Happy Friday,

Don't you wish this day would end and you could be on the crag?

You see, whether you climb sport or trad, we can all agree that we'd rather be on the rock than office.

So I'm a sport climber, my best lead was an 11b, 1 take. And now, I think i'm ready to learn Trad.

I'm not looking to fully convert, yet.

What do people recommend for techinques and drills to learn placement and become comfortable on it?
to make a long story short: I was doing my first trad route, a 5.6 last saturday, I placed exact gear in exact spots as instructed, but it just seemed non-sensical, I'm climbing a route that I know I shouldn't fall on, on protection that I don't feel comfortable falling on, with the hopes that I will become comfortable to fall on it by not falling on it? Is it just me or do the means not logical result in the desired ends of being comfortable falling on Trad.

So what do people recommend as SAFE, ways for a Sport climber to learn Trad?

I was thinking of trying a sport route, clipping a bolt, placing a piece of pro a few feet above the bolt, climbing above trad pro and then taking falls and learning and getting comfortable like that.

I have friends who have the gear, knowledge, and are generous with their time to teach me, but I am not fully comfortable with they methods they have used.

Suggestions, personal experience etc... are very welcome.

I'd offer to teach you sport climbing, but lets face it, I'm sure y'all know how to layback on a crack :)

Cheers and Thank you

What do people recommend for techinques and drills to learn placement and become comfortable on it?
to make a long story short: I was doing my first trad route, a 5.6 last saturday, I placed exact gear in exact spots as instructed, but it just seemed non-sensical, I'm climbing a route that I know I shouldn't fall on, on protection that I don't feel comfortable falling on, with the hopes that I will become comfortable to fall on it by not falling on it? Is it just me or do the means not logical result in the desired ends of being comfortable falling on Trad.

So what do people recommend as SAFE, ways for a Sport climber to learn Trad?

I was thinking of trying a sport route, clipping a bolt, placing a piece of pro a few feet above the bolt, climbing above trad pro and then taking falls and learning and getting comfortable like that.

I have friends who have the gear, knowledge, and are generous with their time to teach me, but I am not fully comfortable with they methods they have used.

Suggestions, personal experience etc... are very welcome.

I'm climbing a route that I know I shouldn't fall on, on protection that I don't feel comfortable falling on, with the hopes that I will become comfortable to fall on it by not falling on it?

Climbing on gear has a MUCH longer learning process than sport does. Climbing easy routes and placing a lot of gear is part of that process. This is the one problem I see with today's progression of going from sport to trad. People get strong with sport climbing real quick and then want to transfer that to climbing on gear. I mean, who wants to dial it back 3 or 4 grades. It can be very frustrating.

The problem is, is that there is a lot of learning that goes on with those easier routes. Gear placement, rope management, building anchors, direction of pull, multidirectional pieces, zippering, running it out, sewing it up, belaying your second, and on and on.


Place a lot of gear, on the ground and on easier routes. Read. A LOT. Get advice from as many different experienced climbers as possible.

Well, where I'm from there are not very many sport routes that will take gear. But, if there is where you are, then sure.


For example? Why are you not comfortable with them? You just said they have the knowledge.


Back when I was learning trad, I was also making the jump from sport and was starting to climb harder. I didn't take as much time learning gear as I should have. I had no business being on something I could have fallen on. Well, I did and pulled two pieces and hit the ground. I was lucky and only got a badly sprained ankle. I learned more that day than any other day out climbing and i'm a better climber today because of it, but it could have been much worse. Like I said, I was lucky.


Good luck!

Josh

33 years traditional climbing; two leader falls; one at Seneca W Va and one at Gunks NY.
Now living/climbing in western NC. Never used a mechanical piece of protection.
Climbing is NO FUN if you are not worried about falling.
Who really knows how to learn ? You could get top roped while leading then have placements critiqued by an "expert" but who knows what makes a real expert.
Best wishes; enjoy the adventure !
Gray Climber

This is an excellent post. A lot of people want to transition from sport to trad in a few days, but that's a ridiculous proposition. Those people are building a house of cards upon a foundation that is woefully lacking in rockcraft and basic mountaineering skills. Granted, single pitch trad doesn't require as much of such things as do longer, more committing routes, but the analogy holds, IMO.

