Whether learning how to jam cracks or cruising 5.13 testpieces, tape gloves will prevent the back of your hands from turning into hamburger. Not only will this help you avoid needless suffering, it will allow you to climb exponentially more than the haughty non-taper who is sidelined by shredded skin.

via Matt Wilder and @jmccartie

Trad climbing has lost some of its appeal, or is a smaller blip on the radar. I still know plenty of folks that prefer trad, but there was a day when there was only trad. Trad climbing may be analogous to a lost culture. In fact, it is a culture within a culture, and as with the loss of any culture, it’s inevitable that knowledge specific to that culture is also lost. My goal here is to create and catalog the (lost) techniques, tricks, and tips particular to, or useful for trad climbing.

(via @rockgrrl)

Duct Tape: For some reason that I will never understand, trad climbers have an affinity for duct tape that is almost as creepy as a mustachioed man winking at five year olds. What they do with this stuff, I’ll never know but what I do know is that to look like a seasoned trad climber, you need to have truck loads of this shit. But here’s the trick: you can’t keep on the roll. You’ve got to stick it to your parka, wrap it around nalgenes and toothbrushes for no apparent reason and use it to patch your carharts. Maybe someday you’ll meet MacGyver and figure some practical uses for this stuff.

There is a little bit of controversy over pre-equalized anchors. Some feel that one leg of the anchor will get more force than another, which means that such an anchor could never be fully equalized. While there may be some truth to this concern, the impact on the anchor as a whole is minimal and professional climbing guides throughout the country are generally not concerned about it.

This may be basic stuff for many of you, but a quick refresher never hurts!

Along with tons of pictures of old gear, the article that accompanies the slideshow contains a history of nuts and other types of pro.

In 1961, a blacksmith from Sheffield, John Brailsford, then a teacher of engineering technology, created the ever first purpose designed nut, the Acorn. Three sizes (1 inch, ¾ inch and 5/8 inch) were turned on a lathe from extruded aluminium alloy. John Brailsford also tried Tufnol (a resin bonded fibre used by Rolls Royce or Hoover for making light weight, silent gears) and brass for their different properties of hardness. Since the Acorn had a machine nut sitting on its top and threaded on the same sling, this « nest of nuts » offered two options, the machine nut or the Acorn. They were probably the first nuts to be marketed in England, by the Roger Turner Mountain Shop in Nottingham.

The key to pure crack climbing, as with every type of climbing, is the feet. I like to start from the basics, which with cracks, is the hand crack. Hand cracks are the nicest, easiest thing you can climb, so you can focus on body position and movement technique, rather than the more precise jamming. If you have never done a handjam, it will feel alien and bizarre at first, but just slide your hand straight into the crack, and flex it, especially the meaty area under your thumb. It will stick, and that’s a handjam. I always say, if I fall out of a handjam, I deserve it , so I tend to run it out if I’m in solid handjams.

Photo by Dru!

Whether you love it or hate it, everyone seems to have some strong opinion of our little pink friends. That’s right, the size 0.5 Tri-cam from Camp! Personally, I love the little buggers. No climb is complete until you sink the pink.