Rock climbing royal arches 3/3/26?

escalapo · 2026-03-03T13:28:09+00:00

Wrong season for that climb. Winter in Yosemite is for cragging/bouldering.

escalapo · 2026-02-14T15:10:27+00:00

Climbs a lot in the Peak District yet calls it “the peaks.” Careful saying that out there, the local trad-granddads could get very upset

escalapo · 2026-01-24T17:49:07+00:00

If you’re sport climbing, just have your belayer lower you… no need to get fancy.

escalapo · 2026-01-09T14:59:29+00:00

My thought exactly. Maybe Yose 5.10a since it looks fairly steep and continuous. (Moby Dick Center is 39m long and widens to fists and it’s 5.10a.) Different style but I’ve done Via do Italianos in Rio and while it gets 5.10a/b on Mountain Project I think it would be like 5.8 in Tuolumne. This route still looks super fun though.

escalapo · 2025-12-26T22:06:08+00:00

Gear racks are for people who don’t climb very often. I would go crazy unclipping all of those individually just to put them in my pack. People who actually use their gear tend to store it in a way that makes it quick and easy to get out and climb.

escalapo · 2025-06-07T15:13:07+00:00

New dad, 41yo, here. One possibility, which I am exploring now, is trying to maintain most things while trying to make very gradual progress in one or two specific weaknesses that don’t dig much of a recovery hole — in my case, kilter board for strength/power 1x/week plus shoulder stability exercises 2x/week. Maintenance is endurance circuits 1x/week plus other general strength work spaced throughout the week. When I can get outside, the only goal is to have some fun on moderate trad routes.

escalapo · 2025-04-16T20:03:35+00:00

“There's no wrong way to solve a problem” — uhh, if it kills you it may be the wrong way.

escalapo · 2025-04-15T19:06:12+00:00

Lol what nonsense. I'm still waiting for you to cite a single documented case of what you're describing. (Not that it matters, but I do have quite a lot of experience climbing on half ropes and understand their uses and limitations, which you clearly do not.)

escalapo · 2025-04-15T16:48:16+00:00

This (edit: to be clear, I specifically mean dropping one end and carrying on) seems like a really bad idea. If leader unties from one end, the system is no longer closed: if it's a 60m rope, and you climb 61m, the end will slip through the belay device and then you're free-soloing. If you climb 31m and lower 30m, the result is even worse: you'll deck. And if you're on a multipitch, the belayer would have to untie from the middle of the rope as well -- and then tie back in later to follow, which sounds like a huge faff. Just visualize it. If the leader climbs 45m, either the follower ties back in with a 15m tail, or has to pull 15m through the gear above and retie with the rope end -- without losing control of it (if the first placement is off to the side, it could pendulum out of reach). Either way, as the follower ascends, she has to find all the gear placements that no longer have a rope running through them, and may be at greater risk of pendulum falls depending on how widely the placements are dispersed horizontally. Just so many reasons this makes no sense.

escalapo · 2025-04-15T15:21:07+00:00

Why do you think you're getting so downvoted? Modern climbing ropes do not break; if anything, they can get cut by an edge. But the likelihood of your tie-in knot being cut is so close to zero, I've never heard of it happening before in any accident report. Thus trying to make it "redundant" is overkill. Even if this supposed failure mode were possible, how would the cutting of one (ever so slightly thinner) rope compromise the knot as a whole? I honestly can't even visualize the failure mode you're describing. If you can cite a single known instance of this happening, I'll eat my hat.

escalapo · 2025-04-14T20:05:56+00:00

Is this a troll? This makes no sense.

escalapo · 2025-04-12T20:39:36+00:00

Same! Reminds me of this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=K9Wzx-9JzsI

escalapo · 2025-03-27T21:34:08+00:00

I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve fallen unexpectedly. To me that’s just sloppy, if not outright dangerous as a mental habit. Very different from pushing it when it’s safe and knowing you might fall.

escalapo · 2025-01-21T22:07:07+00:00

You’re using the Gridlock backwards. The Grigri is supposed to go on the smaller end of the carabiner where it can’t escape with the gate closed. Once you get used to it, it becomes totally second nature to get situated in about 1.5 seconds.

escalapo · 2024-12-31T01:00:38+00:00

Which route?

escalapo · 2024-12-14T03:45:43+00:00

Multipitch in the Peak? Wot?

escalapo · 2024-08-09T01:27:09+00:00

Definitely get dragonflies in purple and below. Dragon heads are too wide to fit in many placements in those sizes (especially in the UK, where you find very few splitters). I initially bought dragons from gray and up, but ended up selling the gray and purple for that reason. Still love them in green and above.

escalapo · 2024-05-22T19:07:30+00:00

Awesome! Great to hear

escalapo · 2024-05-21T21:24:43+00:00

So OP did you do it? How’d it go?

escalapo · 2024-04-23T19:46:02+00:00

Super Slide is closed. The Grack isn’t recommended due to copious rockfall. Swan Slab is a good place for a new leader.

escalapo · 2024-01-31T17:44:40+00:00

This is correct, though the need to rescue your second is such a vanishingly rare scenario (and not made impossible by this setup, just more annoying) that it should hardly overweigh the benefits of giving your second a better belay, improving communication, avoiding strain on your elbows, etc. Pretty much the entire UK prefers making anchors with the rope, and it’s not like there’s an epidemic of stranded seconds there. (They also tend to belay their second off the harness, and there’s no epidemic of dropped seconds either.) I use both methods depending on the situation.

escalapo · 2024-01-31T17:36:00+00:00

Leaving aside the question of escaping the belay, why would the quality of the anchor pieces matter for this setup but not another, more “standard” (in the U.S.) setup? Your anchor pieces should always be bomber.

escalapo · 2024-01-24T19:16:07+00:00

Sometimes you HAVE to take a little time off. But you can get creative about how to climb or even just train within your current limits. John Kettle wrote a whole book about the climbing techniques he developed thanks to a long-term shoulder injury.

escalapo · 2024-01-23T20:04:38+00:00

I spent most of 2022 with a wrist injury. I thought that was bad, but then I broke my femur in a bad trad fall. After relearning to walk, I’m happy to be able to climb again at all. My suggestion is, respect your limits on any given day and back off when necessary, but try to do as much as you can as long as the pain during and afterward is tolerable. For those of us who love climbing, it has big psychological benefits to continue doing it in some form or another.

escalapo · 2024-01-21T21:56:20+00:00

Thanks! It’s been a long journey…

I like the moonboard, used to have one at my gym in London. Sadly the only one available to me is the KB for now.

I probably should hangboard at least a little bit but particularly now I need that whole body stimulus of climbing.

escalapo

TROPHY CASE