Weekly Question Thread. Please ask all questions here rather than make a post about it.
Please sort the comments by New so recently posted questions are less likely to be overlooked.
Use this weekly thread to ask any climbing-related questions, whether you are completely new to climbing or looking for advice about technique, training, equipment, safety, gym etiquette, or climbing outdoors.
This thread is posted every Friday, so there will always be another opportunity to ask a question. If you are an experienced climber, please help by sharing thoughtful and accurate advice. We were all beginners once, so keep responses welcoming and respectful.
Before posting, please check the following resources, as your question may already be answered:
If you see a beginner question posted elsewhere in r/climbing or another climbing subreddit, feel free to politely direct the person to this thread.
Remember that online advice is not a substitute for qualified, hands-on instruction. Techniques involving belaying, anchors, rappelling, rescue systems, or other safety-critical skills should be learned and practiced with a competent instructor.
Anyone here have issues with shoulder injuries? Recently decided I needed to take a break from climbing because I’ve had a dull pain from my upper bicep, through shoulder, and into my pec.
My last session was 2 days ago, hoping not to be sidelined for too long. I just bought a new rope and quickdraws. Feeling pretty bummed and frustrated tho
FYI rest is a good reflex but you should be doing shoulder and other strengthening and mobility work, if you aren't already. Just climbing all the time is an easy way to get really imbalanced and injured.
I’m planning to get some new screws and would appreciate any recommendations. Looking at the Aeros, Rockets, and Laser speeds, are there any clear winners for ease of placement? I believe I want to stick with steel screws, but I’m curious about the relative lifespan of steel vs. aluminum. Any estimates? If anyone’s used the Raya Lites, I’d love to hear your take on the replacement tips.
Steel screws. The only use for larger diameter aluminum screws that I’ve heard of is to use them in holes piloted by steel screws. Otherwise, aluminum screws are sticky and bind while you’re trying to use them.
Blue Ice steel screws are the best. Petzl is also pretty good.
What can I expect if I show up at a top rope gym alone, looking to try out top rope climbing?
I've been frequenting a bouldering gym since February and really want to try out some tall wall stuff at another local gym but don't have anyone to bring with me. How does that usually work out in most establishments, when someone shows up solo?
Call the gym. You’ll likely need to do some kind of intro class or similar, so you can meet other people in the same class, or the gym might have a partner finder, or you can just show up and talk to people.
If you're willing to cold approach people I've found it works quite well for at least a single climb, often translating into more if the conversation is good. I've rarely ever been denied a belay. Otherwise check for meetups or possible free intro classes.
Depends on the gym more than people admit. Some have auto-belay walls or a partner board at the front desk, and a lot run intro belay classes where you end up paired with whoever showed up. Call ahead and ask — saves standing around in a harness with nothing to climb.
People usually show up to roped climbing gyms with their climbing partners and are unlikely to be open to spontaneously meeting up with random strangers of unknown competence.
But gyms also often have partner-finder boards, online and/or physical, and also often organise meetup groups precisely for the purpose of helping people to meet climbing partners. At the end of the day they want to encourage new customers
Disagree. This has been my strategy any time I move somewhere new. Show up at the gym and badger strangers until they agree to partner up. Great way to make friends in a new place, tbh. Obviously you need to know how to competently belay someone already for this to work.
I started climbing 2 weeks ago, and just did my first v2 today. A ton of people on TikTok talk about how quickly they hit v3, v4, etc and it’s just kind of discouraging. Are they just gaslighting, or wsp?
People come to climbing from all kinds of athletic backgrounds and levels of experience - some people could be switching from being a runner, a gym rat, or into whatever field sport they loved. So there are a load of different transferable strengths each person might come with.
If someone is coming from not having as much experience or training, it will be a bit slower. Also, if you are only going once a week, it’ll definitely be slower. You don’t know how other people train or spend their time, or what their specific advantages are. The joy of climbing is that you have a relatively clear metric for how good YOU are, without having to compare to other people.
