Saturday, March 28, 2009

Gear Placement

It was wet and cold when we huddled up at Rocky Butte Park for our first Advanced Rock field session.  The first piece of advice that we were given was that one should avoid rock climbing in such conditions at all costs.  However, we were not here to climb, but rather practice placing rock climbing  protection gear.  Between shivers we spread out along a vertical wall and practiced fitting various kinds of gear in the cracks of the wall.  The lead coordinator of the class is a big fan of the Tricam, so there was plenty of practice with that kind of gear.


I managed to work with the various kinds of protection gear and also practice building a couple of anchors.  I did not get to testing my gear placement by placing my body weight upon a attached sling.  Hopefully I'll have a chance to do so when I'm not cold and wet.

Next on the class agenda is anchors.  Stay tuned...

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