Top Tips For Bouldering

Top Tips For Bouldering

When I was a child I would climb anything: trees, bridges, garden walls, anything, partly because there weren’t any crags near to our home in Surrey and partly because I just loved the challenge, particularly when I was with friends, egging each other on to try harder. I have always loved all different forms of climbing, from bouldering to big mountains, ice climbing, mixed snow and rock, and ski mountaineering. Bouldering is a form of rock climbing on small rock formations or artificial walls without using ropes, harnesses or any of the usual climbing kit. Most bouldering problems (the sequence of moves that a climber performs to complete the climb) are within 6m of the ground.

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The ABC of Trad Climbing

The ABC of Trad Climbing

Until fairly recently, climbing was just called… climbing. With the rise of sport climbing, a new name was needed for what everyone had been doing previously, and so the name ‘traditional climbing’, or ‘trad climbing’, was born. In sport climbing, the routes have pre-placed bolts, allowing the lead climber to follow the route and quickly clip in to the bolts. In trad climbing, the lead climber carries, places and clips into protection (nuts, cams, etc) whilst finding the route, so as well as the physical challenge there is a significant mental challenge too. The basics of trad climbing can be summed up in three letters: A = anchor; B = belay; C = climber

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How To Practise Your Personal Climbing Skills At Home

How To Practise Your Personal Climbing Skills At Home

In these COVID-19 days, you may find yourself with more spare time than you’ve ever had before. Add in the amazing weather we’ve been having, and the result is a good deal of frustration at not being able to get out on the crags. We’ll all be straight out there as soon as the current restrictions are lifted, so it’s really important to keep our skills current for when we’ll need them. Here are a few ways you can practise your personal climbing skills without leaving the house.

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How To Use Prusiks

How To Use Prusiks

Some years ago, I was sea-cliff climbing at Gogarth in north Wales. My second was on a tricky overhanging pitch, and he was really struggling. We couldn’t communicate because of the background noise from the sea, and I couldn’t lower him back down as the tide was coming in. My only option was to escape the system using a prusik loop, climb down the rope using a prusik loop, build another belay and haul my second up to it using – you’ve guessed it – a prusik loop.

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10 Top Tips for Progressing from Mountain Leader to Mountaineering & Climbing Instructor

10 Top Tips for Progressing from Mountain Leader to Mountaineering & Climbing Instructor

Congratulations! You’ve passed your assessment, and you’re now a Mountain Leader. That might be as far as you want to go with outdoor qualifications, and that’s fine – well done for getting this far. But on the other hand you might want to progress further and go for Winter Mountain Leader (winter ML), Mountaineering & Climbing Instructor Award (MCI), or International Mountain Leader (IML). We’ll be focusing on MCI here. It is a big step up, but here are some tips to make it easier.

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