INTRO TO SPORT CLIMBING

at Hanging Mountain, MA

This course is for the gym climber that wants to learn how to lead sport climbing routes outdoors. This course is designed to take a competent top rope climber and turn them into someone who feels comfortable sport climbing outdoors and indoors. We will hit the ground running in this course, quickly covering a variety of topics specific to outdoor sport climbing before jumping into climber and belayer specific responsibilities while sport climbing. We will discuss how to position yourself best as the climber to avoid unwanted consequences, and how to manage slack as a belay, while also protecting yourself. We will also touch on bolted anchors, and how to best utilize them while climbing. This course will spend time on the ground, utilizing a number of training aids, time climbing with a top rope back-up, and finish with some first leads. This class will be covering a lot of ground. The more solid of a foundation of climbing and top rope belaying you have prior to this course, the more you can expect to gain from this class.

Following this course, you should feel comfortable in their ability to sport climb both outdoors and indoors. You should be able to go to any climbing gym and pass their lead test there if they desire. You will be able to identify risks with sport climbing, and have a solid framework to make decisions to mitigate them. The world of climbing opens up drastically after learning how to lead climb.

WHAT MAKES THIS COURSE DIFFERENT:

This course, like all of our courses, is designed to meet you where you are, with the experiences you have, and help make you into a better climber. You will leave this course knowing how to lead belay, how to lead climb, common pitfalls when belaying and climbing, and more! We take the time to demonstrate techniques and ideas, and ensure that climbers have the opportunity to put all skills and ideas to the test. We want to make sure that you leave this course fully prepared to take the lead indoors or our, and competently able to pass any lead belay class in any gym.

We pride ourselves in being able to cater to the group dynamics of the day. Just because this a group event, doesn’t mean that we necessarily have to follow a prescribed curriculum. The curriculum listed above is just a guideline. If you and your group want to pursue additional ideas, goals, or education, then we can make that happen. If your group wants to spend their time on specific learning goals or ideas, we can make it happen.

We pride ourselves on keeping low ratios of students to instructors, and providing individualized and exceptional instruction. If you want to see what outdoor climbing is all about, then join us now!