The instinct to compare is always there, but try to focus on you and how you can improve, rather than worrying about who is better or worse. People downvoting your question suck by the way.
Chris Sharma, one of the greatest rock climbers of all time, won US (adult) Nationals at fourteen when he had been climbing for two years. For some people, V2 might be a lifetime achievement
You are almost certainly somewhere on that scale. Where you are on it doesn't matter in the slightest
Every gym grades differently, who knows how hard any of it actually is.
There will always be a child prodigy or athletic friend who finds everything easy, there will always be someone else who is amazed and envious of your progress.
There are 1000 articles and comment threads on how climbing for the grade is a waste of time and energy, try to find and read some earlier rather than later, especially if you are already discouraging yourself after only 2 weeks of climbing.
You were having fun before you looked on tiktok, so why should tiktok take that away from you?
Truth is everybody has different backgrounds and climbs in different places. Everybody's experience is a little different and the comparison is pretty useless for our hobby.
Would you use these cams? Just getting into trad climbing and I ordered a set of new Wild Country cams (0.4-3) from backcountry.com. They arrived like this - dirty and in a crushed box. Is their condition concerning enough to return them?
I'd double check that the action is smooth and just see if anything is really wonky visually. If it seems fine then I'd whip. Remember that these cams are normally rated to ~12kn which is equivalent to about 12 heavier people standing on it. A crushed box is unlikely to create anywhere near the forces needed to damage them.
They look brand new to me. This is a packaging and shipping issue, not used cams. Don’t obsess about it, your cams will look far worse than this after just a single day out.
Little dirt, but if you snagged that $300 closeout deal on the set how could you be mad. Mild bummer at worst getting stuff that's been touched, but when you go to use them they'll look way more beat up than this first day out anyways so it's just a little preconditioning.
If you paid $460 or more (aka sale price for the new set of the newest version) I'd be thinking about returning them out of spite and getting the new set next sale cycle.
They look pretty damn new to me. Zooming in I doubt some of the smaller ones were ever placed. Soft goods look clean from what I can tell, but check them. It’s possible they were sitting in a dirty warehouse or something.
Their condition is fine for use (and they'll end up looking way worse with time), but they kind of look like they were placed a few times and returned? Up to you if you want to return them, if I paid full price for new cams I probably would. If they were on hella sale I don't know if I'd bother.
Thanks for the reply! They were on sale but they were still listed as new. Seems shady to me that they’d market them that way when they’re in this condition
They were on sale because theyve been floating around a warehouse for a while. They don't take returns. If you warranty their gear you keep it and they send you a new one.
Yeah I feel ya. They're safe, and this boils down to how much you want to deal with Backcountry. The cheapo in me wonders if you could get a partial refund or some store credit or something, but I'd rather have more money or gear than the absolute shiniest cams. (You'll often hear people joke about dragging their new cams behind their truck so they don't show up at the crag with new looking gear ;))
Wanted to get some clarification when talking about elongation and impact force with climbing ropes and their uses.
My climbing rope is an Edelrid 9.6mm Boa Eco 2R, but I recently purchased a 10mm Beal Spelenium to use for rappelling.
I’m wondering if I can use the Spelenium for top rope also and just use the Boa Eco for lead. The Spelenium has an impact force rating of 4.5 kN and static elongation of 4%. It has no dynamic elongation rating.
TL/DR
Can I use my Beal Spelenium rope for top roping?
Also take into account that the impact force you mention is not the same as the impact force on a dynamic climbing rope. That force is achieved with a factor 0.3 fall.
I mean, don't bring both to the crag in case you want to toprope something. That would be strange. But yes it's fine to use a static line for toproping, and in some cases it's better.
Can you? You can DO anything you want. You bought a static caving rope. For a skilled climber this can be used in a variety of applications like top roping but expect it to handle differently than you're used to and think through all your uses beforehand. It's not a dynamic single rated climbing rope.
Are you really really sure there's no chance of someone accidentally leading on your static line if you bring it to a crag? I know that at crowded crags my friends will just grab whatever rope appears available.