This story of what happened on a 5.7 to a guy who has climbed 5.13 should be required reading for badass sport climbers who want to learn to plug gear.

So what do people recommend as SAFE, ways for a Sport climber to learn Trad?

start by placing knotted ropes, hexes, and tri-cams. you will learn more than that than by using sticky rubber and those cheater cams.

Safe, means that when you fall, you are not going to injure yourself. On a 5.11, where you plug the pro in the rock¸, it is safe to fall with a boltt or a cam in a crack. When you climb ten feet of 5.7, two moves of 5.8 and a run out in a 5.10... it could be dangerous to fall.

Trad is mostly to be able to see the danger and to find a way to avoid it. Example: you don`t need to be able to place a good pro, you need to be able to place a pro in a shity placement.

One curious think about the difference between trad and sport is that the beginer learn the limit of the technique in trad and the limit of his body in sport. I often saw sport climber jumping on a hold without testing it. In trad, you have to make an evaluation of where I fall if the hold broke, decide wihich technique to use and make the move. for example, you can do a barn door or a flag. With a flag, you load the hold with one hand and if the hold broke, your back fall first and will hit a rock first (results; injure vertebra). With a barn door, you will fall on your feet.

Limiting trad at the idea of placing gear is offencing. One can make a run out of 30 feet with a fall in the air and be safe in trad. What happen in a fall, from the moment you lost contact with the rock to the moment you rest on the end of the rope? it is really what it is important to learn in trad.

[
Barndoor's take place when your body weight is past its base support (example, feet left, torso right, remove left supporting hand). If the hold brakes during a barn door how can you possibly expect to gain control of your fall during a ''move'' that had no control in the first place?.

Any reason for recommending knotted ropes and hexes, but not nuts?

start by placing knotted ropes, hexes, and tri-cams. you will learn more than that than by using sticky rubber and those cheater cams.

So what do people recommend as SAFE, ways for a Sport climber to learn Trad?

1. Follow good trad climbers, and when that isn't possible (because there are not any available) top rope aid climb. Bounce test everything vigorously and you will begin to get a feel for good placements. Bounce them really hard. This will help you gain trust in the gear by letting you see how much force it can take.

did you wear a helmet, spend over 30 minutes on the route, and take way too much gear? ...these are very important to being a trad

A Sincere thank you for the time and effort, many of the replies were incredibly helpful.

Yesterday I led my first trad route!!! Onsighted a 5.2, Ya baby I'm hardcore It was the easiest route (grade wise) I have ever climbed and it was also the scariest and most mentally challenging route I have ever climbed [/laugh]

Blue Eyed, I found your post to be incredibly helpful and inspiring so a special thanks to you.

I'd love any advice anyone can offer for excercises to train myself to find good rest positions and comfy places to plug.

How long did it take people until they felt confident in being able to look at a crack and know within 1-2 pieces, what type and size pro should be placed. Is this even a goal worth striving towards?

How long did it take people until they felt comfortable falling on their gear?

Just to confirm my thoughts on a matter: Just because an anchor built with gear holds the seconder doesn't mean those placements could hold a leader fall. This is becasue the anchor, if equalized will distribute the weight, and the force of the seconder on the pro is less than that of a fall by the leader. Does direction of pull play a factor too?

Again, sorry to be a nag, but I'm a N00B, thanks again for the advice and support. I love sport , but Trad is rad, its a game of chess with your life on the line, and where you hope your opponent never moves, a true act of humility and patience, and it offers a view!

Wore a helmet, always do feel more confident and I don't hit my head on overhanging rocks if moving too fast with not enough thought (the sport climber in me ;))

Took 10 minutes on route about 20 building anchor and belaying second and rappelling back down

Placed 8 pieces of pro and slung 2 trees route was about 40-50"

It weighed a shit load!

SBA Climber:
Please advise, if rope is ~150' (50m) why would you stop after 50' (~16m) and build a belay station? To replenish the rack? The route was most likely less than 50' probably 35-40', I have been trying to find route information but this site doesn't have it, and the book for ontario sport climbing is damn old.

...and have led trad routes for 20 years without taking a leader fall.

The goal of trad climbing is to NOT fall, so practice that discipline.

The most dangerous trad climber is one who learned in a climbing gym.

Yeah right. You, sir, are an idiot.

GO

And to be honest I couldn't disagree more...

