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Tech Tips
Get that extra edge you need to succeed on your dream climb with Climbing's Tech Tips - Aid, Alpine, Sport, and Trad Beta for the vertical world. Illustrations by Mike Clelland, Mike Tea, Kieth Svihovec, and Joe Iurato.
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 Tech Tips - Travel - UP, UP, AND AWAY...
By Emily Harrington - ...in style for globetrotting dirtbags - So you're a travel gumby. We’ve all been there — that first trip overseas. I’ve had a few such adventures, dream trips to Venezuela, Greece, and Spain with their fantastic climbing, bluebird weather, and succulent food and drink. Still, travel can be exhausting, confusing, and irritating, especially when you’re disorganized and unfamiliar with your destination. Prepping is essential, so follow these seven savvy tips.  Tech Tip - Alpine - THE WETTER, THE BETTER
By Blake Herrington - How to find and quickly collect water in the high alpine - While in Alaska’s Mendenhall Towers last July, my partner and I found ourselves in the warmest weather system in years. For climbers like us hoping to establish new alpine rock routes, the timing was perfect. But with 20-hour days and a desire for light packs, we had a serious challenge finding enough to drink on the walls.  Tech Tip - Training - TALES OF POWER
By Steve Bechtel - The real secret to effective power training - You can train long or you can train hard, but not both - which is probably why so many of us train power so wrongly. (By “power,” we mean the product of strength and speed, i.e., the explosive force recruited any time you use momentum, or “go for it.”) Properly training power allows you to get stronger - to muckle through otherwise impossible cruxes.  Tech Tip - Trad - SCUM MANIFESTO
By Matt Samet - Total friction with 7 neglected body parts - “Knees off the rock, Samet!” barked my instructor, an old-school mountain clubber in New Mexico. This was 22 years ago, and I flapped up a 5.6 corner to a midway ledge. Unsure how to highstep and rock over, I’d pressed a knee to its lip, scrabbling for purchase.  Tech Tip - Big Wall - Pig-free big-walling
By Chris Van Leuven - 4 tips for going light, fast, strong . . . and free - What’s not to love about walls? Climbing sunup-to-sundown, sleeping on a giant face, great views. Oh, and the dreaded haulbag — that pig digging into your shoulders on the approach; hauling and docking the massive load; digging water bottles from the pig’s bowels like Oscar the Grouch doing a handstand. And don’t get me started on trying to free-climb while hauling — fuggedaboutit! I’d rather help Sisyphus with his boulder.  Tech Tip - Sport - THE HOT ZONE
BY JUSTIN ROTH - 9 warming tricks for cold-weather cragging - A GUNKS REGULAR IN COLLEGE, I spent many a windy, frigid day bouldering on the Carriage Road. Fingers and toes would turn to wood, shoe rubber harden and lose its stick-um, and my psyche grow brittle — still, I had to climb. Over time, I developed these nine coldweather techniques, to squeeze every drop of frozen fun from an arctic sesh.  Tech Tip - Technique - HEELS OF STEEL
BY FITZ CAHALL - 6 keys to master-class slab climbing - CLIMBERS TYPICALLY FALL INTO TWO CAMPS when it comes to slabs. Some gag at the connotation of meat-grating, nipple-raking falls. But others say friction climbing is our most elegant discipline, a communion of mental grit and technical grace that rewards brains and finesse, not mindless brawn.  Tech Tip - Training - TARGETED OPPOSITION
By Stacy Mccooey, MSPT, DPT - TENDONITIS — LIKE IT OR NOT, if you’re an avid climber, at some point you’ll feel that deep, dull ache in your elbows or shoulders, a sign of inflamed tendons. The constant tugging is what does us in — using loads of pulling muscles (lats, shoulders, biceps, forearms) while neglecting the pushing muscles (pectorals, anterior deltoids, triceps), thus placing unidirectional strain on your tendons.  Tech Tip - Technique - DON'T CALL IT A COMEBACK!
