How to understand this sentence: "This clipped, the final section to the belay is relaxing by comparison."

Question

This clipped, the final section to the belay is relaxing by comparison. (source)

This is a sentence from Longman Dictionary. I am having a hard time parsing and making sense of it. There is no further context in the dictionary, and I can't find a source from which this sentence possibily comes. With "clip" being a verb with multiple meanings, I am not sure what it means here or if this sentence makes sense at all.

Since "belay" is a rope for climbing, is the sentence saying that "the final section to the rope is relaxing by comparison"? In the context, limited though as it is, what could "clip" possibily mean? "fasten", "hold", "cut", or "shorten"? Is this sentence grammatical, at all?

Answer 1

In rock climbing, "clipped" means that a rope has been attached to "clipping bolts" that have been screwed into the rock. A belay is the safety rope used in climbing, or by extension, a climb that is done with the use of a belay.

It just says that "Once a climber has attached their rope to the clipping bolts, the last section of the climb is easier."

Answer 2

It's really not possible to interpret this absent the context that the sentence came from. It seems it was pulled from somewhere else, but it doesn't work as a standalone sentence in terms of understanding it.

Since it's in a dictionary, and it's at least unlikely that a dictionary would include something ungrammatical, I'm going to interpret it as follows:

(The final section to the belay is strenuous.) But once (something is) clipped, the final section to the belay is relaxing by comparison.

In other words:

This (being) clipped, the final section to the belay is relaxing by comparison.

The phrasing and verb tenses are certainly awkward. But that doesn't make it strictly ungrammatical.

However, any further analysis is impossible without context.