outdoor climbing field notes

Summary

introduction

This guide hopes to eventually become the starting point to everything one needs to know to climb outdoors (boulder, trad, sport/lead, top rope, multi-pitch, rappelling., self-rescue techniques, and much more).

Outdoor climbing is one of those skills that is learned through practice, rather than reading a guide. My hope for this guide is just to list every skill one would need in one place, rather than acting as a replacement for real experience.

prerequisites

Although you could technically start climbing for the first time and have a good time outdoors, gyms are now so much more accessible that I’d strongly recommend starting indoors.

Indoor climbing helps you develop your intuition and vocabulary for describing and executing on a variety of climbing situations. When you go outdoors, this will help tremendously with safety since you’ll be able to understand and explain to others what moves you’ll be making when scoping out a route, and build your protection systems in a way that’ll enable you to safely attempt (and possibly fall on) every individual move.

Some baseline bouldering and top-rope experience will be assumed from this point forwards. Lead climbing experience is optional, but will be helpful.

materials

ropes

The strongest part of a safety system is almost always the rope.

carabiners

Carabiners are typically made

knots

Knots are the primary way you work with ropes. It lets you attach two ropes together, attach ropes to anchors/objects, attach yourself to ropes, attach ropes to carabiners, and much more.

bites

• A bite is the name for an enclosed loop of rope secured by a knot.
• Bites can be created by folding your rope in half, then tying a knot as if it were a single strand rather than two.
• You can also create double bites by folding your rope one more time (so that you combine a group of 4 strands together). This will create two loops and is great for situations where you need redundancy.

overhand

The simplest knot: the same as tying your shoe.

• Secure and self-tightening.
• Make a loop. Then pass one end of the rope through the loop.
• Great on its own as a stopper knot, or for tying a rope into things.
• Easy to create, tear down, and adjust.
• Easy to create bites/double-bites with.

The main problem of overhand knots is that it weakens the rope significantly— the rope loses 50-60% of its strength.

figure eight

• functionally equivalent to an overhand with some nicer properties:
  • since it has more surface area, it reduces
• Good way of tying a figure eight correctly every time: ️
  • Make a loop and pretend it’s a snowman’s head.
  • Take one end of the rope and wrap it around the head like a scarf. This rope must wrap entirely around, like a winter scarf; your knot won’t be correct if you wrap it halfway, like a soccer/football scarf.
  • Pass the end you’re holding back through the head, like you’re poking a carrot nose into the snowman.
• A great figure eight knot will be well-dressed, meaning it should look symmetrical from all sides. This just takes experience/practice to get right, and can be helped by ensuring you’re never crossing over the first line during your follow through. Making a well-dressed knot helps distribute the load evenly, dissipates heat most effectively, and prevents potential slippage from your strands uncrossing each other.
• If you are having trouble loosening your figure-eights after overtightening them, start your follow-through the “hard way”: there will be a naturally “easy” opening to start the follow-through, but instead of taking it, push the original rope aside and insert it on the other” “hard” end.

clove hitch

• used to

Prusik knot

• Looks like a fist. Used to attach a rope to a particular point on another rope.
• It’s a friction knot, so if you loosen it you can
  • The amount of friction before it slips might be somewhat low (depending on knot tightness, rope properties, etc.), so you may want to make a double/triple Prusik knot to prevent slipping. However, these will be more

anchors

SERENE and SERELE

There is a near-infinite number of anchor variations, so it’s not worth memorizing individual anchors. Rather, you should aim to build your anchors to follow the rules of SERENE:

• Strong: Will the anchor hold for every possible load situation (see how ‘strong’ is your anchor?)
• Equalized: Does the anchor exert approximately the same force on each of the anchor points?
• Redunant: If the weakest point in the anchor (typically a knot) fails, will the system continue to be safe?
• Efficient: Is the anchor quick to set up and tear down without sacrificing quality and integrity? (for example, can you satisfy all the other SERENE requirements in 5 minutes or less?)
• No Extension: If the weakest point in the anchor fails, will the climber remain in the same location?

Having a no-extension anchor is only possible for static anchors. For self-equalizing anchors, you should instead aim for Limited Extension anchors that have a fixed maximum extension length (typically less than 12 inches).

how ‘strong’ is your anchor?

The strength of a protection system is usually measured in the number of kilonewtons (kN) of force it is expected to hold. One kN is approximately 225 U.S. pounds.

Dynamic loads (like taking a lead fall) can greatly exceed your body-weight’s worth of force.

Static vs. Dynamic Ropes

Most lead climbing ropes are considered dynamic because they stretch significantly under fall loads. This introduces an elastic force in the system, which can reduce the force exerted onto climbers and equipment.

Top ropes and anchor-building ropes are often chosen to be static (or semi-static) because the max force exerted on the rope is typically bodyweight or less. Static ropes allow for more precise positioning of equipment since they don’t stretch out that much under load.

Fall factors

The “fall factor” is equal to the ratio of the length of fall to the length of rope.

• A fall under full tension has fall factor 0 (virtually no additional force exerted from falling).
• The maximum fall factor under top rope is 1 (climber falls the entire length of the rope).
• The maximum fall factor on lead is 2 (climber past anchor point maxes out rope and falls double the length of the rope)
• Static falls (such as on a via ferrata route or slippage from a static anchor) can have higher fall factors (4+) and can easily cause equipment failure, so they should be avoided whenever possible.

There are two main classes of anchors: self-equalizing and static anchors.

anchor points

bolts