Are a-threads or v-threads stronger? What makes a "threaded" ice climbing anchor strong in the first place? In this video, we go a little deeper into the characteristics of stronger and weaker threaded anchors and go through a tutorial of how to build a good one.

When we form a rope team for glacier travel on a mountaineering route, we need to get the tie in points placed efficiently. While we may make different decisions on how far apart to place climbers based upon the crevasse sizes, the mix of terrain, and communication difficulties, we will always end up at the need to divide the rope and tie the knots where we want them. Here are two methods for doing so.

Knots weaken soft climbing materials like slings, but we tie knots in slings all the time. Particularly the high forces that anchors can face during multi-pitch climbing will make us want to be sure our anchors are reliable. So, why do so many people tie knots in anchor slings? And isn't this worse with dyneema? Let's go deep into this topic.

When we go climbing, camping, or hiking in the backcountry during the winter, we tend to stay out longer and experience more extreme conditions. As advances in technology have improved battery-heated gloves, are they now able to perform well enough and long enough to make them worth having in your gear closet?

Winter peak climbing has its own unique challenges. Borrowing from my winter mountaineering experiences on Colorado 14ers, Colorado 13ers, and my climbs around the world, here is what new winter climbers can expect so that they may better prepare themselves for the challenges of summiting in the coldest months.

Ice climbing, and particularly mixed climbing, sometimes demands that the climber switch which tool is in which hand. There are lots of ways to switch hands on your ice tools, and all of them have pros and cons. This video breaks down three different techniques and then lets you know which one I typically use and why.

Ice climbing usually demands a lot of different gloves. Different portions of ice climbing need more dexterity and therefore less insulation. Some portions are the opposite. Some portions expose your hands to a lot of water. Here's how the approach ice climbers use to pick gloves to bring can help us think through how different gloves, in combination, can help us ensure our kids have warm hands on their climbing, hiking, and camping adventures in winter.

Ice climbing. Snow couloir climbing. Even mixed climbing. My kids want to do it all, but off-the-shelf crampons can't fit on their small feet. Here's how I took advantage of the new trend in modular crampon manufacturing to make some crampons that I'd be willing to wear but fit on my kids and work with their limited boot options.

I've had elbow pain: climber's elbow and golfer's elbow. After clinicians helped me get an exercise routine in place, I wanted to share how I got through the pain and how I've stopped the pain from coming back.

Before I took my kids rock climbing on their first multi-pitch route, I wanted to make sure they had the skills for getting up the route but also the skills for rappelling (abseiling) down if weather or other circumstances forced a retreat. Part of that education was learning to tie a figure eight retrace (follow through), clove hitch, girth hitch (larksfoot), figure eight on a bight, and an autoblock hitch, which are key to their climbing and rappelling systems. Here's how we tie and most frequently use these five knots.

There are lots of important safety practices that go into multi-pitch climbing: building good anchors, swapping or blocking leads, efficient rope management, safety practices like first and second pieces of protection off the anchor, etc. This stuff is well covered, nuanced, and - yes - important. They have to be understood and practiced. But after doing two 1500 foot climbs with two 7 year old kids, I noticed a few other things that these two new multi-pitch climbers also needed to spend some attention on. Maybe it will help those who are new to multi-pitch climbing.

Any time you change systems in a vertical environment, you are inviting risk and therefore potential consequences. Switching from climbing up a rock climb to lowering down is one of those circumstances. And then there is the added complexity of different anchor setups requiring different steps in that transition process. This video goes through the process of both cleaning an anchor and direct lowering when coming to a two-bolt anchor with narrow fixed hardware such as tightly linked chains.

Often the riskiest part of sport climbing is the transition at the top of the climb from leading to lowering. Different anchors require different steps in that transition in order to stay safe and backed-up in case something goes wrong. This video goes through the process of both cleaning an anchor and direct lowering when coming to a two-bolt anchor with rappel rings or links.

Potentially, the transition from climbing to lowering can be the most dangerous part of sport climbing. Setting up a system without any additional eyes to check your work increases the danger, and facing different permanent hardware setups means we need to know how to manage those scenarios. This video walks through how to safely transition from at the top of a climb when facing two mussy hooks, both when cleaning an anchor or when lowering directly.

Transitioning from climbing up to being lowered down can be simple or can be tricky, depending upon the hardware you find at the anchor bolts. It can get even more complicated if you are putting in a top rope anchor for climbers to use after you. Here's how to manage this transition safely.

Our kids just completed their first sport climbing leads and their first multi-pitch climbs. We are continuing to shed some light on how we got ourselves and our kids ready so that they could make those advances in their climbing journeys. Today, we are talking about the mental checklist we impart to any new sport climbing leaders to make sure they were staying as safe as possible when up on the sharp end of the rope.

Our kids hit a few rock climbing milestones, this year, putting up their first sport climbing leads and completing their first multi-pitch climbs as seconds. Today, we are sharing how the kids progressed in skills and how we gave them exposure to some of the different demands of climbing so that we all felt comfortable letting them head up on lead.

A lot of home climbing walls go unused, often because the routes get stale and boring. Here's how I've approached setting routes for the climbers in my family so that we can always feel like the routes we have on the wall are helping us become better climbers while also being fun!

To get better at any endeavor, we need a way to talk about it. New rock climbers are not an exception. In this video, we describe and name some basic rock features, grip and foot placement types, and rock climbing techniques. This rock climbing vocabulary will help new climbers discuss their climbing with others, hopefully stimulating help, collaboration, and improvement.

Communication between climbing partners is a fundamental part of maintaining safety. Surprises create risk because you can't plan for things you can't anticipate. Solid communication can reduce surprises. Before attempting nuanced multi-partner, multi-pitch, or complicated alpine climbs, here's how we taught the new climbers in our family - our kids - good communication while working comparatively simply top rope climbs. These communication habits will form the foundation of a lifetime of safe climbing.