Ascending a Vertical Fixed Line Using Nothing But that Climbing Rope

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I talk a lot about risks in my blogs and on my YouTube channel.

I believe climbing is a serious endeavor if for no other reason than the consequences of a mistake can be very, very high.

But we also climb because it is fun.

Today’s video is just a fun video… for a certain kind of person, maybe. I really enjoyed working on this one because it was novel. I was presented a problem to solve, and had to use some ingenuity to solve it. The solution is not practically applied to any climbing scenario we are likely to see. So, the solution isn’t “transferrable” to the world. But through the course of working on my solution, I came to realize that the process of coming to the solution - not the solution itself - was very, very practical.

You’ve also seen me write and comment about the variables we are confronted with in climbing and how those variables make metacognition so important. Metacognition is simply being aware of how we think. We are confronted with a metacognition “problem” when we don’t realize that how we are thinking doesn’t reflect reality. A classic example of this is thinking we know something that, in fact, we are wrong about. In climbing, we run into metacognition demands when we not only need to apply a procedure to mitigate a risk but also must select the best procedure from those we know.

This whole “puzzle,” was less about particular systems. Most of the systems I used were no more complicated than a specific knot. Rather, “stacking” the systems in an order that would a) work, and b) was dictated by the constraint of a linear climbing rope with only one tail available, was the fun stuff.

Constraints actually allow for creativity. So, these constraints pressed on my creativity to select the right systems to make the procedure work.

Does being able to leaf through our internal catalog of climbing knowledge to select a knot, or system, or procedure that can be safely applied to a risk constitute a “practical skill?

I think it does.