Does the first climber do it bit by bit until those behind have a decent distance to climb? In my head they’re climbing using a rope that’s anchored 20 feet above them. If so, how does it get there?
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You’re mentally picturing one type of climbing called “top roping”, but it’s not the only way to climb.
It’s common for the top of the climb to be accessible by walking, like if there’s a 20 foot cliff with a path off to the side to walk down. In this case, someone can build the anchor at the top, attach the rope, drop it off the side, and walk down the path to the bottom.
Sometimes the top isn’t accessible by walking. In those instances, they usually have a bolted anchor at the top of the climb. A bolted anchor is just what it sounds like — someone drilled into the rock face and put a permanent bolt into the rock that you can attach gear to.
There are two ways to get up to a bolted anchor. If it’s a route that someone has bolted the entire route (“sport climbing”), then you climb up with Quickdraws (two carabiners attached by webbing), attach to each anchor as you pass it, and then build an anchor at the top. If someone hasn’t bolted the entire route (“trad climbing”, short for traditional), then you bring your own gear, stuff the gear into cracks to make your own anchors that you attach to as you pass, and then build an anchor at the top.
If there’s no bolted anchor, you have to trad climb up, then stuff your own gear into the “top” to make an anchor.
A lot of movies get this distinction wrong. They’ll have someone in the middle of nowhere trad climbing, and the rope will be above them. In reality, it’s trailing behind them to the anchored gear they set on their way up.
It’s scary to take a fall when trad climbing because you can fall pretty far before the rope catches you. Taking one of those big falls is called “taking a whipper”, and you can find YouTube videos of them.
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