It maybe a goal or 'discipline' in caving or in rescue - but certainly not in climbing, or at least not any concept of climbing I've ever held.

But never falling? I'd say that is where the "leader must not fall" tripe should have been rooted out and put down for good once nylon was invented.

Call me what you want, but that's a simple fact. The number of accidents on climbing crags increased with the increasing prevalence and popularity of indoor climbing gyms.

People were learning to climb in highly controlled environments, with no changing weather, no crumbling or flaking rock, no insects or reptiles or lichen, and no need to learn how to set up protection or an anchor or manage different belay situations. So it was easy to develop climbing skill quickly without having any of the necessary associated skills

Then they went to the crags, thinking they could simply do the same level of climbing on real rock in the real world.

Are you serious? You don't think that the switchover to nylon kernmantle ropes, the invention of nuts and cams or the use of modern belay devices reduces the seriousness of a trad fall?

I could toprope 5.10 in the gym before I learned to lead. I knew that my physical skills were way ahead of my technical skills, so I worked very hard to learn the technical skills and gain the experience I needed to become a competent leader. I'd have to be an idiot not to.

I can see how someone who is lacking intelligence or sound judgment himself could fail to understand that others might make better choices. In short, your conclusions speak more about you than they do about me.

It's the discipline I learned and nurtured from trad climbing long before I got involved in caving and rescue. And it's the discipline that has been central to alpine climbing since time immemorial.

Traditional climbing, like life itself, is a matter of learning to understand and live humbly within one's inherent limits - and to know when one is about to exceed them and then wisely back off.

Call it "tripe" if you're unable to understand this spiritual discipline. But believing that we can exceed our natural limitations by "better" technology is exactly why the human race is on the brink of global collapse and possible extinction. The ancient Greeks understood that all human tragedy is rooted in hubris.

Sport climbing, however, is a completely different beast. As a sport, the goal is to constantly test one's limits and try to exceed them.

"Accidents are also caused by simple overconfidence; climbers think they know more than they actually do and suddenly find themselves in a dangerous situation with no idea of what to do."

My assessment about the increase in climbing accidents came from discussions with rescue rangers and climbing guides.

Well good for you. But what you fail to understand is that most people in today's world are "lacking intelligence or sound judgment".

Call me what you want, but that's a simple fact.

And I would say that if you've been leading for twenty years and never taken a leader fall then you entirely lack the experience to speak objectively on the matter.

That is how one exceeds one's [current] limits - by learning progressively better physical, emotional, and risk management skills

I'm here to tell you you chose a exceptionally conservative path in your rock climbing

Sport climbing simply stripped off the technical and emotional challenges leaving the the above-stated 'goal' which has always been at the heart of trad climbing. "Constantly testing one's limits and trying to exceed them" while placing highly technical pro and managing your fear is what has always defined the cutting edge of trad climbing and always will.

I'm glad you found a repose with trad climbing that works for you, but given your choices I'd suggest refraining from attempting to project that experience as what trad climbing has been, is, or should be for others.

That's just more projection. I know lots of solid trad climbers who started in the gym.

To the OP: Don't let this ass discourage you. The simple fact that you first climbed in a gym does not mean you cannot be a technically and physically solid and proficient trad climber.

That's the same as saying that, if I've been driving for 20 years and have never had an accident, then I lack the experience necessary to speak objectively about driving.

Well, if being able to speak "objectively" about something requires having at some point pushed yourself beyond the boundary of your own capabilities, sure, why not.

That's the same as saying that, if I've been driving for 20 years and have never had an accident...

I think most people would say just the opposite.

But the stage of life we call maturity is about, having learned where those limits are, living responsibly within them.

Do you understand the meaning of "traditional". It's almost synonymous with "conservative".

But the hero's journey and the warrior's creed has always been about confronting our fears and acting responsibly in spite of them.

John Long's 1989 book How to Rock Climb used the term "sport climbing" repeatedly in reference to what is now considered "traditional climbing."

Your perspective is no more legitimate, useful or worthy of teaching to others than mine - which is based on a lifetime of experience, and teaching and guiding of others - adolescent and adult - in both the physical and the spiritual realms.

For climbing, at its best (as with any pursuit in life) is a spiritual endeavor.

You're confusing objectivity with subjectivity.
And your syllogism is false, because your premise - "being able to speak "objectively" about something requires having at some point pushed yourself beyond the boundary of your own capabilities" - is false.