By Craig Demartino - An amputee’s tips for smarter, smoother movement - AS AN AMPUTEE (I’m missing my right leg below the knee after a 100-foot fall ultimately claimed the limb), the way I climb has changed in several ways. For one, I’m forced to use my feet more precisely than before. But other things have changed, too.  Tech Tip - Training - "5.15" ACLS
BY THOMAS ROSENBERG - A COMMON CLIMBER INJURY is tearing of the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) and/or meniscus. One of the knee’s four major ligaments, the ACL is a connective-tissue cord about 8 or 9 mm at its narrowest; it connects the distal femur to the tibia’s top. The menisci are C-shaped, gasket-like pads at the perimeter of the knee’s two weightbearing compartments — medial (inside) and lateral (outside); they absorb shock, lubricate/nourish, and expand load distribution.  Tech Tip - Trad - QUICK TRANSITIONS
By Sarah Garlick - ONE OF ALPINISM'S BEST-KNOWN ADAGES is “Speed is safety,” useful wisdom that reminds us the less time we spend on route, the less likely we are to run into thunderstorms, get benighted, or otherwise epic. Likewise, make good time and you’ll have more of it to deal with the unexpected: a snagged rope, cryptic route, or slow party ahead.  Tech Tip - Training - TO SUPPLEMENT OR NOT TO SUPPLEMENT?
By Thomas Rosenberg, MD, Orthopedic Surgeon - Joint health, from the inside out - Climb long enough, and you’ll experience setbacks: tendonitis, torn pulleys, injured tendons/ligaments, joint pain, or shoulder injuries. They’re our war wounds from battling gravity. But just as year-round conditioning is important to stave off injury, so, too, is “training” from the inside out.  Tech Tip - Technique - WHISPERS OF WISDOM
By Kevin Jorgeson - The awesome power of Silent Feet - Nothing is more frustrating than falling because your foot slipped. It’s not frustrating because you passed the crux, were still fresh, or had just one move to finish your project. No, it’s frustrating because it’s preventable.  Reader Tech Tip - An Improved Way to Coil the Rope for Backpack-Style Carry
By Lee Myers - I’ve discovered a way to simplify the conventional method of coiling a climbing rope for carrying like a backpack — nice for hiking to or from a climb when you don’t want to use a pack. This method makes it easier to coil and uncoil the rope, and it prevents tangles.  Tech Tip - Training - The Beat Down
By Justin Roth - Heart-rate training for max sending power - You're gunning for your project, a pumpy 90-foot route with a crux on hateful crimpers at bolt 11. For the umpteenth time, you enter the crux feeling juiced: your footwork crumbles, your arms chickenwing . . . and then you whip, huffing like the Big Bad Wolf as you hit the end of the rope. Could be you were "pumped" or just "blew it again," but what you might not know is the role your heart rate played in the meltdown.  Tech Tip - Bouldering - Spot On!
By Abbey Smith - When 6’4” Corey Dwan first plucked me from the sky, I’d just pitched from a Grampians, Australia, highball — he quickly earned a place on my all-time spotting dream team. Dwan’s masterful bodycatching technique is even a matter of public record, as seen in the 1998 climbing flick Free Hueco. Dwan, 38, who works in real estate in Colorado, has refined his spotting technique over the past two decades.  Tech Tip Trad - Soft-Man Link-Up
By Kolin Powick - Half Dome and El Cap in a day . . . for mortals - In 2002, Dean Potter linked the Regular Northwest Face (VI 5.12) on Half Dome and El Cap’s Freerider (VI 5.12d/13a), climbing 57 pitches in sub-24 hours. In 2008, Leo Houlding and Sean Leary did the same, team free. Both were heroic feats of master-class endurance by worldclass climbers. Thus, according to conventional wisdom, a Half Dome/El Cap free link-up remains beyond the means of all but the hardest hardmen — or does it?  Tech Tip - Sport - Kiddy Craggin'
By Heidi Ahrens and Trina Ortega - 10 cliffside-survival tips for climbing families - If you’re a new (or SOON -TO-BE) parent, it’s not unreasonable to fear that kids might crimp your climbing style. Still, it is possible to keep cranking as a mom or pop — even to turn climbing into an engaging family affair.  Tech Tip - Alpine - Stayin' Alive
By Dave Sheldon - The pitches flew by on Polar Circus, our one-day Canadian Rockies winter objective. So when my partner said he’d forgotten his headlamp, I didn’t sweat it. Then, a few hours later, I dropped our shared thermos (bummer). But when my crampon’s toe bail snapped and a falling rock halved our ropes, our day climb morphed into a grovelfest replete with unplanned bivy.  Tech Tip - Sport - Welcome to the Jungle (Gym)
By Krisitn Bjornsen - YOU FEEL EYES UPON YOU — is that panting you hear? You flee to the bouldering cave . . . but you’re cornered. Any second, the lone, roving male will pounce, turning your once-pleasant session into a socially awkward morass. |
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