The Climbing Wall

The climbing wall you attend is only one of many around the country. Each wall will have it's own safety guidleines and terms of use and it is important that you know these in order to ensure you and others are safe.

Safety

it is very important to make climbing as safe as possible for the grade of climbing you are participating in. Climbing on an indoor wall is one of the safer ways to climb because such factors as weather and rock falls have been removed from the equasion but indoor walls can still be dangerous places because of one of the following reasons:

Not understanding or following the rules and regulations
Not climbing within your ability
Not checking equipment
Not working effectively in a team or pair
Using the facility or the equipment for purposes it was not made for
Over confidence
Horseplay / playing around

Carrying out risk assessments is an important part of making groups as safe as possible on the wall and carrying out your own personal risk assessment is very important when you go to any wall. Look around the wall and say "what if?"

Next session you will be asked to give the safety briefing for each other. Can you remember the issues?

Next session you will be asked to fit your own helmets without assistance from the instructor. Can you remember how many adjustment points there are and how they need to be adjusted?

Next session you will be asked to fit your own harnesses without assistance from the instructor. Can you remember how the harness should fit?



On your first session you worked in groups but from our next session you will be learning to belay in groups of 3.

You will need to be able to:

tie a rethreaded figure of eight with a stopper knot
Set up a belay and use it effectively
back up a belay effectively
Use the standard climbing calls
Climb effectively using 3 points of contact
Understand the risks

These are sites and links that may help you

http://thebmc.co.uk    This is the website of The British Mountaineering Council. Their website is full of information about every aspect of climbing and mountaineering

http://www.animatedknots.com  This website is a great resource to help you learn climbing knots and other knots

http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=ROCKFROGOUTDOORS&p=r  This is a link to some of the Rock Frog videos on Youtube. You will be able to see some of our climbers doing particular moves on the wall. Watch how they use their bodies using 3 points of contact.

There are a huge number of climbing videos on Youtube . http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=qkOJV05Goqg is a link to a video compild by Brunel Students; the end of which is not for the squeemish!