Projection? Hardly. It's from nearly 60 years of living on earth as a close observer of human behavior.

Anyone who calls another names just because they disagree with their statements or because their own limited experience has led them to other conclusions has a lot of growing up to do.

The most dangerous trad climber is one who learned in a climbing gym.

BTW, if it's any consolation, I think the above is the one (and perhaps the only) area where you and HEALYJE agree!

Bad analogy - a better analogy would be never going out surfing on a big day because you either always play it safe, you lack confidence in your abilities, or are afraid to confront the unknown.

Another analogy would be a soldier who served stateside, and never saw battle, but is attempting to define for new recruits what 'soldiering' and it's 'goals' are all about

Maybe among the general population...

Here you confuse climbing with suburban life and career. That you've never risked in climbing in no way represents climbing responsibly or even living responsibly, but rather safely and timidly while making explicit trade offs that always err on the side of caution and 'safety'.

'Trad' is an unfortunate term

Not really into heros or warriors, but I can categorically state that definition is bullshit - particularly the "acting responsibly" part. 'Acting bravely' is how that should read - as in knowing it's time to rise to an uncertain challenge and committing to the unknown.

Spirituality is a personal deal and folks may or may not find such a path in or through climbing.

Another irrelevant, or straw man, argument. The proper analogy would be the soldier who has served for 20 years, including in positions of leadership and training, and who has confronted many enemies without suffering wounds. That is not only the master soldier, but the one who should be teaching new recruits - not the old sargeant with all the scars.

Entirely wrong and, in the context of climbing, you are not either of those men.

Again, I'm sure your notions of climbing and spirituality work for you - but your whole spiel here is a non-starter relative to climbing at a high level of confidence, competence, and accomplishment.

This may be a result of you entering climbing at as a risk-averse middle aged man, or maybe climbing just isn't a venue you feel comfortable managing risk in - I can't say which, but leading for twenty years without falling says it all relative to your qualifications to pontificate about what climbing is or should be about.

You are free to disagree, but you have not demonstrated the standing (other than simple years in the trenches) to judge my perspective "wrong".

You're entirely mistaken - since my climbing has always been at a "high level of confidence, competence, and accomplishment"

...and more than sufficient to introduce hundreds of others to the art as an experiential educator, adventure program leader and wilderness guide - but that's because you have a distorted notion of "accomplishment" which is based on how many mistakes you've survived and how high a 5.x number you can tuck into your hat.
...
I began climbing when I was trained for an entirely new vocation - outdoor leadership - and, while risk management is part of the curriculum, no one changes careers who is "risk-averse".

And, given that I have not only a deep understanding of the art of traditional climbing but also a deeper understanding of the art of living than you, I suspect that I'm in a far better position to "pontificate" about the subject and to offer perspectives which will help make climbing into a part of life's journey rather than a mere sport.

Well, you don't know anything about me and my life to make any judgment around me

twenty years of leading without falling means you at best possess a limited understanding of what [trad] climbing is all about.

"there's just no getting around that reality."

But that doesn't seem to stop you from making all kinds of irrational and absurd (and typically straw man) judgements about me. Do you not notice the hypocrisy?

It's true that there's a certain nobility in picking yourself up after repeated failure to try and try again, but there is a necessary obsessiveness required to continue banging your head against the same wall in spite of the pain.

Clearly, you believe yourself to be the master of trad climbing...

That's the same as saying that, if I've been driving for 20 years and have never had an accident, then I lack the experience necessary to speak objectively about driving.

It's the discipline I learned and nurtured from trad climbing long before I got involved in caving and rescue. And it's the discipline that has been central to alpine climbing since time immemorial.

Sport climbing, however, is a completely different beast. As a sport, the goal is to constantly test one's limits and try to exceed them.

Traditional climbing, like life itself, is a matter of learning to understand and live humbly within one's inherent limits - and to know when one is about to exceed them and then wisely back off.


Call it "tripe" if you're unable to understand this spiritual discipline. But believing that we can exceed our natural limitations by "better" technology is exactly why the human race is on the brink of global collapse and possible extinction.

In sport, the goal is to make the hardiest move, and, more often, a move that the other can not do.

Both are good, but I think like rescueman that trad climbing most avoid falling to play the game.

