Simul-climbing is a form of roped climbing that is used to cover a lot of ground quickly over moderate terrain. One climber is tied into each end of the rope and the leader starts to climb, being belayed normally by the second climber. When the leader runs out of rope (in other words, when the rope starts to pull on the belayer), the belayer then starts to climb. Both climbers move simultaneously, yet separated by a rope length. The leader still places pro and clips into it as usual and the follower removes it as usual. The leader tries to make sure there is AT LEAST one piece of pro between him and the follower, and usually at least a few pieces. Simul-climbing is safer than free soloing or simul-soloing, but not as safe as normally belaying each pitch.
NOW. Having said that, let’s get to the point of this tip. There was recently a pretty serious simul-climbing fall in Eldorado Canyon in Colorado. Both of the climbers were very good and experienced and the leader fell on 5.6-ish terrain. In this blog post, the other climber (that was following) discusses what went wrong, what went right, how the rescue operation went, and more. In another blog post, the second climber goes back to the location of the fall and finds out that a broken hold was the cause.
This is a reminder that — as it says on every piece of climbing gear and climbing literature ever produced — that climbing is dangerous. Bad things can happen, especially when doing something like simul-climbing. No matter how experienced you are, stuff can still go wrong. Don’t try simul-climbing unless you’re extremely confident that you’re not going to fall. And even then, realize what you’re getting into.
It’s getting hot right about now in most parts of the northern hemisphere. Here are some ways to climb in the heat and still have an enjoyable time!
1. Bring appropriate food — Some food is just incredibly unapetizing when it’s hot outside. I love peanut butter sandwiches, but it’s almost impossible for me to choke them down when it gets really hot.
2. Wear the right clothes — Wear shorts. Wear light-colored clothing. Wear clothing that breathes well. Wear loose-fitting clothing.
3. Bring sun protection — This includes a hat, sunglasses, and sunscreen.
4. Wear light-colored shoes — If you’ve got multiple pairs of shoes, consider wearing the pair that isn’t entirely covered in black rubber. The black rubber absorbs the sun’s heat like a champ.
5. Drink lots of liquid – Bring tons of water, Gatorade, or whatever kind of drink you like. Freeze a couple of the smaller bottles so that you’ve got cold water even later in the day.
6. Have a reward in mind — Promise yourself that you’ll go get a nice refreshing Coke, Slurpee, snowcone, or ice cream as soon as you get off of the mountain! I promise you that nothing will ever have tasted so good!
7. Climb in the shade — Duh. You’ll be able to find a shaded wall in most areas.
8. Climb in the morning or evening, when it’s cooler outside.
9. Climb near water — To some this means deep water soloing. To others this could mean climbing in a narrow gorge with a stream at the bottom.
10. Head for the mountains! — If possible, climb at higher (cooler!) elevations.
I started climbing what seems like a long, long time ago. If only I knew what I was getting myself into… Here are a few things I wish I had known before started climbing (note that these are for me… Your mileage may vary…):
1. It will dominate your life — Forget about any other hobbies, interests, or passions…
2. It will take your money — You will never have any extra cash to spend, but you’ll be very “asset rich.”
3. It will ruin your productivity — All you’ll ever want to do is climb, and when you’re not climbing you’ll only think about climbing.
4. It will relieve stress, tension, and worry like nothing else can.
5. You will receive more joy from climbing than doing just about anything else.
6. You will start a climbing blog that you have to write on every single day…
7. It’s OK to fall. The sooner you fall, the better of a climber you’ll be.
8. It doesn’t matter how hard you climb. You’ll enjoy whatever rock you get on at whatever level.
9. Use partners’ gear before you buy your own. Don’t rely solely on what review websites or magazines say. You need to get out and use the stuff on your own!
10. Start trad climbing as soon as you can, because trad climbing is freaking awesome.
11. Only climb with people you enjoy being with.
12. Climb in as many different areas as possible to stay psyched.
13. If you’re not enjoying climbing, it’s OK to stop! You’ll come back to it eventually.
14. Climbing will take you to the most beautiful places you’ve ever seen.
15. Don’t forget to look down and enjoy the moment.
That’s all from me. What do you wish you had known before you started climbing?
