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General Climbing Discussion

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Taking leading to the next level 8-Aug-2006 At 9:01:34 PM master of drung

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For what it is worth

I don't think it is a good idea to develop confidence in your gear by falling on it. i think that this approach tends towards finding out a bit to late whether or not you can do it safely. (although i guess that you would be inhuman not to have a tiny question in the back of your head before your first lead fall ) i would reccommend you do what ever you have to do to trust your placements before you need to. this may include, lots of seconding, placing and analysing gear at ground level, gettting a second opinion, studying physics who knows, but be sure.

Don't assume that placing safe gear comes relatively easily to all lead climbers, there is the odd climber around who has been placing bad gear for years and just not falling.

Don't place "maybe" gear unless you are very experienced, even then it is probably a bad idea.

Aim to become confident about your placements, not complacent about falling on them if you are totally confident of falling safely when you climb, you are an idiot.

When assessing a situation think about the whole fall not just whether or not the piece of gear will hold.

One of the things that i love and is strange about particularly trad climbing is that you are constantly trying to predict what might happen next as practically and logically as possible in order to get up safely, whilst dealing with the problem that your confidence level ,regarding all aspects of the climb, which is far from a constant has a profound impact potentially positively or negatively on your ability to have an accurate perception of what is going on.

i'm not sure where that came from perhaps i should start or resurrect a climbing philosophy thread.

All that aside if you have fun and don't die you are doing something right.