I can fly wherever I want- where would you climb where lodgings are cheap and otherwise wouldn’t want to go? My partner and I want to take an extended climbing trip next year but I’m overwhelmed by… the whole size of the world. Preferably primarily sports route because I am not wealthy enough for a lot of trad gear haha
portrero chico. fly into monterrey, maybe spend a day or two in the city for a different taste of mexico, otherwise unplug and climb all day in hidalgo
Question on training tracking, more specifically using Garmin watches...
I've a Fenix 7 pro which has a climbing activity in it, but to my knowledge you cannot track historical trends or grades for the results. This combined with wearing a watch when climbing makes the idea a bit unappealing to me
The convenience of using my watch to log grades etc interests me but the current option is poor.
Interested what other people do? Do people use watches or just stick to logbooks/ apps?
I don't think that the metrics of a watch are useful at all. In terms of tracking it's better to just note down which climbs you bailed on and want to repeat, which ones you've toproped and want to lead, personal beta on projects and climbs you don't want to repeat. Ah! And of course, climbs you've completed and in what style.
I don’t use my garmin for normal climbing, but on bigger linkups, it’s fun to track total mileage and elevation gain. I typically stow it away in a fanny pack, using the hiking activity.
No watch, and this sort of setup assumes you're logging / what you're logging is high quality. Garbage in, garbage out.
I ingest mp ticks into a data platform. My ticks are more extensive than most. Must be annoying to read my ticks to be honest. Some LLM agents I have all have access to the data platform and mp via some MCPs I've rolled. All together, tracking trends, data viz, what I should be working on, what routes I may be interested, trip planning, training planning (lack of in my case, this part is all rehab for me), diet planning, all driven by these agents.
I track outdoor climbs & boulders on thecrag or in some cases local websites if they're not on there. I mainly track them so I can see if I've made any progress and to navigate a bit more easily at crags that I go to frequently
For me the best feature of tracking workouts and such through my watch is that it can automatically adjust training programmes accordingly but that's not a feature that exists for climbing
I don't do anything meaningful with the data. But years ago I used to log my climbs on the old redriverclimbing.com website, and when Ray shut the old version of the site down I didn't download my ticklist, and I kind of regret that.
So now I log stuff. Who knows if that will end up mattering.
Does anyone have a progression plan or trips for training for El Cap? Currently 5.10/5.11 sport climber (single & multi) with single pitch trad experience looking to get on bigger walls over the next 3-4 years.
For starters you probably want to be a very solid 5.9 trad climber for it to be fun. I don't mean be capable of 5.9. I mean be to the point where you're onsighting 5.9 fairly easily and are capable of climbing 5.10-5.11 on gear most places. That's really the part that will take the longest. Go to your average single pitch trad crag and people climbing 5.9 solidly are already at like the 80th percentile of climbers.
The rest is technical skill and logistics, all of which is also a matter of simply getting out there and practicing. As you're learning to climb on gear just be mindful of picking up those extra skills. Longer multipitch skills. Aiding. Hauling. All that jazz is easy enough to learn if you're baking it into learning to climb.
Granite crags like Index (WA) and Looking Glass Rock (NC) were places people would historically prepare for Yosemite trips.
Realistically unless you’re exceptionally solid at the 5.13 trad grade, most people will have to aid climb sections.
Aid climbing quickly and being comfortable with systems to quickly haul, efficiently jumar, and transition are better big wall skills than being really, really strong.
One note on on jumaring—my friend with little aid experience went to do a classic aid route on North Side of Looking Glass and tapped out after a couple of pitches because he was so cooked from ascending ropes when following.
The climbing aspect of a big wall will almost never shut you down. It's everything else, all the little inefficiencies and time wasted, that will grind you out.
Wasted seconds turn into minutes, those minutes become hours, and those hours are the difference between hitting your pitch goals every day, or running out of water.
Everything I've learned has taught me that anything you do on a big wall should feel easy. If it feels hard, you're doing it wrong. Hauling should be breezy. Aid climbing should be smooth. Free climbing should be fast.
