fbpx

Daily Climbing

A couple of climbing enthusiasts spill the beans about all the best practices in rock climbing and bouldering.

Rock Climbing Info

Secret Climbing Hacks to Help You Push Your Grade

By Leave a Comment

So everyone wants to hear about those’s little secrets or tips that can help improve your climbing.

So not all of these are secret, some are just obvious advice, but this can be often overlooked. When your focusing on sending you can sometimes forget some of the basics.

1: Carb up!

There is nothing worse than climbing and feeling like the tank is empty, It can cause you to feel a huge loss of energy.

As we all know carbohydrates are your main source of energy,

A lot of people neglect this and tend to adopt low carb diets usually to try and cut weight. what people don’t seem to realize is you’re not going to be able to climb to your fullest while hungry or carb deprived.

A quick carb snack, about  30 mins – 90 mins before your climb is perfect to help you climb at peak performance.

Recommended snacks:  My favorite climbing fuel is sweet potatoes or oats, sweet potato mashed up is an amazing meal or snack that is easy to make and store.

For some cool outdoor recipes, I recommend Dirty Gourmet.

2: Record Your Failures

Again, pretty basic, but I don’t see climbers doing this enough. Most people just record successful top outs for Instagram or other social media.

While there is nothing wrong with this and its great to keep track of your achievements! but you’re not going to learn much from watching your successful climbs, you need to find out where you went wrong, what you are doing wrong, and how you can do it better next time.

Recording your climbing is a great way to observe yourself and pick out your weak points to improve on.

With everyone owning smartphones there is no excuse for not giving this a try and seeing how much you improve!

3: Antihydral (Be Careful)

So this one is going to only apply to those of you with what I call swamp hands! Pretty all of my friends seem to have bone dry hands 90% of the time when climbing, I, however, don’t.

When I was climbing the easier early grades with large jugs and huge hold’s this wasn’t an issue, but the better I got the more and more I found my hand’s feeling like they were holding back my climbing.

Sometimes on climbs, I would have to chalk 3-4 times especially if it was a bold one. Liquid chalk helped but it didn’t seem enough to clog the showerheads on my hands.

After reading about Antihydral on rock and ice I decided to give it a try! I couldn’t believe the difference it made.

Antihydral basically blocks your hand’s pores to stop you sweating as much. Now as mentioned this is perfect if you have swamp hands, but if your hands are already pretty dry I do not recommend you use Antihydral.

Without a proper skincare regime, it’s very easy to damage your hands. Due to the Antihydral, you will develop calluses extremely quickly and they will need to be maintained in order to ensure no you don’t get any huge flappers or damage your skin.

4: Get a good night’s rest

People always forget the importance of rest for repair and recovery. You will never climb your best running on less than 8 hours sleep.

If you are trying to climb at your limit you are going to need to make sure you take advantage of any tip available to you and this is a biggie.

Sleep is incredibly important not just the night before but also on the days leading up you climbing.

It’s common knowledge that your muscles repair and grow while you are sleeping, this is why its crucial to get enough sleep to allow your muscles to fix themselves and develop. This not only helps your climbing ability but it will also reduce the chance of injury.

This one might sound strange but memory is also pretty important when it comes to climbing, this can be shown by Adam Ondras weird visualization techniques.

Adam memorizes the route and then sits down and does each climbing move in his head, so the next time he climbs it the route feels familiar and therefore easier.

Another example of this is climbing techniques.

These are efficient and good practices that you drill into yourself week after week to ensure your climbing is fluid and smooth.

So where does sleep come in? Well, sleep is where your brain stores and processes the memories of the day. If you want to ensure you retrain as much technique as possible or memories of a route, it’s important to get enough good quality sleep.

Now, lack of sleep can cause lack of reactions and sometimes in climbing you need to react and fast.

This is usually when you slip off a hold. Split-second decisions to bail or stay will sometimes need to be made to avoid injury.

Some days you might feel extra tired but don’t worry about taking a few extra hours if you feel you need them. This is your body telling you that it needs more time to repair it’s not just you being lazy.

