Between Pitching and Free Solo Climbing "Easier" Terrain, Part II: Terrain and Body Belays

(This post may contain affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links and make a purchase, I’ll receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. This helps support the channel and allows us to continue to make videos like this. Thank you for the support!)

If you’ve been following my blog and YouTube channel at all, you probably know that I like to do videos in small sets. This video is a part of a short series on using a rope on moderate (class 4, low class 5) terrain. You can check out the whole series by following this link, and this particular video is about using terrain and our bodies to set up quick belays that don’t take the time of fully anchored, pitched climbing. Take a look at the video to learn more.

The reason I like to do a bunch of - in essence - mini-series is because skills stack on one another. We develop foundational skills for something, and then add new skills on top of it. For example, take rappelling. First, we need to know how to set up a rappel system, then we need to get comfortable (-enough, I’m never fully comfortable) with a single-pitch rappel. Then we need to know how to manager ourselves, our gear, and the rope for multi-pitch rappels. And so on…

Subsequently, this is also how I teach this stuff to my kids. Going with the same example, I felt I needed to teach the kids to rappel before we got into single-pitch situations that might be best entered from the top (think Ouray, CO for ice climbing, as an example). And, before I was willing to take the kids on a multi-pitch climb, I felt they needed to know the multi-pitch rappel transition sequence. Given that things can just happen when we are out on a climb, I didn’t want to be in a situation where the kids were completely unprepared for some contingency that might arise, such as needing to bail off of a multi-pitch route due to weather, which would mean knowing how to do multiple rappels in a row. So, again, I am building the boys’ skill sets in this “stacked” way, that I was describing, above.

Since this channel is basically something of a “close to real time” reflection of what I’m teaching my kids at any one particular point of time, then it maybe makes some sense that as I go deep into a topic (like rappelling or rope work when scrambling) with the boys that I do the same with the commensurate video series.

It’s not like the boys are masters of these things as I teach them, but what I am going for is that they have exposure, experience, and some level of competence. I don’t want to be in a situation where I am talking them through something I need them to do - for the first time - in an emergency. Yes, they are probably going to need me to talk them through whatever skill we are applying, but we will have shared experience and practice time we can reference: “Remember when we set that extended rappel on the home wall? We are going to do that, again. So, do you remember what we start with, first?”

That’s the micro-view, anyway; I want them to be able to actively contribute to meeting the demands of the situation we are in, because it empowers them and because it distributes the effort in a way that will make us more efficient and therefore safer.

The macro-view, though, is a series of object lessons in being self-sufficient and self-reliant. I want them to feel capable and confident and resilient in life. Being reminded, on a weekly basis when we go out into the wild, that they can learn these things and take an active role in deciding their own fate is something I hope will translate into the rest of their lives as they grow and mature.