Climbing

I’ve never been a sports person. I generally dislike most of them: or maybe not as much as dislike, but just feel very indifferent about them. My ideal sport was:

• Non-competitive
• Solitary (in the sense that you can perform it without other people)
• Technical, but not enough that you can’t perform the sport without months of exercise.
• Cheap.
• Not relying on a strenght level I don’t have.

There aren’t so many sports that fulfill these requirements. Before the pandemic, this would be running: getting out every day and doing 5km was kind of easy, cheap and a way to decompress. I prefered to do it after dinner, as a way to end the day, when the streets where mostly empty and I could put on a 35 minute album and just enjoy the music while running. Back in Barcelona, I used to run along the Rambla de Badal so much I even started to recognize the faces of fellow runners.

I lost all progres after Covid hit, and have failed to regain the habitude ever since. I tried a couple of martial arts as well over the years: judo was fun, but most of the people in class were awkward teenagers who had been at it for years already, so I didn’t enjoy it too much. Aikido was super fun, but, to be honest, it’s a bit too niche and quirky.

Climbing (and, specifically, bouldering), however… It’s loads of fun, and fullfills all my criteria for doing it. The fact that the problems are ephemeral (as they get changed every two weeks or so) makes it perfect.

Climbing notes

Writing about climbing is like reading about music, in that most of the learning is intrinsic to body placement and muscle memory rather than explicitly transmissible. Still, I think there are general principles that hold in theory and that benefit climber practice.

In my (limited) experience, there are two key principles to know about boulder climbing:

• Boulder climbing is about efficiency: planning a way to solve a route beforehand and making each movement spend as little energy as possible while progressing is rewarded.
• It’s, above all, a mental sport: being present, conscious of your body and gravity axis at all times, breathing properly and trying to be as precise as possible are key elements. My worst climbing days so far have always been due to poor mood and lack of concentration. Fear of falling and half-attempts are also a key distraction.

For the first principle, one has to be aware of several common mistakes:

• Climbing is a function of the legs: you gain nothing by overusing your arms. In other words: as long as you arms are extended you should be ok. As a general rule, holds should never be below your face level unless you have very good footing, as that would mean your arms are the ones keeping you close to the wall.
• A good climb should be controlled: it has more to do with hip rotation and squatting that pulling oneself up by sheer strength.
• Foot position is king: climbing with your toetips allows rotation of the body, so it’s the first thing one should take care off.

A couple techniques one should check out after some attempts at the wall are:

• Flags
• Rockovers
• Hip rotations (I’m not sure how these are called technically).

Sport climbing

Here are some things I’ve learned about sport climbing (not specific about bouldering).

Note that here security is prime. This means:

• Redundancy
• Regular checks of everything.

Learning about climbing involves several steps, most of them more related to security, knots and equipement than anything.

First, you learn about the material, some basic knots (particularly, the figure-eight knot) and basic security skills (communication, posture, etc).

Second, you learn to secure and climb, meaning: using a grigri or another kind of assisted belay device.

Third, you test out some climbing, so that you learn to: give rope, collect it, and descense.

Fourth, you learn about the techniques to recover all the material from the top, either from parabolt or epoxi

Fifth, you learn about lead climbing and you start to mock top climb.

Let’s go over everything.

NOTE: I’m but a beginner at this, and this page is only for aiding my own learning. Expect some of this information to be incorrect and/or incomplete, and in no way enough to climb without help from an experienced climber, or ideally from professionals. Just in case you get funny ideas. I can recommend the Mountain Federation of Murcia, with whom I’m did a course, to learn this and more, but I’m sure there are many places where you can learn.

Material

Epoxi/chemical and parabolt anchors. Personal equipement: harness, rope, climbing shoes, helmet. Funny metal stuff you need to climb: belay device, carabiners, security carabines, quickdraws (cinta expréss in spanish), anchor sling (cabo de anclaje) and many other stuff.

Basic manouvers

Abandonment manouver

• 1 mosquetón de seguridad
• Mallon
• Cordino 60cm para machard

1. Pillarse (enganchas cinta exprés, cuerda)
2. Cinta exprés en anillo ventral a anilla
3. Enganchas mallon
4. Le metes la cuerda, lo cierras (pero no del todo!)
5. Haz un nudo mallard que enganchas sobre la cuerda, con los extremos en mosquetón de seguridad.
6. Recupera cinta exprés. Y ya podrías descender

Route cleaning manouver (w/ parabolt/ring)

[TBD]

Route cleaning manouver (w/ epoxi anchors)

Same material [TBD]

Rapel

• Cinta plana
• Presa
• Mosquetón seguridad
• Mosquetón de rapel