I second everything RG just said!

RG's comments got me to thinking. My other "obsession" (my wife's term) is driving a race car. Both that sport and rock climbing involve a certain level of risk and a lot of thought, training and work to manage that risk. I pretty firmly believe that no one should be doing either activity unless he or she really, really wants to. It just does not make any sense to expose yourself to that level of risk unless you have a passion for the sport.

I have been climbing with my 24 year old daughter. Although she is a stronger climber than I, she has not (yet) experesssed any desire to lead. Unless and until she does, I am not going to encourage her to lead. Even then, I likely will resist her a bit, to make sure her desire is strong. And if she never does, hey, she makes a terrific second.

Though I trashed a post I wrote very similar to RG s, I feel the same way about this as he and others. I went into a little more depth concerning his last line.

“have you thought about what you'll say if she falls on one of your pre-placed pieces and it blows?"

I’ve mentioned how much I have thought about this type of thing in several places before. All I can say is that as much as I enjoy climbing, I have yet to take my kids up anything multi-pitch due to similar concerns.

If this person really needs the pre-placed gear, then get them to hire a guide. You won't have to talk them into or out of leading, the guide will have insurance if anything happens, and you won’t have to feel completely responsible about it.

If it will help suggest it, then pay for it!

I remember some story about that blind guy who did Everest taking a bad fall when some pre-placed gear pulled.

I think there's no substitute for placing your own gear. The route should be super-duper easy for her (I don't think we know what level she follows at) and I'll admit to a preference for a fixed anchor at the top (it slightly improves my chances of living if I should slip while following), but basically I'd just pick a route and send her up it.

The only way to learn most of the things you need to know about leading is to lead. You learn to respect rope drag by doing a series of squat thrusts at the top of an easy route after hosing yourself. You learn to manage a hanging belay after dealing with the cluster-fuck of a poorly managed one. You learn route finding by crying at the top of Minty (so I've heard).

But one or two virtual leads, hey, whatever. It's how people do it now, so it's probably like letting your kid walk to the library and if he gets kidnapped it's your own fault because everyone nowadays knows it's way too dangerous to walk to the library. Just don't think she'll learn much from it. Some day it'll be her own gear and she'll be above it and the clock doesn't really start ticking until that day.

"All I can say is that as much as I enjoy climbing, I have yet to take my kids up anything multi-pitch due to similar concerns.

If this person really needs the pre-placed gear, then get them to hire a guide. You won't have to talk them into or out of leading, the guide will have insurance if anything happens, and you won’t have to feel completely responsible about it."

I respect the intent, but I have to disagree with this one. First, if you don't have as much (or more) confidence in your own gear as in that placed by a guide you don't know, you might want to reconsider whether you should be leading for yourself as well. After all, how will your (wife, kids, girlfriend, etc.) feel if you fall and the piece blows while they're belaying you?

Second, can you really subcontract out your own feelings of responsibility that easily? That is, if the guide places gear instead of you and something goes wrong, aren't you going to feel like maybe that wasn't such a good idea?

And finally, although I don't know for a fact, I suspect that most guides would want no part of this project. If their gear blows, it's going to be with them on the lead, not your wife/girlfriend, etc. (And if they don't feel that way, I'm sure their insurance companies do).

I am surprised how many AMGA rock climbing instructors we have on this site. Now everyone is entitles to their opinions but they mean jack sh*t(mine included). Learning by doing I am all for. NOTHING teaches like experience. The simple fact is that Jeff is responsible for how he teaches. I am sure many of you have taken new climbers under your wing and have the experience teaching numerous people to hang it out above the gear that it qualifies you to speak up when you think something could be done differently...Just don’t be offended if they tell you to mind your own business. Just because you were taught a certain way doesn’t mean it was the only way or even the correct way for that matter.

Learn by doing....she will know when it is time...bla bla bla. If I was to bring a brandy new person to the cliffs and showed them how to belay with doubles how many of you would cast off on a lead with that new belayer and only that new belayer holding you? Not many I’d bet. So much for learning by doing. Eh? Imagine if they instructed parachuting like that. Just throw them out of the fuggin plane and scream down to them learn by doing!

If a person teaching another to do something as incredibly dangerous as trad climbing and decides they need an extra step what the hell is the big deal? A wise instructor will recognize what the student needs and lead them accordingly. Incremental teaching is an age old doctrine. Lets face it gang, far better to take baby steps than to find out your student wasn’t ready by a carry out on a backboard.

CLimer

Again, I think dalguard has nailed it. Spoken like the true tradgirl.

In an attempt not to be only negative, and assuming that the prospective leader in question really wants to lead trad and isn't being either coaxed or deluded into it, here are a few additional thoughts on the process.