5: The Sharma Ondra Screams

So this one is not really a tip for the gym unless you want to get some weird looks…

So Chris Sharma and Adam Ondra are often called the best sport climbers in the world and they have one thing in common.

They both Scream their hearts out when trying hard. Both interestingly enough have different reasons.

Chris attributes his scream to trying to raise his levels of aggression in his moves, to ensure he is going at them with his full power and strength, along with this he has also mentioned it helps him shut out the doubts in his head.

Ondra, on the other hand, said he screams to ensure he is breathing out on certain moves, Ondra has some of the best breathing control I have ever seen so it was interesting to find out his screams were tailored into that.

It won’t really matter if you use psyche screams for breathing or just to shut out those negative thoughts and bring out your inner power, It’s clear it can be used as another tool in your to ensure you give it your all and climb harder.

6: Investing In A Good Fan

As a climber, you already know the weather is never on your side. If anything it’s out to get you.

But you don’t always have to rely on nature to get that nice upwards draft going on. Thanks to tech improving over the past decade its no longer unrealistic to take a portable fan with you to the rockface.

If you are looking for recommendations I know Daniel Woods is always seen sporting his portable Makita fan, it can be found on Amazon here.

7: Break Out The Crocs

Honestly, this is one of the best bits of advice on the list. It’s super annoying swapping out your climbing shoes, then back to your approach shoes and then back again after you have finished belaying.

A cheap pair of Crocs are great to slip on and off while at the crag, they are super comfy to belay in too.

You can easily attach them to the outer of your back or stuff them down the side of it so it’s not too hard to store.

This tip honestly was such a good quality of life tip.

But beware you might lose style points, or gain them depending on your friends.

6 Reasons Why You Might Find Lead Climbing More Fun Than Top Roping

By Leave a Comment

Don’t get me wrong, top roping is far more ideal for newbies, casual climbers and people who can’t take big falls for whatever reason.

However, if you’re not one of those people, then you might be surprised to find out how fun lead climbing really is. I’d say it’s more fun than top roping, for both yourself and others too.

Here’s a stream of consciousness of my thoughts on it.

1. The “Climbing On Rails” Feeling

I’ve always seen top rope climbing as “climbing on rails,” compared to the sensation you get when lead climbing, looking up without seeing a rope leading right up to the top.

I know it’s just a perception thing, but I can’t help but feel that when top roping, you’re having to pretend that the rope isn’t there. Otherwise, you could literally just use the rope and your belayer to aid climb your way to the top.

2. You Can’t Use Half Ropes

Another big problem is that you can’t use half ropes on a top rope climb.

“Why would that matter?” you’re no doubt thinking.

Well, it’s because top ropes aren’t just about reducing rope drag. It’s about what reducing rope drag enables you to do.

That is to say, reducing rope drag serves a grander purpose.

It enables you to take on the more interesting climbs out there, without any drawbacks.

Lead climbing is great, and half ropes make it even greater. They take the true strength of lead climbing – the ability to take on those really complex and wandering routes – and enable you to take it to its absolute limit.

It’s also why I love bouldering. There’s a strange synergy between the mind-tasking nature of bouldering problems and the deeply strategic nature of lead climbing.

Those twisting and winding climbs are rope drag magnets with how much they wander left and right. Half ropes turn them into a dream.

Top roping is quite limited in that respect. You’re mostly tied to a central line, and wandering routes would end up pretty dangerous if you fell, because you’d swing right across the rock during the fall. Ouch.

3. You Miss Some Moves

Another drawback of top roping is that you skip all the bolts.

Most would see this as simply convenient, but if you look at activity of lead climbing as a whole, clipping in is just another part of it.

Balancing yourself while delicately and smoothly clipping a quickdraw into the bolt, and then slipping a rope into it, all while not falling is a fun little challenge in itself.

Yes, you could say that free soloing skips this too, but free soloing is a whole other ballpark that I’m too scared to do. Bouldering is enough for me for that kind of experience.

