Help Me Get A Climbing Grant

[Pete]

Thanks for spotting that buddy!

Glad you enjoyed the video

[Greetings]

How do you keep your hands warm when climbing stuff like that? Surely after 5 minutes of contact with freezing rocks and cold winds they'd just go numb.

Also are you scared of heights?

[forteh]

That video was awesome

Im also intrigued as to how your hands dont just fall apart after 5 minutes or is it just conditioning? I have no idea how you can trust those portaledges, hanging from a single anchor with 3 of you suspended with a bit of nylon

Ive no idea about climbing, how does it work? Does one man go ahead and climb a section whilst securing anchors to give a lifeline for the following climbers? Presuming you chose the climber suited to the specific section, mason couldnt complete that crack climb but george could? You either camp in large cracks/caves or portaledge and carry on when possible, on the descent do you just collect your equipment as you go?

Bloody mental if you ask me

[PaRtZ]

That video was awesome

Im also intrigued as to how your hands dont just fall apart after 5 minutes or is it just conditioning? I have no idea how you can trust those portaledges, hanging from a single anchor with 3 of you suspended with a bit of nylon

Ive no idea about climbing, how does it work? Does one man go ahead and climb a section whilst securing anchors to give a lifeline for the following climbers? Presuming you chose the climber suited to the specific section, mason couldnt complete that crack climb but george could? You either camp in large cracks/caves or portaledge and carry on when possible, on the descent do you just collect your equipment as you go?

Bloody mental if you ask me

*cracks knuckles*

Traditional (Trad) Leading is where one climber goes up first and puts in gear into the rock (nuts, cams, hexes, slings etc), attaches a quickdraw and then attachs that to his rope. Then if he fell at that point, the piece of gear would stop him from falling too far (if the gear is bomber) So imagine the first bit of gear is at 3m. The leader has to get to that gear placement, put the gear in and clip before he/she is safe, otherwise if they fall they kiss the ground

Now the next piece of gear is at 6m say (a further 3m away) The leader then progresses upwards towards this point. From here there are two possibilties:

1) The leader reaches the placement, puts the gear in and clips it. He/she is now safe incase of a fall

2) The leader doesn't reach it in time. The worst case scenario is that they reach the placement, start to put it in, attach a quickdraw, and then come to clip it....and then they fall. The leader would fall 3m, down to the last bit of gear PLUS another 3m's worth of rope that was used to ascend. In this case, they too would hit the ground unless the belayer (the guy on the ground) is a good belayer.

A pitch is a stretch of climbing, usually maximum of 50m (the length of standard ropes) at the top of each pitch, the leader has to put in lots of gear to create an anchor. This anchor must be strong enough so that if the seconder (the remaining climber who comes up and removes the gear from the route as he goes upwards) falls, then he/she is protected. If the seconder were to fall, then he/she would have no slack rope and thus would fall very far at all.

Once at the top of the first pitch, the gear is sorted out so that whoever is leading the next pitch has whatever he/she wants for the pitch. The anchor remains in position and the person attached to the anchor is now the belayer; the other climber leads the next pitch.

To answer your question, the gear that is placed by the leader isn't a lifeline for the seconding guy, its a lifeline for the leader. Ive only done a couple of short multipitch routes that werent very hard atall (VS, and I didn't lead the crux ) but I find them incredibly good fun and scary. You can also get sport multipitch routes where instead of placing gear there are already bolted fixtures glued into the rock face that are much, much safer. You simple use a quickdraw here to the bolt, and then attach it to the rope in the same way.

Anymore questions feel free to ask

EDIT: The cold hands thing I wouldn't know, because me hands get fooking cold very quick, so I sometimes have a disposable handwarmer in my chalk bag. Im going to assume the rock isn't that cold? Or hes got good circulation

Im going to watch this video while I eat my tea

Edited December 13, 2010 by PaRtZ

[JD™]

Great explanation to a question I didn't ask but wanted to know about

The only bit I don't get. You talk about getting to the first bit of 'gear' at 3m and 6m - who puts those there? On a 'normal' (or first time, I suppose) ascent, would the leader be freeclimbing and then hammering in bits of gear every 3m (to go with the distance in your example) for his safety or what? And if he is hammering in bits of gear, does he just leave that there for future climbers?

I used to do a bit of indoor climbing, but this was when I was about 12, and mainly because I'd heard it was great cross training for trials. I would definitely fancy doing some of this if it didn't seem so expensive!

