I’ve spent the last 10 days learning how to build anchors, place gear correctly and tie knots. No I haven’t gone into the building business, I’ve been Trad climbing in Arapiles! read on…

Pic by Murry.

Trad climbing is a tricky occupation, nothing is what it seems like! It’s like building a puzzle without seeing the big picture your aiming for and in my case knowing what pieces you have. In Trad it all revolves around safety. Unlike other forms of climbing, in Trad, climbers are the ones placing equipment, or ‘friends’, inside the rock that will protect them in case of a fall.  But even among the most safety conscience climbers once they have ascended a climb, safety is forgotten as they start down climbing slippery slopes or walking over thin ledges over a 100 meter high just to get back to the ground.

The sky is falling? This huge rock came off the wall when Sam tried to hold on to it.

Another example of the trickiness is the Trad lingo, telling someone ‘I like you rack’ or ‘you have a nice pair of nuts’, is not a sexual harassment, it’s just a compliment about their gear.
These tricks happen with the direction of climbing too. It seems you should be climbing up but actually climbers play a game I’ve coined ‘Snakes and Ladders’. They climb up a little, try to place safety gear, fail, and then slink back down to the last point they felt relatively safe. They repeat this process over and over until success.

Having a ‘Goldilocks’ moment, but at least I have a ‘knee bar’ allowing me to use both hands and preventing me from playing ‘snakes and ladders’.

Because Trad climbing is a slow process there’s also quit a lot of standing around, especially for the person ‘belaying’ the climber, giving or taking rope as needed. This gave me some time to name all of all the variations of Murphy’s law that exist in Trad climbing. There is the ‘Goldilocks’ effect, which means the gear you try to place will always be too big and then too small before it actually fits. That’s still better than the ‘Ugly sisters’, which means nothing you have fits or the ‘Aladdin’ which means you actually have the piece you need but you left it on the ground or already used it. Everyone is obviously hoping for a ‘Cinderella’, a perfect fit, but you really do need a fairy godmother to be looking out for you to get some of those.
Anyway, standing around is still way better then literally ‘hanging around’, which happens when you have to belay your partner while painfully dangling from your harness in midair.

My fingers, or what’s left of them after 10 days!

The first climber might take most of the danger upon their self, but the second climber, who ‘cleans’, still has to have some tricks up their sleeve. They have to remove the gear the first climber left in the rock, sometime banging away at it for a good long while, while occasionally banging some of their own fingers in the process. They are also forced to climb in the direction of the first climber even if they found a much easier way to climb.

Where’s the treasure? Pic by Sam

A special note should be made about the trickiness of the guide book. It is like a treasure map, meaning you are quite likely to get lost, wander in the busses and be surrounded by evil kangaroos before you actually get to the climb you are looking for. Finding your way is important in sports climbing too but in Trad, because there are no bolts connected to the rock to show you the way, my lack of map reading skilled caused me to make an easy climb much more difficult.

And the prize you get for actually getting to the top of a climb? Sorting out all the tangled gear! It’s worse than tiding your room!

Too much stuff!!!

My next adventure will be heading out to the Australian outback in a Walkabout that is trying to stop uranium mining. “‘Walkatjurra Walkabout – Walking for Country’ is a celebration of Wangkatja country, a testament to the strength of the community who have fought to stop uranium mining at Yeelirrie for over forty years,” Check it out!