So you think you’re hardcore, and everyone else thinks so, too. You climb V-ten-thousand boulder problems and warm up on 5.13s while two lucky ladies cling to your rippling back muscles. Life is good. But you have a dirty little secret. You’re afraid. Not of any 5.14 gut-wrenching mono ladder. No. You’re afraid of the 5.8 fist crack at your local choss bucket crag. You don’t trad climb under the pretense of it being “too easy,” and you just want to “focus on the movement, man.”
The truth, however, is that the idea of trusting your life to Bazooka gum-sized pieces of aluminum shoved in weaknesses in the rock gives you the heebie-jeebies. As you pass the 5.8 crack on your way to your double-dyno sick proj, you silently curse the climbing gods. “What the crap?!” you ask in anger. “How do I become a trad climber??” In that moment, the clouds part, the sun shines through, angels sing, and your prayers have been answered by Daily Climbing Tips.
(Note: You don’t have to sport climb before you trad climb, but that seems to be the route that most people take. My first lead ever was trad—the first pitch of After Six in Yosemite. Regardless, moving on to trad climbing assumes that you already understand the fundamentals of leading.)
The single best thing you can do to become a trad climber is to apprentice yourself to a trad Jedi master. Be Anakin to his Obi-Wan. Or, since Anakin was really annoying, be Luke. Have him (or her) lead all of the trad pitches, and you follow all of the pitches (multi pitch) or toprope the route (single pitch). You remove all the gear that the leader placed. Cleaning gear lets you see what fits where, and how it fits there. Do this for a while. Follow and clean as many pitches as you can. As you’re doing this, be paying attention to what pieces fit in what size cracks. For me, for example, a tight hand crack takes a red (#1) Camalot, perfect hands takes a gold (#2), and so on.
While you’ve got Obi-Wan around, grab his gear and practice placing his cams and nuts in the cracks at ground-level. This gives you first-hand experience with placing gear without any holy-crap-I’m-gonna-die-if-I-fall-here moments. Try pulling on the gear, then clip in to a piece. Bounce around a lot and become confident that these aluminum doohickeys really can save your sorry butt.
Somewhere in here I should mention that you should get a book that describes how to place cams and nuts. (I hate hexes, so I won’t talk about them.) Study it, live it, breathe it. No, books aren’t substitutes for first-hand instruction, but it never hurts to responsibly know too much.
Ok, now go find a super easy trad line. One that you probably wouldn’t ever fall on. Now practice placing gear on toprope. Rig up the climb just like you would any other toprope. But throw cams and nuts on your gear sling or harness and practice placing them as you go up. Climb the route a bunch of times. Get the gear wired. You can also try tying into a rope and pretend you’re on lead. Practice placing the gear and clipping the mock lead rope into it.
You can also kick it up a notch and try leading for real on a lead line while simultaneously being belayed on toprope. Yeah, you need two belayers for this, but it will help with your confidence. If you’ve got the stones and if you really want to be confident, take little falls on your gear. Start out by just weighting the pieces, and then take a little fall. Once you realize that you’re still alive, you’ll be filled with all sorts of confidence.
Are you ready? By this point, you should know how to place gear. You should know when a cam is tipped out and when it’s overcammed. You should know what makes a good nut placement. You should know that whatever piece you place (in good rock) will hold you and every fat person you know. To me, that is the single most important thing you must know! Your gear WILL hold if you place it correctly. But yeah, you’re ready to go! Get on that route that you’ve toproped to death and you’ll dominate it. Trad climbing is very mental. Just keep breathing and keep telling yourself that you’ll be fine if you do fall (which you shouldn’t on this route, right?). And voila! You’re a trad climber!
The order described here isn’t sacred. You can practice placing gear on toprope, for example, before you follow an old coot up a bunch of routes. Do what works for you. Just don’t die. Know what you’re doing before you do it, climb with people who know what they’re doing, and you’ll be fine. And when you’re ready, there’s that 5.8 fist crack to take down.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
First, that first paragraph is hilarious and I wish I wrote it. Second, anchor building is also very important, and more tricky then placing single pieces. Also, the TR approach sounds time/energy consuming. I just started on super mega easy leads. Lastly, I like the “Just don’t die” line. Cool site.
Good advice. I don’t know if the gear you placed on Freedom would have held though.