1. Good modeling.

(a) The experienced person should try to model good leading, anchoring, belaying, and rope-management practices, including verbalizing what they are thinking and why they are doing things. This means, perhaps unobviously, that the experienced person should strive to model how a beginning leader ought to lead the pitch in question. A 5.12 leader that places one piece in 100 feet on a 5.4 pitch isn't going to help a beginning leader learn anything.

(b) The team should do climbs that the experienced leader knows nothing about. The behavior of a leader on a totally unfamiliar climb is quite different from their behavior on something they've already done, and it is the former behavior that the inexperienced person needs to learn about. You can get really distorted ideas about what competent leading looks like if you only follow a leader up climbs that are familiar.

(c) Encourage a lot of questioning by the novice, who shouldn't take anything for granted and should always be asking, "why did you do this, why not that?"

(d) A leader has to make sure their second is properly protected; it's not just about the leader's safety. In fact, I think the second's safety is more important than the leader's, in the sense that the leader is making choices for themselves but the second doesn't have a say in the level of risk the leader has created for them.

(e) Gear not only has to go in, it has to come out (but not before it is supposed to!), and the prospective leader has to think about this too. Deeper is rarely better.

(f) Rope drag has to be managed. In addition to thinking about it ahead of time, one of the marks of a competent leader is the ability, at least in some cases, to back down a move or two and rearrange something that the leader realizes after the fact will cause drag.

(g) Zippering. In my experience, zippering (lifting from bottom up) is the most common error made by experienced climbers. The novice leader needs to think about preventive strategies from day one. The experienced leader should remember to explain what they are doing to forestall this catastrophe, or what they should have done in retrospect if some of their nuts lift.

2. Downclimbing. Sooner or later, a leader will have to downclimb. It shouldn't be the first time they ever tried this. After climbing up a pitch, try to downclimb it. But also, while seconding, adopt a "no-falls" mentality and downclimb rather than going for moves.

Team downclimbing is an interesting exercise. The first person down places protection for the second person down (the pro has to be placed after tricky moves, not before, of course). The willingness of the experienced person to engage in this exercise is a very good measure of their real estimate of the novice's gear skills. If you don't trust someone to protect you properly on a downclimb, should you be sending them up on leads of their own?

3. Ground school.

I've watched bits of several "ground schools" from afar, and all I've ever seen is the instructor doing all the placing and explaining. Of course this is important, but the learner also has to be marched up to the rock and tasked with making an anchor or placing protection while the instructor bites their lip and keeps quiet until the process is completed.

4. Aid climbing.

(a) The forgotten discipline. With top-rope belay, aid pitches, descend, and then follow with aid. A beginning leader (well, or course, any leader) needs to be competent at improvised aid, but for aid climbing practice I'd use a pair of etriers and a pair of daisy's. Bounce test every placement. Beware of getting hit in the face by the ones that fail.

(b) Devote a little bit of time to down-aiding with improvised gear. This might be essential if you can't pull the crux and can't aid up it.

4. Mock leading.

Personally, I'm not a fan. Guides invented this in order to be able to teach climbers to lead without exposing themselves to the attendant liability. As I mentioned before, there may be some benefit if novice and instructor rap the pitch together to examine and discuss placements, otherwise it isn't going to be worth all that much. The time would be better spend aiding.

5. Redundance.

The only person I've heard of who actually tested the placements he made is John Stannard. This means, somewhat shockingly if you think about it, that most of us don't know how good our gear really is. Redundance is our only bulwark against this ignorance, and whatever decisions an experienced climber makes, the beginning leader's safety lies in not betting the farm on a single piece. Of course, this is just a platitude---redundance isn't always practical or achievable, and you can't use up all your gear in the first 30 feet. Such uncertainties notwithstanding, the novice needs to learn to think about redundancy and use it in a practically effective way.

I do have confidence in my gear and that is exactly why I trust my evaluation of my trad pro more than my evaluation of sport bolts. But that not really the issue here.

1) With how little I actually climb I would hope most guides would have better judgment off their pro than me!
2) The guide will have insurance for their clients. Do you have insurance of any type? Then I’m not going to listen to the argument you do not expect expect to use it or need it.



No I can’t subcontract my feelings of responsibility that easily, but things do go wrong, and it’s not even necessarily some ones fault. As an example it is standard practice for doctors, surgeons, and anesthesiologists etc. not to participate in surgery of one of their family members.



I never recommended that a guide take part “in this project”. I suggested that if someone wants you to help them lead, but you do not feel they are ready, then I advised suggesting to them that they let a guide help them with their decision. Besides the fact that the guide might be a better judge, and better teacher, they will certainly be less personally involved and more likely to have their advice followed.

Sorry for the semi off topic post. RG's and DA's posts are better than mine anyway.