Kevin Corrigan

Crazy what some people will use for climbing gear.

"We only had one harness, so I pulled my car up closer, opened the passenger door, and clipped the locker and belay device to the door latch. The car caught a few falls."

Climbing is risky, but these six characters took it to a whole new level.

The belay had three bolts yet he only clipped one, and didn't use a single locking carabiner.

Sometimes the hardest part of climbing is not climbing.

"I was belaying from a ledge high up on the wall at 2 a.m. when my partner called 'off belay.' I was so out of it that I responded by untying myself from the rope."

They were trying to be safe, but in their zeal they neglected to follow three tenets of basic anchor construction.

A gym climber needed a belay, so a stranger offered to hold her rope. Literally, just held onto the rope for the belay.

How many pitches do you climb in a year? For many of our readers it's probably close to 1,000. If you make a critical error one out of a thousand times, the outlook is bleak.

"Showed up in a swami belt, refused to use a belay device, and made fun of my figure-eight knot. One star."

A beginner climber is forced up a route, gets in a dangerous situation and her partner refuses to help. Should you intervene?

An experienced climber makes the mistake of lowering over another team's rope.

The author was mean to his body in the worst ways. But is he really sorry?

The list of dangerous climbing acts continues to grow.

Avoid these dangerous mistakes (and how to politely tell off others when their actions are unsafe)

Parents love their kids and will do anything for them, including taking them toprope climbing when they don't have a clue.

Ever wanted to work your grip strength while sipping on a hot cup of joe? Take your morning multitasking to the next level by making your own climbing hold mug.

Climbing is supposedly about soul, but nothing beats beating everyone at their own game, and that's why we invented style.

Follow this handy flowchart to find out if you’ve earned a day off.

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If you thought you'd seen everything, you haven't.

By “Kevvie” Corrigan, age 15

This story goes beyond gross.

This guy's cheapness brought danger to a new level.

Deep in the Cascades, you can top out huge walls without placing gear or pulling 5.10 moves on routes like Flyboys, which climbs 1,800 fully bolted feet at an achievable 5.9. (From 2020.)

"Maybe this is shallow, but you’ve let yourself go. When we first met, you were hangboarding three days a week. These days you’re lucky to get in the gym one day"

Her mother was "belaying" by holding on tight to the climber's end of the rope with her bare hands. The girl had the Grigri clipped to her harness with the rope running through it.

Sendhaus™ is the premier facility for affluent millenials that heard rock climbing was a great workout.

Prevent extended gear from coming unclipped with these tips.

SCARY (AND TRUE) TALES FROM A CRAG NEAR YOU

Thinking they were using rope tugs for commands, this beginner belayer took their climber off belay minutes before the climber had finished climbing.

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"Notice I didn’t mention aesthetics. I’m not climbing a painting. The only aesthetics I worry about are the graphs of my sends on 8a.nu and the topography of my chiseled back muscles."

"I used to be a bit of a rock climber myself. Now I haven't so much as touched a hold in—gosh, how long has it been?—four or five weeks."

Use this expert advice to never lose touch with your partner on a long route.

Scary (and true!) tales from a crag near you

How moving sideways has pushed me up.

A classic case of miscommunication could have spelled disaster.

For "conquistadors of the useless," climbers sure love getting into bitter disputes about how we enjoy ourselves.

It's a fantastical, unbelievable story, but the unbelievable really happened.

For sale: Offwidth rack, used once.

"Her son was still on the wall, suspended about 20 feet up. The only thing holding him up was a Grigri chained to the floor."

A lot of people love ice climbing. This one is for those of you that don't, but go anyway.

Climbing training is hard and boring, and often requires expensive, specialized equipment. Here's how to get more swole for less work and even less money.

Climbing is dangerous even when you know what you are doing. It's outright deadly when you think you know what you're doing but don't have a clue.

This is one of the worst anchors we've ever seen and is an inappropriate use of equipment.

If I'd hopped off the ledge or tried to weight the sling, I would've fallen a few hundred feet to the ground. I felt sick to my stomach for a couple weeks after that one.

Any time spent helping your partner achieve his goals is time not crushing your projects.

"How do you decide what climbs to write about? What makes a route newsworthy in the first place, and why are the fifth or tenth ascents of a route sometimes newsworthy and sometimes not?"

This climber was experienced, too. Just shows that you can't be too careful when you climb.

Us 9-5ers want to climb 5.16, but we don’t have the time to get there because of our jobs. Well, let me let you in on a little secret: You can train for climbing all day every day with these simple exercises.

This anchorless belay relied on bodyweight and broke all the rules in the book, including some that weren't even in there.

Five ways to customize hangboard training to make it easier or harder.

Check out Kevin Corrigan's author page.

Kids may be lighter than adults, but that doesn't mean you can skimp on safety thinking that your rig is "strong enough."

Follow these five simple, experience-driven not-training tips and in just six weeks you will be no better of a climber than you are today—and possibly worse.

After climbing every bolted route below 5.9 in Boulder Canyon, Kevin Corrigan learns an essential truth about rock climbing.

Climbing partners can be poor substitutes for real friends, but they don't have to be.

Ascend blank corners with this handbook on stemming.

The Australian style of rappel might be fine if you are being shot at, but for climbing it's a very unnecessary risk.

Webbing may cost less than climbing rope, but it doesn't stretch and belay devices aren't designed for it. It seems self apparent that you should only climb on an actual climbing rope, but not everyone has gotten the message.

John Q Public always imagined that we climb by throwing grappling hooks up the cliff. Turns out they were right.

More risky behavior, as if climbing the proper way isn't dangerous enough.

Not only was the belayer unanchored, another climber sharing the ledge wasn't roped in. If the nut had pulled ...

It was a double-rope rappel, but he only clipped his rap device to one rope.

Three more instances of climbers taking unnecessary, foolish risks.

People like to be liked and noticed. But this guy took it way too far.

This guy had his partner lower him but she wasn't anchored. Luckily a guide was nearby to intervene.

The guide was right about the loose boulder, but wrong to jiggle it.

This guy used 27 pieces of gear for one anchor, and that wasn't his only mistake.

Always thread the rope through the anchor, not around it.

Here we have two tales of not paying enough attention to climbing's most critical tasks: tying in and belaying.

If a nearby climber hadn't intervened the outcome could have been a disaster.

They figured they knew enough about climbing to wing it, but took a dangerous risk that could have cost them.

A triple package of climbing blunders, near misses and outright stupidity.

Bad form all the way around, and not the safest/smartest maneuver.

Might as well be soloing with this belayer completely out to lunch.

They needed to be prepared for disaster. Fortunately, a real climber stepped in.

A tossed rock and a lost belay would have killed this leader if not for a miraculous landing among the boulders.

He didn't know how to pass a knot toproping with two ropes tied together, so he just took her off belay.