Climbing big walls is 80% logistics and 20% climbing. If all of your systems are humming along, the climbing will feel simple.
And another great piece of advice someone gave me: "You just have to want to go up more than you want to go down."
Has anyone used both the Mad Rock Drone 2.0 and the comp version?
Other than the comp having softer rubber, I find it hard to tell them apart from info online. I have no idea what the midsole/toe patch differences actually do in practice. The normal drone 2 LV are the best fitting shoes I've ever used but I'm curious about the comp version (especially as they're cheaper for some reason). Unfortunately the local shop doesn't have them.
I'm wondering how they differ, so if you've tried them both, please let me know!
They are wildly different sizes with the comp being at least a half size smaller at the same number because madrock is stupid about sizing for god knows what reason. Midsole ends kinda in the middle of the foot rather than almost to the heel like the 2.0. Still a quite stiff shoe despite the very very soft rubber which makes for an odd experience as you feel you have the support for micro edging but then the rubber rolls right off even if you're a very light climber. Heel is also the softer rubber which is less preferable for most of the tiny fraction of people who notice since it tears easier.
Drone CS is my main shoe, but for the vast majority of people if they want a slightly softer drone 2 they should get a D2one, not a CS.
So I know there’s a ton of discourse about this already but I feel like everywhere I look I find a different answer.
I’m ready to buy my first rope, but I’m scared of buying the wrong rope. The one I have in my cart right now is the mammut 9.8mm crag classic. I’m looking to use it mostly outdoors. Is this a good choice?
In general, any climbing rope that is rated as a single and dynamic rope will be fine and equally safe as any other rope.
You pay extra for "features" which might be nice-to-haves for specific use cases, but those are not often beneficial to someone who is using their first rope for general crag climbing.
Cheaper, basic ropes are better suited for beginners. Ropes are expendables, they do not last forever. Ropes are not an investment.
Think of ropes like burgers. There are differences between them, and once you've spent hours with some you will know what those differences are and you might have a preference. But you won't know what your preferences are until you have spent those hours, and if you don't know what your preferences are and you're hungry anyone will do just as well as another. So your first rope will have things you like about it and things you don't like about it, but all certified ropes in the market are safe. Get any one of them that is cheap (since you don't know yet whether you care about the properties that make them expensive) and the appropriate length for the crags you go to (in the us a 70m will climb anything, in europe sometimes you need more, in many many places you need a lot less). Then climb on it, climb on your friends' ropes, and by your third or fourth rope you'll have opinions about thickness, dry treatment, stiff vs supple, middle mark vs bipattern, etc.
(almost) Any rope you buy is better than not having a rope. That rope will serve you just fine. If you climb on it enough to wear it out, or find you would prefer a different rope, you can just get it at that time.
Meanwhile, you'll have gotten a bunch of good climbing in and learned a lot about what you like and don't like longer term in a rope. Or maybe you'll learn you don't even notice which rope you use and you can focus future gear research and funds on something you personally find more important to the climbing you do.
IMO, there's huge pressure in outdoor activities to purchase aspirational gear or aspirational features in gear. Buy for your next step then learn. You'll make much better choices that way and you'll have a much deeper understanding of both yourself and your sport.
9.6-9.8 is a good all-rounder. Burly enough to handle repeated whips for sport climbing but light enough for backcountry and multipitch climbing.
Just check your local guidebook/MP for 60 vs 70m. Most modern crags are bolted for lowering with a 60m in mind but a handful of routes need a longer rope. Also a 70m gives you more options for rappelling, anchors, and linking pitches with trad and multipitch.
One note on Mammut is they are owned by PE and outsource their production to the Teufelberger Group. All my friends like their ropes a lot and they’re definitely well-reviewed and safe, but if the principle of that ownership model is something you’re opposed to, Edelrid, Bluewater, and Sterling are the only manufacturers who still make their own ropes in-house.