Jerry Moffatt is a hardcore English climber who was at the forefront of the world’s climbing scene in the 80s and 90s. In the video below, he offers some great tips that will help you climb better. Listen to the man! He’s got the résumé to back it up…
SuperTopo has been doing a great job over the past several months reviewing a bunch of different climbing gear. They cover climbing shoes, harnesses, helmets, belay devices. quickdraws, slings, pro, ropes, snow and ice gear, etc. The list goes on. And if you buy something that is reviewed on the site, SuperTopo gets a small commission. Hooray for helping people make a living off of climbing!
Why yes, they are. I climbed a snow gully on a mountain yesterday with my dad. He hasn’t done a snow climb in 40 years, but he did do something interesting that I’d never seen before. Maybe I’m just a spoiled punk kid with my gaiters, but my dad put rubber bands around his somewhat billowy pant legs so that his crampon points wouldn’t snag them. Like this:
Does that make sense? It seemed to work for him… Seems like an easy (and light) way to protect your pants if you don’t have gaiters. Does anyone else out there do this?
I read a forum post over on RockClimbing.com by a guy who was belaying and dropped the climber. According to the belayer’s story, he warned the climber when he was at the halfway point of the rope, but he kept climbing. Anyway, long story short, both guys seem partially to blame. And I started to think about how crazy it is that we often place our lives (literally) in the hands of strangers. Other activities don’t require that level of trust and mutual competency.
So I figure the best thing to do when climbing for the first time with someone is to just assume they don’t know anything! Check and double check everything (harness, tie-in knot; make sure they’ve got all the gear they need). Go over procedures (“OK, so when I get to the top, I’m going to… and then YOU are going to…”) and commands (“When I say “OFF!”…).
In other words, do as much as you can to ensure that everything will go as smoothly as possible! Got any other ideas or examples?
I have several ropes with core shots. That’s where the sheath of the rope is cut through and the white core of the rope is damaged. There’s an easy way to tie off this damaged section so that it can’t get weighted. That way is the amazing butterfly knot!
While I no longer climb on these ropes, they’re great for hanging on a route that you’re going to clean and bolt. That’s what I use them for, anyway. Or you can use them as hand lines over a sketchy approach, or… well, for anything other than climbing, really! Here’s how to do it:
There you go! Any questions or comments? Any other times you can think of when tying off a damaged section of rope would be useful?
A lot of people tie a stopper knot with the extra rope after tying a figure 8. I prefer doing the below method. Both methods are useful for making sure the short end of rope doesn’t slip through the knot. The trick shown below is also nice because it gets that extra end out of the way, making it easier to grab the rope and clip it in.
Click for a larger version.
It’s pretty simple. After tying the figure 8, you take the free end of rope and stick it in between the loops of the knot (where noted in the picture).
UPDATE: After writing this, I found out that this is also called a figure 8 with an extra pass. Here’s a great page with step-by-step photos of how to tie this knot.
Devil's Tower in Wyoming, home to two of the 100 North American Classic Climbs.
Roper and Steck’s Fifty Classic Climbs of North America is a classic of mountaineering literature, but the book’s been out of print for a while now and some consider its list of routes to be dated (which is a weird complaint about a book about classics…). A great–and you could argue more modern–list of 100 routes can be found here at the North American Classic Climbs page.
While this list includes some of Roper and Steck’s routes (like The Nose on El Capitan and the Finger of Fate on the Titan), there are many other decidedly more modern-feeling routes such as Ancient Art and El Matador. Each route includes trip reports, beta, and pics. Very cool!
How many of the routes have you done? Also, is there anything like this for Europe?
Today my buddy and I climbed a pitch that traverses significantly. Routes like this create a problem when you try to clean them; if you were just lowered, you wouldn’t be able to reach the draws to clean them. The solution? Trollying! It’s when you clip one end of a quickdraw to your belay loop and the other to the rope. As you get lowered down, you slide along the rope. Like this!
