Progression from beginner to climber
Progression from beginner to climber
Here I’ll be describing the steps you can take to progress from complete beginner to climber, regarding the skills gained (taking away the learning of climbing movement). I’m just describing the steps to take, and assuming that you will gain experience first before moving onto the next step. Some of these steps can be moved around a little, but I personally think this is the nicer way of progression, each time adding a few more skills to the previous step.
- Learn to belay, and go bottom rope climbing
- Learning to clip quickdraws
- Leading with the safety of a bottom rope
- Learn to sport lead climb indoors
- Learn to sport lead climb outdoors (single pitch)
- Learn to sport lead climb outdoors (multi pitch)
- Seconding trad routes
- Learning to place gear
- Learning to build anchors with trad gear
- Go trad climbing
- Have fun, if you feel you want to progress further to the dark art of aid climbing, read on
- Get lots and lots of experience trad climbing
- Learn the art of clean aid climbing(*) on single pitch (easy to escape if things go wrong)
- Combined with step 13, learn to jumar up a rope
- Go aid climbing on multi pitch routes
- Learn to haul, start with light bags, up to heavier bags
- Learn to place hammered protection (**)
- Learn to place marginal gear, i.e. skyhooks, beaks, copperheads
- Step 17 & 18 are optional before moving onto big walling, but are beneficial
- Have fun, push yourself outside of your comfort zone at times, and scare yourself from time to time.
If you would like any advice on the above, or feel you could use some help or instruction, feel free to contact us and we would be happy to help. Alternatively, please look at the courses we have available to see if there is anything of interest. We are very flexible with our courses, and tailor them to suit your needs. Please follow the link below:
Rock Climbing Courses
(*) clean aid climbing means the use of cams and nuts, etc… where the use of a hammer is not required
(**) hammered protection consists of lots of shapes and sizes of pitons and