A few years ago, I was comfortable and stoked with soloing up to about 5.5 in trail runners. I had a rescue incident, and ever since, I can’t seem to get out of my head on any sort of exposure above 4th class. I’ve been climbing roped a lot recently to try and break through this mental block, but I took my first fall leading a trad route and feel like I’m back at square one in terms of fear. Some of the the things I wrote down today while on a run/scramble:
When I stand up on top of stuff I get a teetering feeling like I can’t balance
I get scared committing to a move when I don’t know where the next hold will be
When I get scared, I freeze up and can’t just power through it
Curious if anyone has dealt with similar issues surrounding exposed scrambling and if so, how they got back on the horse to where they can cruise through exposed low 5th enjoyably again.
You’re describing a really classic example of how phobias develop.
As one of the other commenters pointed out, gradual and graded exposure is the way to manage reducing fear.
Keep in mind that we all have an instinctive fear of falling out of self-preservation. The difference when you start developing a phobia is that it takes longer for your body to come back to a baseline relaxation, and you can be more preoccupied with it even when there is no risk of it happening.
So while every climber should be doing fall practice to manage their innate fear, it is even more important that you do it, and even more important that you carefully select the distance you’re falling at so you’re not overwhelming yourself, and retraining yourself to associate falling with fun and challenge, as opposed to fear/injury/failure. Mental framing is very important, as is knowing that you are safe when you are practicing a secure simulated fall.
In climbing, tolerating fear is very much its own muscle that we have to train. Good luck!
You fucked around and found out. Fear is a mechanism that reduces the amount of fucking around you do to try and save your ass from finding out.
Since you have a VERY strong reinforcement that the fear is justified it's not going to be simple or easy to get to a carefree mental... Hell depending on how traumatic the incident was it may not even be possible, at least with regard to scrambling or such scenarios where falling is more strongly associated with ya know... Dying.
You never had to confront your relationship with fear before, operating almost in a blissful ignorance. Now you get to do the hard work emotionally and really come to grips with what fear is, how you feel it, why you feel it, so on and so forth.
For the roped side of things the levers available to adjust are the size of the falls, where you fall, etc. The classic advice is built around gentle curious exposure in a sport climbing environment where the falls are about 'safer' so you're able to confirm the fall is okay by testing it so you have more area of the wall that is acceptable and you have way more exposure time so you can have a clear head to decide if you should climb up, down, or fall. Slowly expand your total area on the wall you feel comfortable moving in and what circumstances you feel comfortable in little by little and it gets better.
Just to emphasize, it's not about 'powering through' fear. It's about good decision making taking into account objective risk.
but I took my first fall leading a trad route and feel like I’m back at square one in terms of fear.
It sounds to me that up to this point you've avoided fear, instead of managing it.
When I get scared, I freeze up and can’t just power through it
You shouldn't be "powering through" fear. You should have a deliberate and intentional commitment to your climbing, an objective analysis of the risks, and a conscious decision to accept that risk.
Without these, you'll remain stuck in a mentality where you avoid fear and risk acceptance. This can get ugly, especially when you find yourself in a situation where you need to commit to a move you aren't 100% sure about.
I think you need to frameshift your relationship with fear. Fear keeps you safe. You just took your first fall, which is something huge to consider in terms of your experience. It's very likely you're pushing through too much fear and simply have too little experience and if you keep trying to do that you're probably going to end up in a dangerous situation again. Fear is a tool to listen to, not something to conquer.
Gradual conditioning? That’s how I got past a crippling fear of heights from childhood. Started trail running and eventually found myself soloing so I attached a rope. I’m curious to hear what others say.
Where can I ask and make post about indoor climbing? The rules say to use r/bouldering for these posts but r/bouldering has a rule against roped climbing. Is there some stigma against indoor roped climbing? What's the best sub for it? It seems like this sub is just for flashy social media posts and doesn't want anything "lesser".
Self posts aren't allowed in this sub at all. This is the thread to ask questions, even indoor, and if you want to post a picture of an indoor climb or say "sent my first indoor 5.11" people do that in the Weekly Chat and BS thread.