I hear that, but again you both badly misperceive and misunderstand what [trad] climbing is all about. And while it may be true in today's demographic that many or most folks climb trad far below their limit and don't fall much, the same thing can't be said of anyone who is serious about it.

It seems to me that the most accomplished artists in all fields are the ones who can achieve perfection of motion without stumbling.

It seems to me that the most accomplished artists in all fields are the ones who can achieve perfection of motion without stumbling.

Well, this confab has been very entertaining- especially for the OP I imagine. I pretty much have to side with maestro healyje all the way. Falling is just part of hard leading.

I agree that falling is part of the game and I train to fall. I did three birtches sunday and it was a little bit wet. When you climb a diedral like that, you can put all your weight on your hand, and you will fall bump first or you can put all on your feet and your feet will hit the ground first (better). So, I was close to the middle (as much weight on my feet and on my hand) with a little more on my feet to have a clean fall...I didnt felt.

It is true that I practice to do that, on top rope or in a bolt lader in a gym or outside, but I really push my limit when I went on a new climb and I do it without any fall. If I fall, I return training.,,and I don't say that I am a 5.11 climber because I make the move after tons of fall. But it is trad climbing and the ethic is different.

If you can do 3 Birches when it's wet and not fall, you have the strength and technique to climb much harder. Why not get on Airation? I promise you're strong enough. You might not get it clean your first try, but you have the potential to do so. The gear is good and plentiful, and the falls are safe. And it's excellent climbing - much better than 3 Birches. The only thing keeping you from challenging yourself on such a nice climb is your silly notion that you must never fall.

Yep, that's how all the best surfers got good; twenty years of surfing without falling...

pretty sweet chuffer on chuffer discussion/argument here, discussing the finer nuances of how to best to rule the 5.9 trad crag in old man style.

pretty sweet chuffer on chuffer discussion/argument here, discussing the finer nuances of how to best to rule the 5.9 trad crag in old man style.

You're welcome to chuff on my old man routes anytime you like. And what the hell, I like a good show as much as the next guy so I'll even belay.

You're welcome to chuff on my old man routes anytime you like. And what the hell, I like a good show as much as the next guy so I'll even belay.

With a belay device?

Jay

With a belay device?

Jay

A non-locking carabiner.

How to become a trad convert...

acquire a rack you can fondle and play with as roughly (or gently) as you want any time you want. - check

note - bigger isn't always better, but it IS more to fondle!

Find people you don't mind fondling and playing roughly (or gently) with your rack. - check - assumed based on previous posts.

Go get high with those people (generally with some fine crack for the day) and play with your rack (big or small) for as long as it keeps giving you that thrilling pleasure feeling. - check

you've got a rack. I'd say you're converted.

If that's not the case, drop me a line when you want don't want that rack anymore. heh!

now being a safe trad convert...well I dunno, out of my territory now....

good luck!

cheers

LS

How to become a trad convert...

acquire a rack you can fondle and play with as roughly (or gently) as you want any time you want. - check

note - bigger isn't always better, but it IS more to fondle!

Find people you don't mind fondling and playing roughly (or gently) with your rack. - check - assumed based on previous posts.

Go get high with those people (generally with some fine crack for the day) and play with your rack (big or small) for as long as it keeps giving you that thrilling pleasure feeling. - check

you've got a rack. I'd say you're converted.

If that's not the case, drop me a line when you want don't want that rack anymore. heh!

now being a safe trad convert...well I dunno, out of my territory now....

good luck!

cheers

LS

It's the discipline I learned and nurtured from trad climbing long before I got involved in caving and rescue. And it's the discipline that has been central to alpine climbing since time immemorial.

Sport climbing, however, is a completely different beast. As a sport, the goal is to constantly test one's limits and try to exceed them.

Traditional climbing, like life itself, is a matter of learning to understand and live humbly within one's inherent limits - and to know when one is about to exceed them and then wisely back off.


Call it "tripe" if you're unable to understand this spiritual discipline. But believing that we can exceed our natural limitations by "better" technology is exactly why the human race is on the brink of global collapse and possible extinction.

The ancient Greeks understood that all human tragedy is rooted in hubris.

Here's some advice I've posted at different times, I hope not incoherently cobbled together.