And yes, I guess it applies to bouldering too, but I’ve always felt that bouldering is more about demolishing problems and enjoying taking on the moves themselves, rather than “making a climb” as if you’re on a mission to the top.

4. It’s Much Easier to “Cheat”

Time after time again, you’ll see top ropers climbing at a grade way out of their depth, scrambling up the route with a tight rope hoisting them up.

They ascend the route like they’re an astronaut in zero gravity, pulling themselves along as if the route were the corridors of a space station.

And there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s like bouldering above your grade. There’s no better way to push yourself.

However, it can end up being a bad habit for sure, because I sure know that I relied on that kind of climbing too much when I was a beginner.

If any of you play video games, then I feel like this kind of climbing is like “save scumming.” We’re all guilty of it, I know.

However, if you don’t play video games and have no idea what that means, then forget I said anything and move on.

5. Setting Up a Top Rope Can Be Annoying

The problem here is the sheer amount of time and effort it takes to set up, for how little you get out of it.

With lead climbing, you just walk to the climb, get on belay, and climb.

With top roping? Well, it’s a real pain sometimes.

And that even goes for when you don’t have to set up your own anchor.

First of all, you have to hike all the way to the top of the climb.

Sometimes, this is impossible. Other times, it’s easy.

When it’s easy, it means your climb is going to be really short and barely worth the setup time. When it’s impossible, well, it’s impossible.

Once you’ve had the pleasure of hiking all the way to the top of the climb, you have set up an equalized top anchor.

You’re going to have to to scout around for suitable objects to build one off, because it’s not quite as straightforward as throwing a sling around a rock and calling it done.

You’ll need at least three sturdy rocks to create an equalized anchor off. If there’s a good strong tree then you could always use that, but it’ll eventually kill the tree if enough top ropers do the same.

Once the equalized anchor’s set up, you have to rig the rope and toss both ends down to your friend, at which point you have hike all the way back down again before you can start climbing.

Now that everything’s finally set up and you’re both in position, you get to climb a short, single pitch route before you get to take everything down again, which means – yep, you guessed it – another hike all the way back down. Fantastic.

6. Route Hogging is More Common With Top Roping

Because it’s such a pain to deal with all this hassle of setting things up only and taking them down again, many top ropers end up becoming route hoggers, trying to get as much as they possibly can out of their setup before they eventually take it down.

There’s a lot of hostility towards them for this reason. They’ll set up their top rope on a popular crag, leave their top rope up while they eat lunch, and continue to block everyone else from leading the route until they finally decide to pack up a few hours later.

Of course, this is entirely avoidable with a little bit of common courtesy.

It’s not so much a problem with top roping itself, it’s just a by-product of the increased set up time being a bit of a pain if you’re setting up top ropes day-in, day-out.

That being said, when top ropers are being complained about as route hoggers, it’s quite often just because they’re newbies. Newbies are not too familiar with crag etiquette, so it’s a bit harsh to blame them for it.

If you’ve been waiting for a while for some “route hoggers” to finish up, go and politely talk to them, without complaining, and tell them you’d like to have a turn on the route. Climbers are good people. You’ll see.

The Best Climbing Movies To Watch If You Enjoyed Free Solo

By 1 Comment

So you don’t really know much about climbing, but what you do know is watching Alex Honnold’s jaw-dropping ascent of El Capitan In Yosemite, was way more interesting and entertaining than you expected.

If you are looking for some other climbing films to scratch that itch, then I highly recommend you check out the films below.

While not quite the levels of sweaty-palm intensity that free solo was, they are still incredibly interesting and awe-inspiring to watch. They will leave you contemplating life, physical limits and hopefully make you want to give climbing a try!

The Dawn Wall

The Dawn Wall is the epic story of Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson and their attempt at the hardest big wall climb in the world!

This is the ultimate climbing film to watch, If anyone I know starts to take an interest in climbing, this is the film I tell them they have to watch.

I mean just talking about it always leaves me with a huge grin on my face.

