Climbing log file
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Climbing comes in many shapes and forms; mountaineering, big wall climbing, solo climbing, tree climbing, ladder climbing, etc. This "How to" will concentrate on the art of Traditional Rock Climbing.

Basic Requirements
When you go rock climbing the two most important factors you want to accommodate is easy of movement and safety. It's often that these two variables can work against each other so it's up to you and your partn er to decide how to balance things.

Ease of movement - it's very important when you climb vertical rock that your legs and arms can move as freely as possible. Hard rock climbing is all about precise movement and this is made easier by wearing the appropriate in climbing wear. Also an obvious point is the lighter you are the better. The heaviest load on you during climbing will most certainly be the weight of your rack which I will get into details about later. Let first look at the clothing - and let's start from the bottom and go up.

• The shoes - in today's climbing (2000) the "climbing shoe" is widely recognized as "de rigeur" in foot wear when entering the vertical ground. A climbing shoe is significant by its very close fit (no room for socks), its use of specialized rubber on the sole and most of the shoe and its pointy shape. It needs to be as tight as possible (read bearable - I usually wear 44.5 in normal shoes but I have been known to squeeze a 42 on for indoor climbing!) for you to have as most "contact" with the rock as possible. If you are smearing your shoe on some tiny blob at Baggy Point you can have your shoes that are big and comfortable. Or if your are in the middle of a heel hook down in Cornwall , then you can have your foot falling out of your shoe. No. It wouldn't work. The rubber is perfect for ultimate frictionous contact and the sole of the shoe is signified by being completely smooth, just like a race tyre. Doesn't work in rainy weather but provides optimal friction. More contact points between two surfaces = more stick. The pointy squeezes your toes into a useful precision tool that can stand on virtually anything.
• Trousers - some sort of tight nonrestrictive garment seems to be the popular choice at the time of writing, but many a hard climber has proven that this is more of a fashion decision that anything else.
• Top - even more than the trousers the top is a good place for your fashion statement to the admiring spectators on the ground or nearby cliffs. I recommend the Willerup.com - Just did it t-shirt. Striking white and orange colours. :-)
• Other - that's it. Longer routes often require you to bring extra clothes in case of bad weather and mostly this means bringing a rucksack, which is bad, so many a route has been climbed with the "Ah, we'll be allright" attitude and we and many of our friends have been caught out in sudden freezing conditions with only a t-shirt and this is not recommendable. Consider the seriousness of the crag and the ascent you are about to do and bring extra clothes accordingly.

Safety - this is an area which is and has always been under passionate debate amongst climbers and our views here should only be taken as a guideline. The rules change when new and better gear enters the sport, old techniques dies out and new better ones gets developed.

You could roughly put the safety of rock climbing into three pieces of gear, all of the equally important and all of them dependent on each other; the rope, the harness and the protection (also called rack).

The Rope - the mothersboy of the system. There is not much to say about this other than you usually end up climbing longer than you should on your ropes, but eventually when the ropes starts to look real dodgy consider getting a new one. It's a stupid thing to have as a weak link in the chain, but as it is the single most expensive piece of gear one usually tends to try and get the most out of it. Should it break in a fall all is over though!

The Harness - again, not much to comment on here other than it is quite expensive as well, so make sure you get the one that suit you when you buy a new one. That's why they make so many different ones anyway. Rather too big than too small. The Bros recommend Black Diamond and Petzl harnesses.

The Rack - this is when the fun starts. The rack is what you hang from your harness when you are leading a route and what you use for protecting the route. The choice of rack often depends of the particular route and it usually a good idea to bring the lot in your rucksack to the bottom of the route and at that point decide which rack to fire up. Nothing worse than looking a a beautiful splitter requiring that No 4 (£80) camelot that you left at home. Your complete rack (the one that you bring in your rucksack) should really only be limited by your financial capabilities - the more the better. You need friends, nuts, big bros, hexes, tricams, slings, carabiners, quickdraws, the lot. Some routes even require many of the same size so don't feel you have completed your rack when you have one piece of pro in every avaiable size, no you will need more.

Where to go rock climbing?
England is a pretty good place to start. France has loads and loads of caves as well. So does Spain, Greece, Germany, Eastern Europe, Ireland, America, Asia, Australia, New Zealand and Africa. Basically you want a region of the world that has limestone and stuff like that underneath you. Geology was never my strong side so let's leave it at that.

Actually just about the only country which doesn't have any cave potential whatsoever is probably our home country Denmark. So whatever you do, try and avoid this otherwise nice little country.

And now you are ready to go climbing. See you on the rocks..