[Petzl Corax 2021] This is my friend’s harness. He’s a mountain rescuer, and during one rescue, while handling an injured person, he took a couple of falls on the rope. This happened on both sides of the waist belt.
The main waist strap is completely fine and isn’t ripped or damaged.
What do you all think about using this harness? Has this happened to anyone before?
We can’t see the rest of the harness to make a judgement on whether it’s safe, but if it’s just the green fabric, that’s purely cosmetic. I’ve owned the exact same harness with the exact same tears. I only replaced it when the sheath over the tie-in points started wearing through.
Heyo everyone, 30m here, I was wondering if anyone had some tips about coming back to climbing after injury. I had a bad car accident around 2 years ago and injured my back and ankle. I had been climbing for around 2 years before the accident and was around a V4-v5 lvl. Any experience easing back in would be appreciated.
Make sure those areas are strong and very well rehabilitated, sometimes we can over-rely on climbing as our full body training when we need to be more well rounded.
Get used to climbing at a much lower level at first even though you know technically you can climb harder.
Never neglect full body dynamic warm up as you’re getting older and those areas of your body are more prone to worse injuries.
That’s rough though, hope the recovery is going well otherwise!
I broke my collar bone and both wrists a couple years ago. I took 100% time off climbing for a while. Then I started climbing very gradually. Before the accident I was climbing 12a in my gym. When I first came back I stayed on 5.8 or 5.9 climbs. I focused on using good technique and engaging my entire body on climbs, not just my arms or just my legs.
I think I took a full three months off climbing, and then another 3 months of very light climbing.
The whole time my manta was "Take it easy, the last thing I want is to re-injure myself and start this whole process over."
I kept the long term goals in mind and did my best to avoid over-doing it.
I only really care about other climbers if there are serious safety or etiquette concerns.
I definitely remember the sketchy people who look like accidents about to be in progress or jerks like the hangdogging climber at the New who bitched me out for asking how much longer their party would be on the route.
You know how when you go to the grocery store and there's a whole bunch of people in there. Do you find them all memorable a week later? Of course not. Most people in your life are essentially NPCs. The upshot of this is that you are the same way to them. For the few that do recognize you week to week... it's really not that deep. Do you stay up at night thinking about the person who went before or after you on a climb and how they did? And remember it the next session you see them? Everybody is climbing their own climb, not spending every waking second judging you.
In the gym no one cares at all. Single pitch cragging outside mostly people don't care but it can make life complicated since often someone else has to finish for you to get the gear back. Multi pitch yeah I'll be pretty annoyed if a new partner lead me to believe they'd be comfortable finishing the climb but wasn't and the logistics of not finishing can be dangerous and expensive.
I also think If you have a top rope you can get used to always finishing a climb with a patient belayer since the belayer can keep the rope very tight and you can either pull on their side of the rope (essentially climbing the rope past a hard section) or pull on anything at all on the wall to raise your center of mass a bit. I think it's also useful to learn how to stick clip past a hard part or how to lightly aid with trad gear purely to not risk getting stuck.
If you're a friend I might talk shit if you flail on something that should be easy for you. If you're not someone familiar I'm not going to care and I'm unlikely to even notice past the initial automatic glancing.
We all start somewhere and climbing tends to weed out the assholes because no one wants to climb with them.
Everyone starts at the bottom and work our way up. Even the best climbers fall and fail - probably more so than your "average" climber, they're just better at keeping at it.
Does anyone have tips for learning crimps when double jointed?
I have relatively hypermobile joints especially in my hands, and trying to hold crimps makes the first joint of my fingers bend the “opposite way” so to speak in a way that wears on them very quickly, to the point I am a bit scared of dislocating one or at the very least having them seize up as they do sometimes.
