How does rock climbing work? Like, for new cliffs to scale?

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Like how do they get the pegs in the rock hundreds of feet up the cliff if they’re at the bottom? I don’t get it.

Like if someone starts out at the base of a mountain with all the shit you need, ropes, pulleys, hooks and metal rods to stick into the rock, how do they manage to get their rods in the rock to climb in the first place? It makes sense if someones been there before and have put the rods in the rock before them, but how do the “FIRST ONES” do it?

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7 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

If you’re thinking of sport climbing, someone rappelled down from the top of the cliff after scoping out a potential climbable line. They drilled and placed permanent anchors into the rock. After that, climbers can simply clip in quickdraws (two carabiners connected to a piece of nylon called a dogbone) as a sort of checkpoint system to place their rope into and protect them when they fall.

Anonymous 0 Comments

You climb up with all the pegs and gear you need. You climb the actual rock using your limbs.

You grab the stone and pull yourself up the cliff bit by bit. The rope isn’t there to help you climb, only to stop you falling all the way down. You can free climb without any pegs at all, they’re just a safety feature.

Then every couple meters up the cliff you wedge a peg into the rock securely and pull your rope through, ensuring you won’t fall beyond that peg. Then you climb some more, put another peg, pull the rope through, climb some more, etc etc.

Anonymous 0 Comments

What your thinking of is sport climbing, routs with protection placed into the rock so climbers only need to clip on. These routs will have usually been climbed first in the traditional (trad climbing) method. Where climbers use I variety of nuts and cams to place their own protection in the rock. In this case the first climber (lead climber) will place the gear and the climber following behind will collect it on their way up.

Check out the film Valley Uprising. Awesome film ever if your not super into rock climbing

Anonymous 0 Comments

You lead climb with a belt that has everything you need (a hammer drill, bolts, etc.) See [this video](https://youtu.be/zd6YKVYkQC8).

Anonymous 0 Comments

Watch the film Free Solo. You can rent it on Amazon Prime.

Won’t totally freak you out in the slightest, nope, definitely not.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Rock climbing is just climbing up cliffs. But there are different ways to do it.

Top roping: Kind of what is says. The safety point is at the top of the climb with the belayer (person in charge of making falls not deadly) in charge of your safety. The climber starts at the bottom, roped in. The belayer can actually be at the top or bottom, but the rope goes either to or through a protection point at the top of the climb. There is no need for any other protection, because you have preset it with a really secure point at the top. The climber goes up and the belayer protect from a fall. This is relatively tame stuff. The maximum fall is the slack in the rope and the stretch. (Climbing ropes have stretch, which is important.) This translates into maybe you fall twenty feet, max. Not all of it at full speed, because of the stretch of the rope thing.

Lead climbing: What you kind of refer to. One climber ‘leads’. They climb up while roped to the belayer, who is protecting them. While climbing, the first climber puts in protection in case they fall. The protection in a nut or chalk in a crack and the rope fed through a carabiner attached to it. So if you fall, you fall twice the distance from the climber to the most recent piece of protection, plus the slack in the rope, plus the stretch in the rope. So you can fall a long way. Again, the stretch in the rope makes it less abrupt, but with a longer fall there is more stretch. You can get really hurt on this type of fall, even though you don’t get killed.

Now if you are about to do a really tricky section, you put in protection right there, because, hey, you have a higher risk of falling. The belayer gives you less slack as well. You manage risk.

So the climb is the lead climber setting protection in a series as they climb. Constantly advancing the highest point of protection up the cliff face. Then they find place they can set up as the belayer, and the second climber goes up clearing any non-permanent protection (some protection on standard routes is permanent, to minimize wear on the rock). Then from that point, they do it again. Basically the length of each pitch is limited by the length of the rope. A climb can be one pitch, or you can spend three days on El Capitan.

Free climbing: Or you can say screw all that and just climb without ropes. Which in not always as unstructured as it sounds. People free climb routes they practice on with ropes. See the film *Free Solo*, which is over a decade of practice to free climb El Capitan in one go.

If you free climb just problems where the fall will not maim or kill you, it’s called Bouldering. Many people who don’t think of themselves as climbers do this. Lot’s of people can be very happy just noodling around twenty feet off the ground.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Trad climbing the lead climber places protection; nuts, cams, slings etc at intervals. When they reach a suitable stance, usually but not always, a rope length, they set up a belay. Then the second follows up the pitch collecting gear to join the first at the stance. Then, if it is multi pitch they will swop the rack (protection) and the second will continue the next pitch this time as the lead. Experienced pairs become very slick at this and tackle big routes in a day.

Sport climbing has prefixed gear (bolts) where “all” the climber has to do is clip a QuickDraw ( two carabiners and a short sling). Sports climbing is more popular on certain types of rock eg limestone and slate whereas trad climbing tends to take place on rock where cracks are more likely to form eg dolerite, gritstone & granite