lead climbing field notes

Summary

Things I’ve learned about lead climbing as I work towards gym certification + being able to lead outdoors.

TODO. still need to write out a few things (like weight differences, belaying/climbing tips, etc)

Terms and definitions

Knots

• Figure-eight: used to tie into harnesses as a climber.
  • Well-dressed: ensuring all sides of the knot are symmetrical. This balances the forces on the knot and can help with straighter falls.
  • Yosemite Finish: tucking in the tail into the far end of the figure-eight. Since falling will tighten the knot, this ensures the knot remains loose enough to untie.
• Stopper knot: tied at the far end of the rope opposite of the climber to stop the rope from slipping through in the event that the rope you select was too short for the climb.
• Make sure to untie all knots after a lead climb, or else the rope will get stuck at the anchor!

Rope

• Flaking: untangling and inspecting the rope for defects. Should be done before and after each lead climb.

Basic Clipping

• Bolt: drilled into the rock to allow for a quickdraw to be attached.
• Carabiner: a metal loop with a gate.
  • Locking carabiners are used for attaching belay devices to your harness and have an additional mechanism to ensure they don’t accidentally detach (like a spring-loaded push gate, or a screw gate).
• Quickdraw: two carabiners attached by a flexible material (known as the dogbone).

Clipping Mistakes

• Backclip: clipping through a twisted carabiner, such that the climber is between the clip and the wall.
  • This is dangerous because the carabiner could twist back during a fall and cause the rope to slip through the gate.
  • To resolve a backclip, simply unclip and re-clip in the correct orientation.
  • Backclips are hard to spot as a belayer after the fact; they’re most easily caught by watching your climber’s hand motion while clipping. If they’re fiddling with the rope a lot / forgot to twist it during an opposite-hand clip, call them out even if you’re not 100% sure it will result in a backclip.
• Z-clip: clipping a higher carabiner before a lower one.
  • This is dangerous for two reasons:
    • It introduces extra friction into the system so it’s harder to reach higher clips.
    • During a fall, the lower carabiner will catch you instead of the higher one (so it’s effectively a skipped clip).
• Skip clip: forgetting a clip.
  • To resolve, climbers may need to downclimb/unclip higher clips to avoid Z-clipping.

Other Mistakes

• Hard catch: when there isn’t enough slack in the system, such that the climber rapidly whips into the wall during a fall.
  • Usually not dangerous, but has a higher chance of causing sprained/broken ankles and other injuries so should be avoided when possible.
• Crossloading: when your belay device shifts to the long side of your locking carabiner.
  • This is dangerous because carabiners are rated for far less force on the cross-direction, so it’s more likely for them to fail during a fall.
• Caught rope: when the rope catches/wraps around the climber’s heel.
  • This is dangerous because the climber’s leg may get caught in the rope during a fall, causing a very hard catch and/or flipping them upside down.
  • Belayers should yell “left heel” / “right heel” if they spot a caught rope.
• Decking: when the climber falls far enough to hit the ground.
  • VERY BAD and will likely result in injury.
  • Most common during the first few clips. Make sure you’re keeping enough tension before the climber reaches the 3rd clip; hard catches are almost always preferred over decking.

The lead check

I’ve attempted the lead check at a Movement gym (Belmont) once so far. I didn’t pass, which is expected— it typically takes a lot of practice + multiple tries to get the smoothness and confidence needed.

The lead check is done as a partner exercise, so you’ll need 1 other person to test with you. Everyone who tests needs to have safely taken AND caught a lead fall before (either through a gym class or outdoors).

The lead check typically needs to be scheduled in advance since it’s fairly involved. At Movement gyms it’s a 45-minute slot that can be booked for free 1-2 weeks in advance on the Events calendar online.

outline

1. Show up 5-10mins early to change, put on gear, sign in, reserve a rope if needed, etc.
2. Groundwork: basic safety and clipping on a couple quickdraws while on the ground
   1. demonstrate you can clip and unclip all orientations with both hands
   2. demonstrate what a backclip looks like, and why/how it’s dangerous (flip the carabiner around, simulate a fall, and show that the rope slips out of the carabiner)
   3. demonstrate what a Z-clip looks like, and why/how it’s dangerous
3. Tie in as climber/belayer, perform pre-climb checks. Instructor will ensure everything looks good (if it doesn’t, it’s an instant-fail).
4. Climb normally up past the 6th clip. When the 6th clip is around the climber’s thigh/hip level, the climber will intentionally fall.
   1. The climber can either do this unannounced, or announce (yell “falling”) immediately while starting to fall.
5. After catching the fall and ensuring both the climber and belayer are safe to continue, the climber will finish the route and clip into the anchor.
6. Clean+flake the rope down, and

instant-fail conditions

1. Starting the climb without passing your pre-climb checks (harnesses tied+doubled-back+not twisted, good knots, locked carabiners, tied into the same rope, belay device correct orientation + climber not on brake line, nobody climbing on an intersecting route)
2. Backclipping, Z-clipping, skipping a clip, or rope getting caught behind heel (100% OK if the belayer catches the mistake within 5secs and climber fixes promptly)
3. Unsafe/excessively hard catch during fall
4. Leaving too much slack in system during fall (i.e. belayer gets lifted past waist-height)
5. Not being able to complete the route / clipping anchor incorrectly

other pitfalls to avoid

Here are a few points of feedback we got during my first lead check to improve on:

• Leaving too much slack before the first clip: I spent a few seconds taking in slack (which is dangerous because the climber could easily deck out during this time). Instead, I should measure out approx. how much slack is needed for the first clip and only have that much let out.
• Taking too long to clip: clipping is the most vulnerable time during a lead climb (besides pre-first clip), so it should be effortless muscle memory and take <1s to execute. I just need to practice this a LOT.
• Rope management as a climber: ensure I gain the intuition to automatically/subconsciously avoid backstepping and rope-behind-heel. Even if corrected, they shouldn’t be happening at all on a test climb because we won’t have the mental capacity to deal with it for harder climbs.
• Messy top-rope to lead transition after a fall: ensure climber isn’t short-roped after passing the initial fall point. (It’s common for the belay device to catch during this transition- know how to deal with it, potentially releasing the lever to do so)
• Clean the rope by pulling it through the climber side rather than the belayer side, such that it falls through all of the clips instead of all at once from the anchor.
• Crossloading: it’s more likely for me to crossload than most other belayers since I’m left-handed. buy an anti-crossloading carabiner with an inner clip for the harness loop to mitigate this.