My go-to "catastrophe" knot, the knot that is my safety backup, when ascending a climbing rope is the clove hitch. Here's why.

Extending your rappel (abseil) device away from your harness after a climb comes with a number of benefits. But how we choose to make our rappel extension can make navigating certain kinds of anchors or rappels easier or harder. The full video provides three different extension configurations and some of the reasons why one might be a better choice for a given circumstance compared to others.

Note: It does weaken the sling, but not to the point that it cannot take the loads we produce in climbing scenarios. We can never perfectly equalize our anchor points when making a climbing anchor, but sometimes we will want to make an adjustment to the length of one leg of an anchor to fix an obvious lack of equalization. Here's a quick way to do it that requires no more material than you've already put into the anchor.

You need to rappel (abseil), but you've dropped your rappel device down a climbing route. The full video provides three different rappel setups you can use in an emergency that don't require a device. There are pros and cons to each and so choosing the right one for the right circumstance may help reduce risk.

There are a pair of gloves that alpinists are turning to for their mountain ascents and ice climbs. Can you believe they are a third to a fifth of the cost of other climbing gloves!? Here they are, and here is what I love about them.

If you are facing many rappels (abseils) and only have a limited number of snow pickets, you can construct a retrievable anchor so that you can reuse your pickets again and again. The full video provides one method for building that anchor.

Last week we made a simple “bucket seat belay” on a snow climb. If we want additional security, we may also wish to construct a back anchor for the belay. However, there are a few elements to that anchor we want to incorporate in order to avoid a few potential problems.

Snow is a highly variable climbing medium, which can make building climbing anchors a challenge. Most often, we use snow pickets. But, what if we don't have pickets with us? The full video provides a few options if we need to make due for a rappel but which would never be my first choice if pickets are available.

Not every climbing scenario demands robust anchors. Moderate snow slopes are a classic example. We won’t suffer the same fall forces as a vertical fall, but we can encounter tricky conditions, such as overly hard or overly soft snow, that make falls a legitimate risk. Maybe the fastest way to add security in these circumstances is to make a simple “bucket seat belay.”

Snow can be soft, dusty, wet, or rock hard. Because of the variability of snow conditions, building climbing anchors into the snow can be challenging. The full video gets into how to choose between and then build a few anchor types using snow pickets, the most common tool we see on show climbs outside of our ice axes and crampons.

When the risks associated with dropping an ice tool goes up, we often will add a leashes on our alpine climbs. But alpine leashes can result in tangled and twisted leashes that may make our climbs more dangerous. Here's how I try to more rigidly attach spinner leashes to my harness so that the risk of twisted leashes is reduced.

Climbing over ice bulges can be the most risky part of an ice climb. More suspect ice and more challenging physics with our ice tools and crampons make these transitions from vertical to low-angle ice moments where we need increased understanding and concentration. The full video shares why these moves are risky and how we can mitigate those risks.

They are thinner, so they are both lighter and easier to drill into the ice. They have three teeth instead of four, which helps with starting an ice screw placement. But they are also wider, which has a number of advantages when placing ice screws or making v-threads or a-threads on our ice climbs and rappels. Here are some of those advantages.

Rappelling (abseiling) from the top of an ice climb on a multi-pitch route has a few additional considerations when compared to doing the same on rock. The full video goes through the process of transitioning from one rappel to the next to ensure we manage ice fall, the rope, and climber safety.

Ice screws can get stuck while we turn them into the ice flow. This can add time, burn through energy, and even throw you off balance at the exact point you are wanting to add protection from a fall. Aluminum screws are particularly bad for this. You can reduce the stickiness by running a silicone gun and reel cloth through the screw a few times a season.

To manage ice climbing more safely, we need to be able to place ice protection, usually an ice screw, efficiently and securely. Both our ability to assess ice quality and use solid technique are key to placing strong ice screws. The full video demonstrates how I approach placing solid ice screws.

Ice climbing tools allow us to carry an ergonomic climbing hold all the way up the ice flow. But the delicacy of the ice also demands care and understanding. We want to be considerate of directions of pull in order to keep our tools sitting in place. When we decide to use the upper grips on our ice tools, we may be impacting those force vectors.

An obscure material was developed by 3M, with an unusually high friction coefficient when two strips of it come into contact. It is purported to perform well when both wet and cold. It is available with an adhesive backing and also on a glove. So, could wearing the glove and wrapping an ice tool with the adhesive prove to provide superior grip when ice climbing? The full video introduces this material I am going to try out for this ice climbing season.

Whether on a climbing expedition, a backpacking trip, or a thru hike, when I am on an extended adventure, I like to use a three sock rotation to ensure I can handle some common eventualities. The video shares how that three sock system helps me take care of my feet.

When it comes to camping in the deep cold, staying warm is the ultimate goal. But did you know that organizing your gear in your tent can make a huge difference? The full video shares some tips on gear organization to maximize heat retention.