The most important principle for using trad protection, especially but not exclusively if you are just learning, is redundancy. The idea is to develop a system you trust while maintaining a healthy scepticism about the reliability of any one piece. Try not to put yourself in the position of having a single piece, no matter how "bombproof," between you and disaster.

Redundancy is a state of mind combined with the will to carry it out. Placing more than gear than seems to be essential requires discipline and endurance, marks of a good trad climber. Failing on a system is a better longevity option than betting the farm on a single piece.

Nonetheless, all climbing to some extent, but trad climbing intrinsically, involves risk. A lot of climbs have places you better not fall from, and this is part of the essence of trad climbing---performing in a cool and controlled manner when confronting a risky situation. Neutralizing danger, not just by protection skills, but also by climbing skills, is part of the game.

Although leader falls are an intrinsic part of modern trad climbing once you get to the higher classical levels, which start around 5.9, people who are in the process of learning protection shouldn't be falling. You will hear, "if the gear is bomber, go for it," which is fair enough, but such pronouncements avoid the real problem by defining it out of existence. Some accidents happen when the bomber gear turns out not to be bomber. The climber (1) misjudged the pro (something that is quite possible for experts, let alone beginners) or misjudged the effect that rope motions would have on the pro, (2) failed to build sufficient redundancy into the system, and then (3) misjudged their ability and went for it in a situation when they were not well protected.

As for judging pro, experienced evaluation of your placements has value, but in addition to that I think top-roped aid climbing practice, with vigorous bounce-testing of every piece., is one of the best things you can do.

More and more people seem to be learning by placing pieces and getting feedback from "experienced" climbers about their placements. In some cases, the "experienced" climbers learned the same way. Such advice can be very valuable, no doubt, but it is also possible that the learner is part of a chain of people who have never fortified their own "judgement" with some kind of testing. A person without extensive aid climbing experience who has climbed for a long time and never taken any leader falls themselves cannot offer expert advice on and/or evaluation of gear.

But even genuinely experienced climbers can be wrong in their estimates 5% of the time. There is no substitute for placing, judging, and then testing yourself.

If you can place pieces near bolts on sport climbs and then fall on those placements with the bolt for back-up protection, that seems like a good idea. You'd need sport climbs that have sufficient placements. Make sure that you aren't putting in gear whose failure might alter or erase holds, however, and practice when you aren't going to be in the way of others,

For most people, top-rope aid practice is going to be the only available option. There are some other advantages to top-rope aiding.

(1) Perhaps the main advantage is that you will learn something about how to aid. This is an essential skill for getting out of jams (route too hard, off route, unexpected wetness, onset of bad weather, approaching darkness, injured partner, etc. etc.).

(BITD when big-wall climbing was the ultimate goal, folks learned free and aid climbing simultaneously. Now there are lots of trad climbers, some who are otherwise quite accomplished, who couldn't aid their way out of a paper bag.)

(2) Aid climbing will inevitably force you to get creative with some placements, because the available terrain just above your current stance may not be optimal. This will be good practice for analogous trad climbing situations.

(3) After finishing the pitch, you rap down with an experienced person and clean it. The experienced person should comment, not only on the placement itself, but also on whether there are better options nearby, something that beginners frequently miss, in my experience.

Then you get to clean the pieces you placed and learn whether your placements lend themselves to cleaning, which is also critical for multipitch cimbs in general as well as for your wallet in particular. This may provide an opportunity for the experienced person to demonstrate some of the tricks of the trade when it comes to extracting recalcitrant gear.

An important caveat about bounce-testing your placements: look at the placement carefully before you test it, but make sure to look away while testing it. If the piece blows, you don't want it to hit you in the face.

Having said something about learning to get good protection, it is time to affirm again that part of trad climbing involves climbing without falling when falling is a bad idea. (For example, if there is one piece between you and the ground and you can't back it up, then falling is a bad idea.) Here I think modern trends can inculcate bad habits. Gym climbing, sport climbing, and bouldering all emphasize moving up in the most marginal of situations. There is a risk of developing an "upward" mentality that, first of all, accepts marginal moves even though the consequences of failure are catastrophic, perhaps not even noticing that the climber has gone from control to high risk status, and second of all, that takes upward motion as the only solution to a difficult situation, blinding the climber to both the need and the opportunity to climb down to rest, regroup, and yes, in some cases, to retreat.

