David’s Basics of Big Walling Evening We will be doing active teaching. The idea is that by doing something, rather than just hearing me say it, you stand more chance of remembering it. Do the activities in pairs or triples – one person can read the instructions while the other one does the activity; then swap roles on the next activity. Try to tick off as many of the activities as you can before you leave, but don’t expect to do them all – you can’t learn the whole of the topic in an hour or two. If there is something you don’t understand, ask. Big wall tips. Read these AFTER you have done the activities – they will make more sense then. A copy of this document is on my website: www.multipitchclimbing.com 1. You can’t have too many lockers. Take mainly twist locks. 2. You can’t have too many snap gates. 3. Screwgates don’t stay done up. 4. The belay needs to be clean and readable for speed and safety. 5. Make the lockers you first clip into the bolts on belays large ones. This is because they are likely to end up with other lockers and bits of rope clipped or tied to them. 6. At belays make sure you have two different forms of attachment at all times – normally the rope and one daisy – attached to two different parts of the anchor. The haul bag also needs to be tied in twice. (If you drop the bag it will fall whole length of the haul line and might rip the belay from the wall.) 7. Buy a Grigri or equivalent. You can’t eat, drink or coil ropes whilst using a belay plate. 8. Don’t clip the waste case or portaledge to the bottom of the haul bag – you won’t be able to reach them. Instead use 2m lengths of 6mm cord (tag lines) with one end girth hitched to the main maillon on the haul bag and the other end tied to the waste caste or portaledge bag. 9. The straps on the bottom of a haul bag are not structural; never hang from them as they might snap. 10. Tie backup knots when cleaning or hauling. 11. Read the instructions for everything you buy. 12. Everything that goes on the ledge needs a clip-in point, including sleeping mats, or they will roll off. 13. Line the haul bag with cardboard or with a foam sleeping mat, or you will end up with a bag full of holes. 14. If possible, keep the hauling point (the taxion or top pulley) as high as possible as this will make the hauling easier. 15. Take lots of stuff sacks to keep everything in. 16. Everything in the haul bag goes in a stuff sack, and these need to be colour coded (put an evening meal, a breakfast and a lunch in one bag; not all the breakfasts in the same bag, etc.) 17. Keep the day’s water at the top of the bag; the rest at the bottom. Put extra climbing gear at the top too so you can access it rapidly. 18. Wear a shirt that tucks into your trousers and stays there; otherwise hauling will rub you raw. 19. Think efficiency. Big wall climbing is one element of the sport where being able to do stuff with ropes and other bits of kit fast is as least as important as being a good climber. The Nose on El Cap for example has been climbed in three days by HVS climbers, when it has taken E5 climbers eight days. The difference is purposeful practice. Chris Mac recommends practicing with a stop watch and really working on reducing the time taken to do the basic big wall skills, like jugging a pitch. I think a sensible minimum is that you must have at least done each task the same number of times beforehand as you will do on the route. So, if you plan a 10 pitch aid route for your first wall, you need to have led, hauled and cleaned a minimum of 10 aid pitches, and also built 10 appropriate belays, sorted the rack 10 times, swapped leader ten times, etc. Many people who visit Yosemite for the first time don’t seem to have done this. 20. Don’t use down clothing or sleeping bags – they will get soaking wet even inside a portaledge’s fly, and you could die (people have). 21. If you are expecting bad weather, then you will need a bivvy sack even if your portaledge has a fly, as the walls of the fly will be wet with condensation if you have to keep the doors done up in a storm. 22. Keep your sleeping bag in the bivvy sack even when it is in the stuff sack and haul bag as this is another layer of protection against a storm. 23. All things that you want to stay dry should be in dry bags. 24. Don’t trap carabiners in the belay. If yourself clip the locker on the end of one of your daises into a bolt then put another locker on top of it through the same bolt hanger and hang the haul bag off it, you will not be able to remove your daisy from the bolt, as the weight of the haul bag will be trapping it. This is a general point, you have to think about the order of clipping into bolts or other carabiners. Sometimes you will have to lift a locker up so you can slide a clove hitch beneath it. Other times you might have to temporarily unclip something to you can release something else, or tie something else into the belay. This is one reason why you and the bags need to be attached to two different points in the belay. 25. Your daises (particularly the upper one) need to be set to the right length for jugging. You might like to mark them to you can adjust them to the correct length quickly. 26. On sunny days hang the sleeping bags and bivvy sacks out to allow any condensation to dry during one of the pitches, or before you dismantle the ledge. 27. Use knots that can be undone even if they have been loaded, for example the Alpine Butterfly. 28. Learn to tie a two-bolt powerpoint with an alpine butterfly on a sling. 29. Learn how to use a cordelette to create a three or four point powerpoint. 30. Clip the haul line with trax, backup draw, any pulleys or grigri to the rear of your harness already to be deployed when you reach the next belay. 31. Test your pieces. If a piece blows after you have tested it, give yourself a slap, and work on your testing skills. 32. If the belay bolts are good it is probably okay to connect the lead line to them banshee style, i.e. in series, rather than trying to load share between the bolts in some way. If this worries you, make the butterfly knot the second will jug on have a large loop about 50cm long. Clip the loop to the first bolt and back this up with a clove hitch on the other bolt. The butterfly itself will now be hanging low between the two bolts, meaning if one bolt were to fail, the lead line will swing rather than drop. 33. Once you have finished bounce testing a piece, walk straight up the aider without stopping until your waist is as high as the piece. Then see if it is worth getting even higher. Don’t look at the piece or stop as you walk up the ladder. If you keep looking at the piece and pausing at every step you are just wasting time. 34. Get as high as sensible on the aider each time. If the rock is low angle get high each time. On steep stuff getting really high every time puts a strain on the core muscles, which will just exhaust you. 35. If you can’t find a good placement, get higher. 36. If you are not very tall (and maybe even if you are), carry a stiff extender for clipping bolts just out of reach. A pair of girth hitched stoppers can be used to reach rivets. 37. Learn to short fix – this is where the leader keeps leading above the belay after pulling up all the slack and tying it off. This means she might be able to get a quarter of the next pitch led before she runs out of gear or the second arrives at the belay. The bags need to be released before she leaves the belay. Once the second has cleaned the pitch, he can tag (pass) up the gear he cleaned using the haul line. The leader belays herself using a Grigri (with backup knots). If you are making extensive use of short fixing, the leader may need to carry a small amount of water on her back. 38. If you have not done any multipitch aid climbing, and your first wall will be an aid climb, then it makes sense to separate the aid bit from the whole moving-the-luggage-and-big-wall-camping bit. This suggests making your first aid wall a day wall. As you don’t know how far up you will get, pick one that can be abseiled at almost any point and simply climb until you need to turn back to get to the base in daylight.