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>You will have much more success if you take this first step as soon as possible. No research, no thinking. I'd be careful with this advice. Almost every time
by superhuzza 6y ago
>You will have much more success if you take this first step as soon as possible. No research, no thinking.
I'd be careful with this advice. Almost every time I climb outside I see groups who clearly have very little idea of what they're doing, because all the small but deadly details are wrong - no stopper knots, not backing up rappels, building weird anchors, having 1 point of failure, etc.
From their perspective, they're just getting out there and taking those first steps - but with an inadequate understanding of how much risk they've taken on. They don't even realize they're doing anything wrong. It's really bad and regularly leads to serious accidents. To actually climb outside they need mentorship or a bunch of research and practice, both of which take a while to acquire. They should definitely not start by doing the thing.
- travisjungroth 6y agoI’d say they weren’t doing what I suggested (that could still mean my advice is bad). Before they actually started climbing the rock, they had to do a bunch of other stuff. They at least got their hands on some gear, probably drove and hiked. And this is partly what gets them into trouble. Fooling yourself into doing something unsafe generally requires a bit of work. I think there’s a safety in doing what’s immediately around you. For most people, it would be really hard to kill themselves rock climbing in the next 15 minutes, but very easy to do it next weekend. My hope for someone doing what I suggest would be something like “I’m gonna go hang from that pull-up bar / low beam / jungle gym on and off for 5 minutes.” Then they research how to actually start rock climbing safely.