What is Trad Climbing?

by Jay Pasricha 

Mike Dobie created some of the first
mainstream climbing routes in China 

When most people first think about climbing, activities such as clambering around on boulders or climbing up an indoor wall tend to spring to mind. Whilst these are both perfectly valid forms of climbing, they are not the most traditional. For most people, their experience of climbing will have been a rope attached to their harness, which then goes up to a hook at the top of the wall and comes back down to a belayer. This is top-rope climbing. Trad climbing is a little different. 

Trad (short for traditional) climbing is seen by most climbers to be the greatest and most enjoyable form of climbing. Whilst most climbers tend to stick to sport climbing (a much safer form of outdoor climbing), trad climbing is something which every climber aspires to become brilliant at. It involves heading up the wall with nothing already in place above you. This may seem scary but don’t worry; as the climber ascends the wall they place various pieces of gear into cracks in the wall which they can then clip the rope into. This gear is called pro (short for protection). The climber will also have a person belaying them from below. Ther person who climbs the route first is called the leader, they have the tough job of climbing up the route whilst placing all of the necessary pro to keep them from falling to their death. Once they are at the top of the route, their belayer now has the slightly easier (but still important) job of climbing up the route (also known as seconding) and removing all of the pro as they ascend.

 I should now point out that often people climb routes which are called “multi-pitch” routes. If a wall is too high to be completed in one rope length, it can be divided into sections which are referred to as pitches. A multi-pitch climb is a climb which has multiple sections. When completing a multi-pitch climb, it is important that the climber seconding the pitch retrieves all of the gear as it may be necessary later on in the climb.

There are lots of different types of gear used whilst trad climbing and it would take me too long to explain them all; here I will give a brief explanation of some of the gear which I have experience using. The most important type of pro which climbers use when trad climbing is called a nut. This is a small metal block which is attached to a wire loop with a carabiner clipped to it. Nuts come in a wide array of sizes so that they can fit in a wide range of different sized cracks. The metal block is jammed into the crack and then the rope is clipped into the carabiner. The same process applies to hexes. These are similar to nuts but the metal block is hexagonal. These are used when the crack is wider or oddly shaped, as the hex will allow for more contact between the pro and the wall. The third piece of gear which every climber will carry is called a cam device. These are mechanisms which are designed to be placed into a crack in the wall and then expand, filling the space and holding fast. They are used because they’re widely applicable and will work in many different scenarios but they are also very heavy and expensive so often people don’t take them up with them in order to lighten their load.

All that is starting to sound like quite a lot of kit, bearing in mind that the climber needs to take several nuts, several cams and several hexes along with lots of other bits of kit. The average rock kit taken up by a climber weighs approximately 5.5kg. This load can get even heavier if the climber is planning on taking a while with their climb as they may want to take water or snacks, and if the route is going to take them multipole days then they will need a cooker, a bivouac and preferably some clean clothes. In total this can sometimes add up to over 15kg. Lots of professional climbers say that their least favourite aspect of going for big climbs is the amount of weight that they end up hauling up the wall.

Now, you’ve learnt about what trad climbing is and what the climbers fix into the wall but I am yet to mention anything about falling off. Obviously falling is not something that a climber aims to do but sometimes it is unavoidable. If a climber is unlucky enough to take a fall whilst leading there are two things which can happen. The preferable result is that the piece of pro which they most recently placed holds and they simply hand below it (assuming their belayer is paying attention and doesn’t let them fall all the way down). The second possibility is that their most recent piece of gear was badly placed and comes out; in this instance, they will continue to tumble down the wall until they become level with another piece of gear which hopefully manages to hold and breaks their fall. All this is, of course, assuming that their belayer is doing their job and taking in the rope. The concept of falling practice is a big part of climbing training, not only for the belayer but also for the climber. It’s very important that a belayer knows how to hold a fall but also that the climber knows how to take a fall. This is because should a climber take a fall and become injured in any way, the only escape route is often climbing down. If the climber is left in shock from their fall then they will be unable to climb down and mountain rescue will have to be called. Whilst climbing is all about being adventurous, the key to a good climber is someone who always considers safety. 

If you’re interested in learning more about trad climbing then I would urge you to read Joe Simpson’s book Touching The Void. It’s a fantastic true story about a massive climb and insane human perseverance. If you aren’t that interested but would like to see some climbing in action, I would recommend a Youtube channel called FirstPersonBeta, their GoPro footage of climbing the Epinephrine is fantastic. The link to that video will be below the article. 

Trad Climbing on Epinephrine: