What is Climbing?
Climbing is simply the activity of using your hands and feet to surmount a steep obstacle such as an artificial wall, boulder, cliff, or mountain. Usually done for recreational enjoyment, fun, and sport, climbing allows you to fully experience the great outdoors by giving you eagle-eye views from lofty summits, pushing both your physical fitness and mental health, and offering you a way to confront and control a couple of our greatest human fears—that of falling and that of heights. Climbing is a risky sport that requires both skill and nerve for success. Climbing tools and equipment such as ropes, harnesses, carabiners, cams, and helmets are all used to lessen the risks of climbing and gravity.
Why Go Climbing
Climbing is one of the fastest growing recreational activities in the world and one of the reasons is the artificial wall. Indoor climbing gyms, offering a safe and controlled environment, allow new climbers to quickly grasp the needed skills—belaying, rope management, equipment, and movement—to make the jump to the great outdoors. But climbing is, of course, serious business. Very serious business.Climbing is Risky
Every time you go climbing outside, you are potentially risking your life and limb. Stuff happens at the cliff. Rocks fall off. Climbers fall off. Gear rips out. Ropes cut over sharp edges. Lightning strikes cliff-tops. Rain slickens descent routes. Belays are improperly rigged. Rappel anchors are old and worn out. I don’t want to scare you, to make you think that climbing is a death-defying feat, because it’s not most of the time.
Learn to be Safe
Everything a wise climber does outside on the rock is oriented toward being safe and ensuring both the climber and his partner’s safety. Every piece of gear a wise climber places in the rock mitigates the dire effects of gravity. I always stress to my beginner clients that your climb begins when you park your car and start walking to the cliffs and it doesn’t end until you and your partner are off the summit and safely back at the parking lot.Outdoor Climbing Experience Needed
It’s really important to remember that indoor climbing on an artificial wall is no substitute for real experience outside on real rock. I always consider indoor climbing, while a worthwhile pursuit in its own right, as physical training for climbing outside in the wide world. Indoor climbing, even at the most realistic rock gym, does not provide all the preparation, experience, and judgment for a safe outdoor climbing experience.Getting Outside
If, after getting started climbing at the gym, you want to venture outside and put those hard-earned gym skills to work on the vertical cliffs, the best thing is to find a reputable guide service and take a couple classes from a skilled instructor. This is something we often do at Front Range Climbing Company, the guide service I regularly teach classes and lessons for in Colorado.After those classes, your guide might give you the go-ahead to set up some top-rope routes at a local crag or crank a few sport climbs. Or perhaps you will find a local climbing club like the Potomac Mountain Club in the Washington DC area or the Colorado Mountain Club and join one of their weekend outings or hook up with a more experienced climber for regular days at nearby cliffs. When I started climbing in the mid-1960s there were no indoor climbing facilities. Instead most budding climbers climbed with older, more experienced mentors, serving an apprenticeship to learn all the nuances of outdoor climbing skills, the tricks of rope management, and the ways to stay safe on the rocks.
Types of Climbing
- Rock Climbing divides into three separate disciplines: traditional climbing, sport climbing, and bouldering.
- Traditional Climbing is the art of ascending rock walls that are protected with gear that is both placed and removed by the climbing party.
- Sport Climbing, using permanent anchors placed in rock, is a climbing style that emphasizes gymnastic movement, difficulty, and safety.
- Bouldering is the ropeless pursuit of short difficult problems on boulders and small cliffs.
- Top-Rope Climbing is scaling both cliffs and artificial walls with the safety rope always anchored above, creating a safe environment and minimal risk.
- Aid Climbing is ascending steep rock faces with the use of specialized climbing equipment that allows mechanical upward progress rather than free climbing with hands and feet.
- Indoor Climbing is climbing preplaced hand and foot holds that are bolted on artificial walls at indoor climbing gyms.
- Mountaineering is climbing mountain peaks from the Rockies to the Himalayas using both rock and ice climbing skills.
- Ice Climbing is the chilly winter pastime of scaling frozen waterfalls and icy gullies using crampons and ice tools.