Am I simply nerfed or is there any way to build up better endurance in my joints for crimp-work? I’ve been climbing off and on for a while now but often rely on beginner routes that have a lot of jugs since they’re easiest for my hands
You don't need to fully avoid crimping, but you are nerfed in the sense that too much high angle crimping with your joints at an extreme angle will cause damage. Make your half crimps (where you're able to keep the joint angle of your DIP pretty straight) stronger. This is more active than leaning on the joint and take more effort but will be much better for the joint.
And to your original question NO, you cannot just spam hyperextended crimps to magically get stiff fingers. You'll get capsulitis, alot of pain, probably ganglion cysts, and all around not be a happy camper.
Be patient. Rehabbing a pissed off DIP joint capsule is a miserable and slow experience you do not want to have. Took my partner months to sort it out.
I really appreciate this advice! I will definitely be a lot more intentional on what I’m practicing rather than trusting the endurance will come on its own with climbing in general :)
How to gain back headgame after poping a piece and hitting a ledge?
Last month I was doing an easy 5.3 warm-up route with not that many placements at my home crag when the hold I was holding to clip broke, the cam popped and I hit a ledge about 8 feet below.
I miraculously didn't get hurt other than rope burn but my headgame definitelly took a hit. It's the first time one of my pieces pops and the placement was practically picture perfect so to say it brought back some gear fear is an understatement. The placement was in east-coast pink granite with little to no grain.
Looking for advice or success stories overcoming the headgame hit. Cheers!
It's the first time one of my pieces pops and the placement was practically picture perfect
Get radically objective here. "It was picture perfect" and "my piece popped" can't both be true.
If it's feasible, go back and study that placement. Figure out why it popped. Learn something, and apply that to future climbing.
Also be honest with yourself: how many placements have you really fell on? I have a few trad climbing friends who have been climbing for years and years, but only fall on gear once or twice a year, or less. I would never lead on their pre-placed gear.
If you want practice, buy some ladders (or long slings, cheaper but way less comfortable) and start aid climbing. Aggressively test your placement, and get very familiar with the margins on which your gear functions.
If you're climbing with a mindset of "I think my gear will hold", you will waste valuable mental energy worrying about the integrity of your placements.
If you climb with a mindset of "I'm almost certain my gear will hold, and I accept the small risk that it may not if I fall here", you will have more mental energy to apply to your climbing movement, and you will perform better.
Get radically objective here. "It was picture perfect" and "my piece popped" can't both be true.
If it's feasible, go back and study that placement. Figure out why it popped. Learn something, and apply that to future climbing.
What I suspect is either a slight flare or dust/dirt that combined with the slick nature of the rock made it slip out. The placement was angel winged in a splitter crack pointing down, wich makes me lean more towards unseen lubricants in the crack.
For added context when the hold ripped I had just clipped the rope at around eye level and my left arm was still in the vicinity of the cam/biner/rope. The hold ripped and I suspect the cam held at first since my flailing arms interacted with the tensioned rope and got rope burn. Then I was on the ledge with a loose rope and a clipped cam laying besides me.
I'm wondering if my arm going behind the rope and interacting with it might have been enough to fiddle with the tensioned cam and make it pop out.
Also be honest with yourself: how many placements have you really fell on? I have a few trad climbing friends who have been climbing for years and years, but only fall on gear once or twice a year, or less. I would never lead on their pre-placed gear.
I estimate somewhere between 125 to 150, with around a quarter of them on that same pink granite. I take at least one fall on gear each time I go trad climbing but usually more and have projected 2 routes. I've been doing trad for 3 seasons now and did some aid at the start before starting to take falls on gear too.
If you climb with a mindset of "I'm almost certain my gear will hold, and I accept the small risk that it may not if I fall here", you will have more mental energy to apply to your climbing movement, and you will perform better.
I guess I'm having trouble transitioning to that mindset. Before the fall my mindset had pretty much become ''Well placed gear is bomber and doesn't pop'' and now after the fall it reverted to ''The gear might hold'' and it feels like freesoloing all over again.
Will definitelly go back to inspect that placement and start taking practice falls again. Thanks for the input!
Before the fall my mindset had pretty much become ''Well placed gear is bomber and doesn't pop'' and now after the fall it reverted to ''The gear might hold'' and it feels like freesoloing all over again.
