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.

As your main points of weighted contact, your feet matter. Placing them silently forces you to be deliberate and aware with your choice, placement, and movement onto and off each foothold.

The awesome power of Silent Feet

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)

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!

The American Alpine Institute has posted a great video illustrating the prusik knot.

Alpinists keep a variety of technical tools in their back-pockets. One of the most important tools is the prusik hitch. The prusik hitch is most commonly used for crevasse rescue systems on a glacier, for rock rescue systems, and for climbing fixed lines.

In addition to their stated uses, I would add that my two most common uses have been to back up a rappel and to ascend a rope after a sketchy (and usually ill-advised) rappel.

Trust me, make sure you learn it!

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!

Chockstone has a pictorial article on the carabiner brake rappel. The also include an alternative method.