Taking place in Yosemite just like Free Solo, Tommy and Kevin aim to climb the part of El Capitan that the sun hits first, naming it the dawn wall.

Not only is this story about climbing the Dawn Wall its also about Tommy Caldwell’s life and his rise to climbing fame and the struggles he has faced.

I personally enjoyed this much more than free solo. I think learning about Tommy’s personal life and struggles helped create a compelling narrative that had me rooting for him and Kevin all the way.

If you are going to watch any climbing film I can’t recommend this one enough! Its a must watch for climbers and non-climbers alike.

Where to watch it?

The Dawn Wall is available on Netflix, which I know 90% of you will have already. If you don’t, you can sign up for a free trial of Prime to watch it on Amazon instead.

Valley Uprising

After watching free solo and the dawn wall you might be curious about the history of climbing in Yosemite.

This is where Valley Uprising has you covered. Climbing in Yosemite really kicked off during the beatnik movement in the 1950s- 1960’s and valley uprising covers it all and more.

Teaching you about climbers that changed climbing in Yosemite forever like Royal Robins and Warren Harding.

It even includes the humble beginning of Black Diamond as the famous climber Yvon Chouinard sold pitons out the back of his car to support himself!

It kind of melds all of this into a rad climbing history lesson, from the crashed drug plane to insane base jumpers, Valley Uprising has it all.

Where to watch it?

The Valley Uprising is available on YouTube Movies, or – yup you guessed it – Amazon Prime. They seem to have everything these days… I included another banner below if you’re too lazy to scroll.

Meru

Meru is the tale of Conrad Ankers, Jimmy Chin and Renan Ozturk and their multiple attempts at one of the hardest alpine routes in the world, the Shark Fin.

Often called the Anti-Everest this climb is known for its failed attempts and incredible difficulty.

So originally it took me a while to get around to watching this one as ice climbing and alpinism never really interested me until recently. But it’s worth the watch!

It explores the strange drive that humans have to complete the goals we set for ourselves along with the ability of the group to push on in the face of hardship and adversity.

It was honestly one of the most inspiring films that I have ever seen.

Meru will keep you glued to your seat while trying to figure out where the drive and determination displayed by the group come from.

Where to watch it?

Meru can be found on a few different streaming sites: YouTube Movies, the Google Store, or on Amazon again. Link below for the lazy.

Statement Of Youth

Lacking in scale to the big dogs like Dawn Wall and Meru it’s a nice short flick, perfect for a commute or study break film.

While still quite new, this doc gives an interesting insight into British climbing. It is set in the 1980s when the bar of climbing was raised significantly. During the start of the 1980’s 7b+ was the hardest climb completed, but by the end of the 80’s people had pushed the grade to 9a.

The film looks into the lives of young climbers during this era doing anything they can to climb full time. Scraping together a living off the small amount of “dole” money given to the unemployed, along with shoplifting and sleeping at crags just to get by.

I found it quite amusing to see the British variant of the dirtbag lifestyle. It was interesting to see what British dirtbags were like compared to American counterparts.

Follow Jerry Moffat and Ben moon as they try and push climbing limits. This eventually lead to Ben moon setting the first 8c+ which at the time of setting was the hardest sport route in the world!

Overall I found I enjoyed this much less than the others, But still a pretty damn good climbing film.

Where to watch it?

Statement Of Youth is available on YouTube for free! Click the banner below to go there.

Who is Janja Garnbret? And Why Is She Slovenia’s Best Hope For Gold In Tokyo 2021 Olympic Games

By Leave a Comment

Henning Schlottmann [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)]

It’s a pretty safe bet to say Janja Garnbret is one of the best climbers in the world right now.

With a title like ‘the golden girl of sport climbing’, it’s no surprise she’s one of the favorites for Tokyo 2021.

This Slovenian climber had a pretty impressive start when she entered the IFSC Lead Climbing World Cup, placing 7th overall. Pretty damn impressive for a 16-year-old, not to mention it was her first world cup!

