Begin your trad climbing journey! This course will guide you through the fundamentals of placing gear, building anchors, and leading with confidence on the “sharp end”.

Whether you’re transitioning from sport climbing or are completely new to outdoor climbing, this hands-on experience focuses on skill-building in a supportive environment. With personalized instruction, you’ll gain the knowledge and techniques to safely explore the world of traditional climbing at your own pace.

Who is this course for?
You already lead sport climbs indoors or outdoors and want to make the transition to trad.
You have climbed some trad with a mentor but you want to get some professional instruction.
You’ve taken a trad course before but its been a while or you just want to review the material.

Itinerary
We’ll start off with some discussion about what trad climbing is, how it differs from other forms of climbing, and what we can expect from the day. We’ll discuss some new equipment and terminology before getting some practice with placing trad gear into the rock. After some time with that we’ll move onto the ropes and do some mock trad leads while backed up with a top rope. You’ll get feedback on your placements and perhaps even take some small falls on them. We’ll wrap up with some basic 3 and 4-point traditional anchor-building considerations before calling it a day.

Curriculum

• Trad vs sport considerations
• Trad climbing equipment
• Cam and nut placement basics
• Assessing rock quality
• Where/when to place protection
• Trad anchors
• Incremental falling practice

Prerequisites

• Lead climbing experience
• Solid lead and top rope belaying skills
• Capable of top roping 5.8 outside
• At least 6 months of climbing experience