Getting Into & Developing Your Climbing

To help break down some of those initial barriers of accessing the gym for the first time either go there with a friend, check out the gym's open/social evenings or events and get involved. Alternatively, get a friend roped in and head down together and the gym staff will help get you started. Once on the mats giving it a go, you’ll quickly relax amongst the many like minded people around you and you’ll have a fun time. With bouldering there are no expectations, no-one's watching and it’s very social, with many around you happy to give help, support and encouragement on those first boulder problems. To help get the most from your climbing the gym or local climbing coaches will offer hourly instruction with tips on how to move more efficiently and foot work helping with a little progression.

As you progress, then you may want to buy your own rock climbing shoes and maybe even a climbing harness to enable you to access and try top roping. Top roping will develop your climbing into using ropes and climbing longer and higher routes. Top roping routes builds your ability to tie into a rope safely, ‘belaying’ which is a technique whereby you can look after others climbing on a rope and also gain more endurance fitness as the routes are longer than the boulder problems you’ve been trying before.

Top roping is a great way to build on those basic core skills mentioned and to then go on and develop your roped climbing so that you can try ‘lead climbing’ which is where you’ll get a great deal of fulfilment in your roped climbing. Lead climbing is where one person would tie onto the end of the rope, your ‘second’ would stand at the bottom belaying you on that rope and you’ll head up on an adventurous journey up the route, clipping bolts for your security as you go. Now there is some jeopardy to your climbing not experienced before, apart from maybe on a high boulder problem where falling off has more consequence, but it’s this lead climbing, with now some consequence, that is core for many to enjoy the riches that climbing has to offer. Clipping all the bolts on the way up and having a safe second managing your ropes in case you were to fall is actually safe and you won’t fall far, but it’s that perception and it then becomes a mind game where you’re fully absorbed an in the moment.

Lead climbing on bolted routes indoors does need some initial instruction to get started and your local climbing wall will run courses, give private instruction as will external climbing coaches like myself. This is a great experience and either an extension or addition to your bouldering and top roping. Lead climbing will develop many skills around your belaying, personal movement, roped techniques, clipping bolts and also help you to gain confidence in your overall climbing ability moving forward, and this is the time when some people now give outdoor climbing a try.

You could try outdoor climbing for the first time under instruction without any experience indoors as I did many years ago, before the advent of any indoor climbing walls or bouldering gyms, and the pathway above is just one example of many ways to access climbing and develop skills through that journey of you enjoying it and starting to go more regularly.

But the real adventure is to access the beautiful open spaces we have here in the UK and to climb outdoors. It’s the fresh air, open sky, weather, views, the stronger relationships built through those outdoor experiences and climbing real rock, which is where I find the joy of all that I feel is amazing about the sport.

The Arc’teryx Climbing Academy in the Lake District is one way in which you could try climbing outdoors for the first time or perhaps develop your existing climbing skills, to gain confidence and over time and build independence to go it alone.

The Academy, which is run over the long May bank holiday weekend, is broken up into half day clinics covering all the different climbing areas, which will help you develop and grow as a climber. The half day clinics work out cheaper and more affordable, and are run by qualified professional ISM Mountain Guides and instructors, so you'll also be getting the best instruction money can buy.

But this is only one way to try for the first time and perhaps develop your outdoor climbing skills, whether that women’s exclusive clinics or in mixed groups, to help everyone access the outdoors in a safe and comfortable space. There are also day and weekend courses available, run by your local climbing wall, climbing club or local gym. There will almost certainly be local climbing coaches/guides like myself here in the Lake District, offering private guiding and coaching in all aspects of your climbing.

We’ve talked about bolt protected climbing like that which you’ll find at indoor climbing walls, but most of the outdoor climbing in the UK is ‘trad’ (traditional). Trad climbing is where the crags are free from any bolts and where, when you lead climb, you’ll need to place your own trad protection as you go. This protection will be a whole array of gear that you clip to your harness before you set off up a climb. You'll have metal ‘nuts’ and ‘rocks’ of many different sizes that you will fit and jam into the many cracks and crevices in the rock to give you similar protection as you’d get from a bolt, But, being that it’s leader placed, and only when the rock you’re climbing allows it, there is a real sense of adventure and excitement in trad lead climbing not found elsewhere, and really gets to the heart of what I love and the riches you’ll find in climbing. For me, the journey builds up to this moment in lead climbing, where you’re in that moment on lead, placing trad protection as you go and heading up from your last piece of gear placed, without knowing where your next gear placement might be, and having the confidence and presence of mind to keep it together and to keep going. The feeling at the top of a trad route, having lead it for the first time in indescribable! The joy you feel isn’t just the consequence of topping out, but the journey it's taken to get there, the friendships made, the learning of this great sport, the development of your own climbing, the fresh air and being outdoors.

Now, for many bouldering is a passion and full-time pastime in it’s own right, and that’s amazing. There is so much indoors and outdoors to fulfil a lifetime of great times and fun days out with friends as well as personal development. But if you want to look further, then there are many other aspects to climbing both summer, winter, home and abroad. A friend of mine said this week ‘that you don’t know, what you don’t know’! I totally get that, but like with any sport, if you slowly absorb yourself into any aspect of it, enjoy what you’re doing, then you’ll grow your knowledge, friendship base within it, and who knows where those relations will take you and what doors will open.

Go on, give it a go!

Adrian Nelhams