Just imagine the nerves! You’re on a world stage now competing against your climbing heroes and the best in the world.

She carried on to win the “La Sportiva Legends Only” a bouldering competition in the same year, she won out against some other notable climbers like Anna Stöhr and Shauna Coxsey.

The following year Janja came back with a fierce determination and managed to place in pretty much every comp she entered.

By the time the next world cup rolled round she was much better prepared. After a year of hard training and competing, she managed to swipe gold in both Lead and Combined!

When called to defend her world cup titles next year she did one better, not only did she get gold in Lead and Combined again, she also took silver in the bouldering world cup.

Talk about raising the stakes! Janja went all in and held nothing back blowing away spectators with her strong performance.

While being extremely proficient in the competitions and pretty much dominating the women’s scene, Janja has proven to be just as good out of the competitions.

While climbing indoor competitions and outdoor routes and are two completely different styles of climbing, Janja has managed to still excel at both.

She has managed ascents like the 8b Avatar in Croatia at 16! Then the same year she moved onto 8c+ which is pretty crazy when a few decades ago 7b+ was seen as the limit to climbing.

Most climbs at a professional level can take weeks, months, or years before the athlete is able to ascend the route.

So one test pro climbers can use to check their skills is to go for a flash. A flash is where you finish a climb first try without attempting it before, but you can get advice/beta from other climbers who have tried the route.

Flashing can be called the ultimate test of a climber’s natural ability. It requires you to dig deep and trust your instincts. Routes at that level require each move to be pulled off almost perfectly in order, to ensure you are in the right position or have enough strength to complete the route.

But the hard part is only being able to attempt the flash once. So if you fail that’s it. You can never again try to flash the route.

The pressure on ascents like this must be almost unbearable. Knowing that one wrong move can cause the failure that will last you a lifetime.

Despite the pressure and difficulty of the climb, Janja managed to flash La Fabelita which is a pretty damn hard 8c. It looks like the advice she got given from fellow Slovenian Mina Markovič helped, as it’s been said she made the route look almost easy.

But this is all in the past for Janja, goals she has already conquered. With the Olympics in sight, a new goal has emerged for all competition climbers. With this new goal also comes a new format.

For those of you not up to date on the new climbing format, climbers who would normally only compete in 1-2 disciplines like lead and or bouldering, now have to also compete in the third discipline which is Speed Climbing.

This creates a new dilemma for Janja and most other climbers. Some pros had never even tried speed climbing before this change and starting to train for it now gives them no way near enough time to get to a level needed for the Olympics.

The reasoning behind this change is climbing only has 1 medal and it would be unfair to pick one of the other disciplines over the others.

Despite these new challenges, Janja still won even with the tough competition in the IFSC World Championships which adopted the Olympics style for the first time in 2018.

She claimed gold in the Bouldering and combined, but didn’t manage to place gold in the finals for the lead climbing.

Battling with Jessica Pilz, Janja narrowly missed out on coming first place due to being 11 seconds slower to finish the final problem. Talk about a close call!

Janja also got gold in the World Cup Lead climbing and combined events making it the second time she has won both the World Cup and World Championships.

With so many achievements under her belt, it’s no surprise that Janja Garnbret (climbing’s golden girl) is expected to do extremely well at the Olympic games.

How to Avoid Ground Falls in Outdoor Climbing

By Leave a Comment

The thought of taking a ground fall is scary, and for a very good reason.

It’s not so much that ground falls happen as a result of sloppy belaying or poor decision making, although it can definitely happen because of those things.

It’s more that you’re literally guaranteed to take a ground fall if you fall before the first bolt.

Now, that wouldn’t be a problem at all if it were for the fact that so many first bolts are so damn high up. I mean, you’re pretty much going to break your ankles for sure if you fall while clipping the first bolt on some of them.

Why First Bolts Are Often High

“Why don’t they just place the first bolt lower then?” you’re probably wondering.

Well, the reason is that it’s arguably more dangerous to place the first bolt too low.

