by Abram Herman

Cold-weather rock climbing and ice climbing have a bit of a reputation for unavoidable suffering, and while I can’t say they haven’t earned it in some ways, I can tell you a few methods for maximizing your warmth and enjoyment despite the cold. Beyond just the basics of proper layering, adequate clothing and exercise to keep warm, there are a few lessons I’ve learned from my own experiences that might help you get by in relative comfort.

As always, nothing I say replaces common sense, proper training and/or checking with your doctor if you have a condition that warrants it. I’m not in any way liable for anything that happens to you. Stay safe, have fun and live to climb another day!

1. The Windmill

For such a useful hand warming technique, I’m surprised at the number of climbers I encounter who don’t know about the simple windmill. This is perhaps the single most effective trick for keeping the screaming barfies at bay, and it’s also pretty useful for cold-weather rock climbing, skiing, or any other pursuit where your digits might be getting a bit chilled.

by Abram Herman

This advice is not meant to replace common sense, decision-making skills, and responsibility for your own actions and choices. I am not in any way liable if you kill yourself after reading something I've written. That being said, there's a lot of paranoia among rock climbers that needs to be dispelled, and a lot of unsafe practices that need to be stopped, so let's get started by busting some long-standing climbing myths!

Myth #1: Dropped gear should be retired because of the possibility of invisible microfractures in the metal.

Dropped gear is an inevitable part of climbing, and everyone knows that you should retire your gear if it gets dropped...right? The truth is, aluminum just isn't a material prone to the kind of microfractures that would be invisible to the naked eye. It's too ductile of a metal, which is exactly why it's perfect for climbing gear (along with its light weight). If you've ever seen a pull test, you know that carabiners actually stretch quite a bit before they ever break. Aluminum's inherent ductile nature prevents the danger of microfractures.

Even the climbing gear manufacturers say (and, more importantly, their lawyers let them say), if it appears okay upon visual inspection, it's probably just fine to use. Similarly, REI employees have done controlled pull tests of carabiners dropped from 30+ feet onto a concrete floor and found no strength difference when comparing the "microfractured" carabiners to a control group.

Of course, this is all still subject to common sense. If you drop a #6 cam off the top of El Cap (and somehow manage to find it after a 2,900 foot tumble), it's probably worth spending another $120 for the peace of mind in knowing that your gear/life is safe. If, on the other hand, you just dropped a locker from the top of your local 50 foot sport crag, you're probably safe keeping the 'biner and saving a few bucks—as long as it looks okay after a close inspection.

Myth #2: Never use a bowline knot.

by Abram Herman

So, yeah... It's been a while since I wrote something on here. I'll admit, I'm more than a bit overdue.

Life happens sometimes, and you lose track of things, and I just kept telling myself I'd get to it, but I haven't, so here I am three and a half months later. I think part of the reason I didn't post is because I didn't feel like I knew what to write about. We had expectations in our head of our first big wall summit and first overnight, but events conspired against us. Don't get me wrong, we had an absolutely amazing trip to Yosemite, but in the context of this blog and climbing it felt a bit anticlimactic.

Yosemite is an awe-inspiring place. Our first glimpse of The Valley we knew from the photographs was at sunset, as we pulled into the park on the evening of May 1st. After passing a few towers that we couldn't identify without a guidebook, El Capitan suddenly loomed ahead of us. It's really just hard to believe. 

by Abram Herman

Whenever people find out I climb they usually assume that I'm just not afraid of heights, period. It's not that I'm not bothered by the heights involved in climbing, it's that I'm good at not letting the fear affect my performance. It's kind of the opposite of fearless, actually; I get really focused when I'm afraid and get a spike of adrenaline, and I perform better. I can't speak for every climber out there, but I think that basically all climbers are afraid of heights just like everyone else—we're just better at dealing with the anxiety, remaining rational and performing in those situations. Climbing has the appearance of danger in spades, but in all actuality it can be a pretty safe sport over all (depending on what you're doing, of course). While it can be terrifying to fall on a tiny piece of gear, you also know how strong and reliable all of that gear is—which is why it's so freakin' expensive. I just watched a fascinating video tour of the DMM factory; a piece of climbing gear like a carabiner is traceable in the production process from start to finish, and inspected and tested some 15 times before it makes its way to the shelves. 

by Abram Herman

Everybody's heard the saying, "Hindsight is 20/20." It means that, even though it's not always clear what you should do, it's always clear what you should have done. It can be easy to beat yourself up over the way you handled a situation, but the fact is that you made what seemed to be the best choice at the time, given the information you had to make the decision. There's no use in regretting something you wish you'd done differently—that energy is better spent thinking about how you can act better in the future.

by Anne E. Williams

Abram, Brad and I are training for aid climbing at Country Club Crack up Boulder Canyon. It was chilly when we arrived, but now the sun is coming up over the eastern side of the canyon and suddenly it’s warm enough to remove my outer layer.   

