When it comes to climbing, for me, the real adventures are outside.
Once you’re regularly leading indoors, safely lead belaying and often second other trad leaders, you may start thinking about learning to lead trad.
Rebecca and Mat have been relentless supporters of the Climbing Clan, sharing their skills, giving people confidence and bringing the group together.
So a few months ago, we all took a Monday off work and went to Windgather rocks so I could share what I know about starting to lead trad.
Trad often has many many subtleties and different ways of doing things that can overwhelm and confuse the new leader, so to help people level up, I had to think hard about what the minimum amount of skills were to help them get started.
Before the day, they both watched a number of training videos I sent, so when we got to the rock, they’d seen some of things at least once before.
We practiced nut, hex, cam and sling placements. We talked about building equalised belays with the climbing rope and belaying from the top.
And they did some climbs!
There’s more to learn, there’s more to practice, but at the start, the first few steps are the most important to take.
Originally posted on this post on Instagram