You see, it’s because it gives the climber a false sense of security. When you fall, you actually fall twice the distance between yourself and the last bolt.

Think about it: the rope leading up to you from the last bolt will end up being extra slack during a fall. However much rope was pointing upward before the fall will be pointing downward after the fall, with the last bolt as as kind of pivot.

So, someone who knows what they’re doing when they place bolts on a climbing route will place the first and second bolts so that the distance between them is not as far as the first one is to the ground. That way, you’ll never take a ground fall due to poor bolt placement.

Naturally, that’ll mean that the first bolt is better off being placed somewhat high up, because otherwise the bolts would have to be so close together that you’d be clipping in more often than you’re climbing.

So, yeah, there is a case to be made for having a lower first bolts, and more frequent bolts around the lower part of the climb to prevent a ground fall, but really, it’s just a lot less hassle for the bolter to just place the first bolt higher up. Besides, you can just use a stick clip to solve the whole problem of “possibly breaking your ankles if you fall before the first bolt.”

Using a Stick Clip

With a stick clip, you can clip into the first bolt while still on the ground. There’s zero risk – as long as your belayer is awake, of course.

It’s interesting though. When you stick clip the first bolt, you’re basically top roping until you reach it, because the rope will be running from your belayer, up to the bolt, and then down to you again. It’s like doing a tiny top roping pitch until you switch back to lead climbing.

It feels strange at first to get into the habit of stick clipping the first bolt, but your ankles will be so glad you started doing it.

Now, stick clips are a little unusual as far as climbing gear goes, in that they’re basically two separate parts that combine together: the stick, and the clip.

The “stick” part is a long, telescoping extension pole, while the “clip” is the part that lets you clip or unclip quickdraws using that pole. With your rope already clipped in, you can lift a quickdraw up to the first bolt, clip it in, and release it within a couple seconds.

If you want an all-in-one stick clip that’s both an extension pole and a stick clip, there’s Kalias’ Clip-Up, which is also pretty much the most compact stick clip setup you can get.

However, if you’re looking for the best stick clip and extension pole combo, I wrote a guide to the clips here, and the sticks here.

I also reviewed the Kalias Clip-Up in that first article about the clips, but really, I do think that the one I recommended, the Superclip, is easily the best “stick clip clip” out there. It’s just a shame that it doesn’t come with a pole.

Though, to be fair, the Kalias Clip-Up only offers an 8′ extra reach for you, which might not be enough for some climbs. With the crags you climb at, if you’re thinking “yeah, I need more than 8 foot of extra reach to clip the first bolt,” then I guess another advantage to getting the Superclip is that you can use it with a pole like the Eversprout 6.5-18 foot one that I recommended in the extension pole buying guide. 

The Ultimate Guide to Indoor Bouldering Safety Precautions

By Leave a Comment

So, you’re probably googling this because you need to know this stuff to be able to climb unsupervised. Either that, or reading this anyway because you value your own personal safety.

In any case, I’m going to cover everything you need to know in order to be able to climb at your local bouldering gym unsupervised.

Before I get into it, I just want to say first, that the single best thing you can do to get a feel for the standard etiquette for indoor bouldering is to observe what the other climbers do at your local bouldering gym.

Have a look around while you have a rest in between climbs, at a safe distance from any would-be falling climbers, and observe these things in particular:

  • The distance between climbers starting routes on the same wall.
  • The distance everyone keeps back from the climbers
  • The places where people leave their stuff, and what they leave there. (Water bottles might not be allowed. Go ask a member of staff if in doubt.)
  • The way climbers land when they fall. I’ll go more into this later.

Anyway, let’s start looking at the basic safety precautions that you’ll need to know.

Keep Away from Climbing Climbers

This one is for obvious reasons, but I’m going to spell it out:

Don’t be anywhere near where a climber could fall.

However, here’s something less obvious:

Watch out above you when you’re moving around the place. There are often walls that lean back quite far, so the fall zone is extended more than you might think if you didn’t look up.

As standard practice, look up often when moving around.

