types of climbing

So, what is this climbing business all about then? Are you and Tracey going to be in youtube videos of people falling a hundred feet from a huge overhanging cliff face?

In short, no.

Climbing is divided into two three main styles: traditional, sport and top-rope (hmm, okay there's also bouldering, but that doesn't use ropes and is about climbing very short, tricky things that you can fall from without hurting yourself)

Traditional Climbing is where you climb up a rock formation, placing anchors into the rock for safety as you climb. There are lots of specific pieces of equipment that you carry in order to place these anchors, and you take them out when you descend. This is a pretty advanced type of climbing, and we're not here yet. I don't think either of us is particularly interested in this yet, really.

Sport climbing is where you climb established routes on which other people have pre-installed permanent anchors to the rock. You simply climb up, clip a carabiner contraption to the anchor, and then clip your rope into it. These anchors are usually about 4-6 feet apart, so if you fall you shouldn't fall too far. You can still hurt yourself though! Although we're not doing this yet, it's on our radar. Some climbing gyms offer sport climbing, although CragX does not.

Finally, top rope climbing is our current pursuit. This is the safest kind of climbing, but it's quite limited. Basically you feed a rope from the ground, up through a permanent anchor at the top of the route, and then back down again. One person (the belayer) holds on to the free end while the climber goes up tied to the other end. The belayer pulls through the slack rope that is created as the climber gets higher up. You use a gadget called a belay device to do this, and basically the idea is that if the other person falls, the belay device locks the rope off so they don't drop very far. In this kind of climbing you only fall a foot or two (unless the other person is being a wanker and not paying attention. in that case, you could get really hurt). You have to be serious when you're belaying someone, because you basically have their life in your hands! Having said that, CragX uses automatically locking belay devices, so you really can't drop somebody.

Anyway, we're top rope climbing exclusively right now, which means that if we were to climb outside we'd have to climb some place where you could hike to the top, fix a rope and then retrieve it later. Obviously, it's not that common to find a *climbing* route where you can (safely) *walk* to the top first! To get over this, we are trying to get our skills up to the point where we can start sport climbing. So, let's put up another post about climbing skill levels and difficulties.

Oh, here's some useful links if you want to read more about the types of climbing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sport_climbing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_climbing

http://climbing.tropic.org.uk/index.php?title=Main_Page