[PaRtZ]

You talk about getting to the first bit of 'gear' at 3m and 6m - who puts those there? On a 'normal' (or first time, I suppose) ascent, would the leader be freeclimbing and then hammering in bits of gear every 3m (to go with the distance in your example) for his safety or what? And if he is hammering in bits of gear, does he just leave that there for future climbers?

Hammering in is the wrong term, hence why they're called PLACEments but yeah the leader puts them there when he goes up. So when the leader sets off, he/she carries some/loads of none of these:

Nuts. Lumps of metal on a wire basically

Hex's. Bigger lumps of extruded aluminum, usually on a sling (like nylon or a thinner/lighter substitute dyneema)

Cams. (Pete had a lot of these for that patagonia trip) These involve a lot of explanation to how they work, but im sure you can see their use.

So the leader places these in the rock, gets to the top, sets up the belay, then the person seconding the route does something called cleaning the route. As you can guess, its taking out all of these bits of gear that the leader placed (Otherwise they WOULD be left on the route, and prone to lighthearted common thievery in climbing known as crag swag).

Whilst the seconder is cleaning the route, these bits of gear are redundant as any falling on the rope will pull on the anchor at the top that the leader has set up and not these lower bits of gear

Does that make sense?

[CalopS]

Brilliant video!

Inspires me to get to some real rocks in 2011

[forteh]

Cheers for the explanations, all makes sense

So when youre descending you have to put fresh placements in and then clean the route again?

[Greetings]

I'm amazed anyone would ever trust those devices or a bit of rope. I'd probably still shit my pants with triple security.

When you're tenting on a wall, do you secure your bodies to ropes as well in case the tent falls?

[JD™]

Another awesome bit of explanation, and I appreciate you taking the time to write it up. I'm still a bit stumped on where these bits go on a flat faced wall though, without having to make a hole (except for the cam, I can see that works in cracks relatively simply). Rather than clog the place up, is there a definitive 'climbing for dummies' thread somewhere that'll quench my thirst for a bit of noob information?

[Si-man]

That video is nuts! Id rather someone scat me though than sleep on one of those porta ledge things

[PaRtZ]

So when youre descending you have to put fresh placements in and then clean the route again?

Ill be perfectly honest I don't know! Every multipitch Ive done we've just walked off the top round the side Id imagine so though, you set up your top anchor, abseil down to your next anchor, build that anchor, and then the next guy could climb down or abseil off his left gear. There is a method whereby you can loop the rope through an chor point in order to pull it through when youre done, but again this is complicated, a bit dodgy, and there is probably better ways of doing it....

JD there isnt really a dummies guide, as most climbers prefer to pass techniques and knowledge on personally so that bad habits arent made and safe practice maintained. A safe gear placement is one that obviously doesnt come out if pulled downwards on, and as you can imagine, different protection methods are used for different features, different rock types, even different parts of the world! Cams are pretty much uselss in wales because all the rock is slate or limestone, so the cams struggle to get much friction on the rock.

Nuts need to be in a slightly tapered V crack so that as the nut travels downwards, it gets more and more stuck due to the sides of the rock creating pressure forces on the nut. The crack also must be flat sided, or splayed inwards, else the nut will simply fall outwards. Unfortunately, as cracks propagate they do tend to splay outwards making good nut placements harder to find. Hexes are the same pretty much, but usually they occupy a much larger space and so are 'posted' behind something, or used as a chock under a large boulder. Ofcourse the slings that are attached to the hex are load bearing so if you're stuck without gear, you can always just use the sling itself to make a placement.

Theres no real rules to placing gear. Its your lead. I prefer to place very little gear and focus more on the climbing and get it done. Placing gear takes alot of energy sometimes, as you're holding on with one arm faffing around with your nuts (hur hur) and you get arm pump (one reason why trials riders are good at climbing - they're already aclimatised to arm pump). In these cases I just think 'f**k it' and carry on up a bit more. Some people prefer to go really slowly and place gear every metre of the climb if they can just so they've got the phsycological reassurance that if they fall, they'd be pretty safe or have a backup close....

Heres some pictures I took of a VS multipitch I did with a friend in Llanberis. I lead the first pitch, and my belay was, well, cosy...

View from my belay point towards snowdon. Note the terrible use of a yellow hex (top left)

Me and my rope management system - Bung it behind a point!

Size of the ledge I was stood on, with the pitch I did below

Dudley leading the next pitch. He actually had no gear apart from a placement on the left you can see, so if he fell he would have gone a looonnnggg way

After shitting his pants a little he was happy to be done

[JD™]

Cheers Matt. I think a goal for next year is definitely going to be to have a bit of a go at climbing and see whether I can enjoy it enough to make time for it. Looks like some great adventures can be had