Another aspect of this, is the distance you keep between yourself and other climbers when you’re both climbing in some proximity to each other.

Again, check the distance that other climbers in your gym keep from each other when attempting routes, but as a rule of thumb, make sure there’s no way you could crash into each other if one or both of you fell.

When you fall, you take up a little more space when you stumble, so take that into account. You don’t want to stumble into the fall zone underneath another climber.

Falling Safety in Bouldering

When you’re climbing, you’re going to be falling at some point if you’re doing it right.

“If you’re doing it right?”

Yep, because if you never fall off, then you’re holding back too much. Go and have fun, but make sure you know how to land properly when you fall.

The way that you do that, is as follows:

  1. When you feel that you’re about to fall, look downwards at the spot where you’ll land. That’ll make it so much easier to be prepared when when you touch the ground.
  2. Be aware of your legs and get ready to land on your feet. Make sure your legs aren’t locked (fully extended at the knee). That’s the biggest mistake you can make.
  3. As you land, bend your knees. If your legs were locked, you wouldn’t be able to bend your knees because of the impact force, resulting in a world of pain.
  4. Place your hands on the floor as you land. This will help for two reasons: First, it’ll help soften the impact. Second, you’ll stabilize yourself better, so that you don’t roll your ankle or anything.

As for the kind of falls you can end up taking with the more advanced routes, you can check out this guide Jamie wrote about them.

Keep Your Stuff Out the Way

Basically, keep everything you’re not using in the lockers or cubby holes.

Of course, you’ll need your chalk, so take your chalk bag or pouch of chalk with you, and possibly your water bottle too if your gym will allow it. Otherwise, just leave it with your other stuff or wherever everyone else leaves their water bottles.

When you climb, leave your chalk bag or chalk pouch away from those same dangerous areas that you yourself should be keeping away from. Chalk left under where a climber falls would cause them to try to avoid landing on it, which means not landing properly. And, as you might imagine, not landing properly can cause injury.

Basically, as a rule of thumb, you should leave your chalk where you’ll probably be sitting down for a breather after the climb you’re doing.

Report Loose Holds

While it’s rare to find a loose hold, make sure you report it to a member of staff immediately if you find one.

Do remember though, that holds might have a little bit of give when you grab onto them, but they shouldn’t actually rotate or anything.

A small amount of wobble is completely fine, but if you grab a hold and think, “whoa, what’s up with this?” then go ahead and report it to a member of staff. They’ll be glad you did, because it’s down to the climbers to mention this stuff when they notice it.

Climb Down Whenever You Can

Yeah, falling can be fun in itself, but do try to climb down whenever you can.

Once you’ve reached the top hold and put both hands on it, you’ve completed the route. Use any color holds you like to climb down, because there’s no need to stick to a color at that point, unless you’re setting yourself a downclimbing challenge or something.

Chalk Up Regularly

This one’s for you. It’s not so much a safety concern, more of a “minor injury” prevention thing.

Well, I guess that does make it a safety tip. Anyway, make sure you use chalk, and use enough of it.

Without enough chalk two things can happen:

One: you can tear your hands to shreds. I did exactly this on my first time, and it took two or three weeks to heal. I don’t have the pictures anymore, but you probably don’t want to see that kind of thing.

Two: you can slip off unexpectedly, which can lead to injury in any number of ways, from bumping holds as you fall down to just plain not landing properly. This is also one of the reasons we use climbing shoes rather than sneakers or something.

Here is a chalk ball that comes in a resealable ziploc bag, which will probably be cheaper than the chalk for sale at your local bouldering place. Chalk balls also last longer than loose chalk, they spill less, and they apply chalk in a less “chunky” way on your hands.

Anyway, that’s it. Have fun, and climb safely. You’ll get used to the whole thing in no time.

As a final note, I’ll say that you should make sure you’ve had enough sleep before you go climbing, because sleep plays a huge role in the level of awareness you have. If you have trouble sleeping, or simply can never fall asleep early enough, then this guide is a great resource on how you can fix that.