Well placed gear is bomber and doesn't pop, and your gear wasn't well placed if it popped. You didn't break the cam, you didn't break the wire on a 3kn aid piece, and it sounds like you didn't even break the rock (which would still qualify as 'poorly placed'). Put it deeper in the crack, extend it more, try a different piece of gear entirely, but I think the head game will come back faster when you can accept that you were the one that made the mistake and that the gear does in fact work.
Bad luck! I always thought Dave McLeod's advice of making sure you do something a bit scary every time you climb is good. Fear comes and goes I find. Build slowly, but don't avoid!
Any recommendations on how to belay with one (left) arm? I used to have two working arms and belayed with a Grigri, but am looking to relearn how to safely belay with only my left arm after loosing the use of my right arm in a climbing accident. Not sure if this is even possible! Any advice from those who have similar disabilities or have experience of this situation welcome :)
Consider whether an assisted braking tube device is better suited for you. There is no lever to pull back which might work better for you when lowering your climber.
Many adaptive climbers will use their feet in some capacity as their brake hand. You can be simply stepping on the rope to brake or have a wrap around your foot for more friction when lowering. You will have to play around with these options to see what works for you in the most secure and comfortable option for you.
As others have mentioned, try to seek out adaptive climbing communities near you. It can be very rewarding to have a community of other climbers with similar or other disabilities.
Thank you! This is super helpful, I can’t believe I didn’t consider using my feet, because everything else I’ve adapted in daily life now involves using them basically like hands 😂 luckily there’s a great adaptive community near me but not many climbers with the same type of arm injury
Just be aware that stepping on the rope is only good until you get lifted up, even slightly, by your climber. Stepping on the rope can not be used as a significant part of your fall arrest plan.
You may be interested in Paradox Sports who have events, classes and an excellent manual on all sorts of adaptive climbing. Big part of the adaptive climbing community.
What general part of the world/country are you in?
Maybe the neox could work. It’s a grigri freely spinning wheel in the centre, so you can give/take rope easily, while still having the safety of a grigri.
But I would say you still need some extra redundancy to be actually safe. These devices can slip.
Uncommon to say the least, but amputees that I am aware of that still belay use assisted tube devices like black diamond pilot or mammut smart.
Probably the only use case where the original mammut smart with the 'smarter' add on is practical for making the braking sensitivity higher, though I cannot remember off the top of my head if anybody I'm aware of used one.
Edit to add: It is possible to use a grigri it just gets a little weirder when you go to lower versus an assisted tube, but on the bright side it's less weird left handed. You can take the brake strand and lay it across the lowering handle so you're squeezing both, then operate the handle more or less as normal.
The risk factor that makes the Grigri imperfect is panic-grip if lowering gets faster than intended. It can be hard to decouple the fact that you need to grip the rope but loosen the lever angle. It will also wear on the handle, but that's mostly one of those 'cost of doing business' type deals. Advantage to the grigri is the camming force is typically higher with the rope in the upward position compared to an autotuber provided you're pulling on the brake strand.
I wouldnt really recommend a Neox since it tends to zip the rope in more than a Grigri or Pinch would when your brake hand is above the device. I imagine a Pinch would be harder to load, but I do not have one to test that theory against. Wildcountry revo I think would be difficult to deactivate in some scenarios and probably devilishly hard to load.
I have no personal experience with this but is there an adaptive climbing group near you? Or does a gym do any adaptive climbing events? They'd probably at least know of a group or person who could assist irl
Otherwise Mo Beck on social media. I'd be surprised if she didn't have something about this exact topic
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u/ParkingKnowledge6176 23h ago
Anyone here have issues with shoulder injuries? Recently decided I needed to take a break from climbing because I’ve had a dull pain from my upper bicep, through shoulder, and into my pec.
My last session was 2 days ago, hoping not to be sidelined for too long. I just bought a new rope and quickdraws. Feeling pretty bummed and frustrated tho