I’m standing on the ground, belaying, while Abram clips the aider into a cam and shifts his weight to bounce-test the piece. Bouncing up and down on a piece of gear to test it seems counter-intuitive, but the other option is to climb up the aider, get well above your last piece of gear, and then figure out that the piece won’t hold as you’re falling through the air. 

Abram is making good progress. We came out for a training day two weeks ago and he was much slower on aid. He has already worked out how to organize the new aid gear on his harness and how to move in a series of efficient steps to make upward progress. Clip an aider to a piece—bounce, bounce, bounce—transition to the new piece, unclip the aider, clip the rope in, step up the ladder, set a new piece, clip an aider to the new piece—bounce, bounce—repeat. The goal is to be able to aid climb a pitch on The Nose in 45 minutes (as opposed to the three hours it takes inexperienced aid climbers). 

by Abram Herman

Anne, Brad and I headed up to Country Club Crack on Saturday morning for some aid climbing and jumaring practice. We arrived at about 10:30, and the base of Castle Rock was freezing cold in the shade. My planning proved to be almost perfect, though, as the sun hit the rock no more than 20 minutes after we arrived. We hauled the gear a grueling 15 feet to the base of the climb and, after taking a few minutes to compose myself from the arduous hike, I geared up with every single piece of gear I have so far that we'll be taking up El Cap.

by Abram Herman

Unfortunately Anne's ankle is hurt and I couldn't find another partner to go with me, so yesterday I went out by myself to hang a toprope on an old practice aid climb in Boulder Canyon. It's called Dark Magic, and Mountain Project consensus rates it at a C2, which I think is fair—there are some good placements, and there are some... "other" placements.

I'd bought some new hooks on Saturday evening, so I was anxious to try them out. If you've never tried it before, using hooks can be terrifying. Mind you, I've taken quite a few falls on gear, some not so good, and countless falls on bolts both in the gym and outside, so committing to a fall is not something that I generally have a problem with. Aid climbing, however, presents a new challenge in this regard. The anticipation, the tension—I haven't perfected moving between aid placements yet, so I have a hard time feeling like I can bounce test a piece without just committing so much weight that I'm along for the ride, if and when something pops (NSFW language).

I place the first hook of my climbing career on what seems to be a decent little bulge on top of a miniature arete up above. I clip the aider and shift a bit of my weight onto the piece in a small bounce test, just to see if the hook wants to move at all. It doesn't, so I steel myself—noticing that it's taking a little longer than usual for me to commit—and I step off of my solid piece below, and into the unknown.

I hang on it for a second, hesitating, and get ready to climb up.

                                         *PING!*

This seems like the most horrible sound you can hear during that moment of tension; rock dust flies, and my knuckles scrape against the rough granite as I fall. Aid climbing lesson number one: Always wear gloves.

by Anne E. Williams

I don’t know when the idea of climbing El Cap first started to take shape in my mind. From very early in my life as a climber, I have loved the history of routes. My heart yearned first for the great classics in Eldo like The Bastille Crack, The Yellow Spur, and The Naked Edge, and for routes like Durrance on Devils Tower in Wyoming. Something like El Cap has always been out of my league—a dream to be put aside like the idea of being a jockey (until I got too big), or the idea of being a ballet dancer (until I got too big), or the idea of being an actress (until the professors at college pointed out that I couldn’t act). I have always known that Abram would climb El Cap, but I assumed he would do it with one of the more accomplished members of our climbing “tribe” like Tyler, Arthur, or Ronie. 

On October 28, our climbing anniversary, I tell him outright that I want to climb El Cap. We’ve been drinking and he’s just had a giant steak so maybe he’s a little less sensible than usual because when I say it—“I want to climb El Cap”—he smiles and shakes his head yes.