Mental discipline is the primary tool for avoiding the stress-induced upward stampede, but this discipline is not something acquired in the gym or on sport climbs, where it is counterproductive, and so retraining may be called for. Here are some exercises that may be of some use:

(1) When climbing in the gym or on sport routes, try to be conscious of how marginal you are. (This does not mean reducing the difficulty level, just striving for heightened awareness.) From a trad perspective, a calculated fall may be ok, but an unexpected fall is not good. Strive to know when you are on the edge.

(2) A lot of falls on steep ground happen when the leader runs out of gas. Try to develop a sense of your "half-way point," because this is one of the moments when you have to decide whether to move up away from your gear into a realm of longer and longer falls, or down towards your gear and the possibility of shorter falls. For example, a gym exercise is to select a challenging endurance route and then see how high on it you can get and still climb all the way back down without falling.

(3) Develop the mental habit of filing away "retreat data." This can make the difference between stepping down and falling. (For example, when you step over a small roof, the holds underneath disappear. Did you make a mental note of features above the roof that will help you locate the holds underneath?)

(4) Don't neglect the building of a base of climbing below your limit, climbing in which you are relatively comfortable but are also frequently in the "must not fall" zone. A steady diet of well-protected hard climbing at or near your limit, while essential for raising your climbing level, may shortchange you on control and calmness when things get dicey, as they will, sooner or later.

One of the things the trad leader has to learn is rope management. Where the rope goes and what to do about it is decided for you on bolted routes, but when you are placing the gear, it is up to you to make placement choices and slinging choices that keep the rope running as you advance. Even experienced climbers find that they have made bad choices about gear location or slingage. But one of the differences is that the experienced climber will often climb back down and fix what was wrong, while the inexperienced climber will push on, finding later on that they can barely move because of rope drag.

I think one of the most common errors experienced people make is placing nuts that zipper---meaning that the rope motions that occur during a fall lift the nuts out. (By the way, if you haven't taken leader falls, then you won't in general even know, except theoretically, what situations are critical in this regard). One thing to be careful about is to either have the belayer right up against the wall, or else place a first piece that is fully stable under an upward load. (I often hear people say a cam in a vertical crack satisfies this condition because it will just rotate upwards without pulling, but I don't believe this is an assumption you want to bet your iife on.)

Zippering potential occurs mid-pitch whenever there is a transition from less than vertical rock to more than vertical rock. The rope will try to make a straight line from your first piece to your top piece if you fall. Nuts that do not lie in this straight line are likely to lift out unless slung so the rope-end carabiners do lie on the line.

Something infrequently mentioned is that the leader is responsible for the safety of the second. The leader gets to choose the level of risk they are comfortable with, but the second is obliged to take risks imposed on them by the decisions of the leader.

These issues come to the fore when the climb involves traverses. Before launching out on a traverse, the leader has got to arrange for a bombproof "pivot" piece if it is at all humanly possible. This is a moment when the whole ascent might have to slow down while the leader works to get in something good, and then they have got to place enough gear along the traverse to keep the second safe. One of the worst offenses in this regard happens when the traverse is easy, but the leader either places nothing or else installs a manky "pivot" piece at the start, leaving the second to climb the vertical bit before the traverse with an inadequate and possibly very dangerous level of protection.

If the traverse is long and easy enough not to merit much protection, then the leader should arrange for a substantial redundant "pivot" piece; I have in some cases installed something equivalent to a belay anchor to make sure that the second is properly cared-for.

Incompetence in protecting the second is climbing malpractice and deserves all the condemnation we are capable of mustering. You can't just be thinking about yourself up there.

Folks mention starting on easy climbs so you can work on protection skills. But this is where you also learn about rope management, slinging, avoiding zippering, and proper protection for the second. You want to have a good hold on all these things before beginning to push into difficulty levels where you are significantly stressed by the climbing moves.

Here's some advice I've posted at different times, I hope not incoherently cobbled together.

As for judging pro, experienced evaluation of your placements has value, but in addition to that I think top-roped aid climbing practice, with vigorous bounce-testing of every piece., is one of the best things you can do.

I dunno. I saw someone at a concert the other night. "She" looked like "she" was smuggling large grapefruits. But as for whether "she" was really converted? Maybe, maybe not. I didn't want to check.

Point being - just having the rack is not conclusive evidence.

GO