(click for a larger version)
Because of all the tension on the rope, it might be hard to unclip the rope from the draws. If that happens, you can clip the quickdraw from your harness onto the quickdraw on the bolt. This unweights the rope, and then you can easily unclip the rope and clip your harness quickdraw back into the rope. Whew! Does that make sense?
Yeah, it’s pretty basic stuff, but essential sport climbing knowledge!
Here's a sample topo from the Betaflash site. Pretty slick...
I ran across a really cool piece of free software recently. It’s called Betaflash and you can quickly and easily draw topos with it. Graphics for bolts, anchors, belays, flakes, corners, routes, bushes, trees, cracks, and more are all pre-drawn and you pretty much just click on whatever you need and plop it in.
You get the same end result that you would from making the topo in a program like Adobe Illustrator, but Betalfash is 1) free, 2) easier to use, and 3) faster to use.
It runs on Windows, OS X, and Linux, and it doesn’t take long to install. Go get it!
Before I did the East Face of Mt. Whitney a couple summers ago, I found a topo online of the route. It seemed pretty good and so I printed it out and took it with me on the route. I didn’t bother taking any other info up. Well, I got up on the route and realized that the topo wasn’t quite as good as I thought it was…
Conserve that energy! There's still a long way to go!
So as I mentioned in a previous post, I’ve been dealing with an injury recently and it sucks pretty bad. But yesterday I finally went climbing again and ended up doing 15 single pitch sport routes, none of which I’d done before. For me, that’s a lot of routes. And man oh man, was it awesome! So with that as background information, here are some thoughts about doing a lot of routes in a day:
This happened to me today. I led a sport route, lowered off it, and untied. My climbing partner pulled the rope but realized too late that I hadn’t fully untied untied the 8 in the rope. So the rope wouldn’t slide through the anchors at the top! Rookie mistake, right?
So this is what we did: My buddy tied in to the other end of the rope (the end not stuck at the anchors) and re-led the route. Once he got to the top of the pitch, he undid the knot and dropped the rope.
Yeah. Pretty simple. Not the most complicated process, but I thought I’d throw it out there in case it might prove useful to someone. Any questions?
The images below show how to make a funnel out of paper. This makes it easier to fill up your chalk ball with loose chalk without getting it all over you:
The fireman’s belay is a sort of rappel backup. A person at the bottom of the rope holds the rope in his/her hands while the rappeller rappels. If the rappeller loses control and goes too fast, the person at the bottom pulls the rope (or ropes if it’s a double rope rappel) tight. This has the same effect as the rappeller pulling back tight on the rope with his break hand, and the rappeller stops. I drew an amazing picture to illustrate the setup.
I use the fireman’s belay when rappelling with inexperienced rappellers. But since it required no extra gear or setup, it’s something you can do whenever you deem necessary. It’s just another nice arrow to have in your quiver of rappelling safety.
Think this guy would have used nuts to jump start a car? Doubtful.
I went into the local climbing store today and heard a funny story. A friend of mine was climbing in the Valley of the Gods last week. After a long, hard, hot day of climbing, he and his partner returned to their car to find that the battery was dead. Fortunately, there were a few other cars that passed by that they flagged down, with the hope that the other cars could jump start their car. Unfortunately, no one had jumper cables.
Then one of the climbers had an idea: Why not use a bunch of nuts strung together to connect the batteries?And guess what. It worked! How awesome is that?
Moral of the story? It’s twofold: 1) Always have jumper cables (and other essential car safety items), and 2) A little bit of ingenuity can get you out of sticky situations not only while you’re climbing, but before and after, too!
A couple days ago at Maple Canyon, Utah. Ahhh... So nice...
I just ran across a great article by climbing training guru Eric Horst over at the Nicros website. In the article, Eric gives the challenge to climb at three new areas this season. Here’s a quote from the article:
Climbing at many different areas is the very best investment in your future climbing ability.
Interesting… I’d never thought of that before, but it makes sense. There are a number of reasons why climbing at multiple areas is good for you.
This is a blog about climbing, updated every night at midnight (Utah time). It's probable that not every post will be a tip per se, but there will be something about climbing every day.
