect optical vision through the high quality prisms, the leader came into view at about 8m so it was a case of have them hanging around my neck until I felt I needed them. The prism tended to slightly enlarge and foreshorten the leader but once I was used to this I was able to anticipate rope without any problems.
The Y&Y Belay Glasses have been a great addition to my sports climbing kit. I’ve used them in a variety of climbing situations and even used them for multi pitch trad climbing (although there’s so much faff with trad kit that I would use them all the time as I’d be anxious of losing them) and they would be great for a multi pitch bolted climbs. They’re perfect for climbing walls and steep sports routes and much, much cheaper than a series of physiotherapy or chiropractor visits.
The next phase for Y&Y is to respond to customer feedback and develop a series of colour options, you can have your say on their facebook page here.
SRP: £49.99 plus p+p
Why not receive our latest reviews and gear news via your inbox by following our blog: perfect for all gear freaks! Just sign up via the home page link in the sidebar. We never keep an email list (too much hassle – we’re out climbing) and we would never, ever pass your email address on to someone else (no, no, no that would be very unethical).
Climbing Gear Reviews 
One comment