How To

CRACK! The jolt back onto the bolt, into which you are still quickdraw-tethered, stuns you. You only fell two feet, but your neck is stiff and your innards feel like they’ve been kicked by a mule.

To help make more climbers safer climbers, Rock and Ice has teamed up with Black Diamond Equipment to present the Climb Safe series.These articles aim to answer some of climbing's most common gear-related questions. Here, Kolin Powick, Black Diamond’s Director of Quality, investigates a mysterious harness failure and dives into the effects of chemical contamination on climbing textiles.

Yosemite seems like a fair-weather paradise, but because it sits high in the Sierra Nevada and close to the Pacific Ocean, cold, wet storms can strike any time. Bad weather and lack of preparedness can be a deadly combination. Here’s how you can avoid becoming a Valley statistic.

Rappelling past a knot that links two ropes end-to-end, however, need not puzzle you, nor must you learn this seemingly complicated yet vital bit of ropework the hard way. The following five-step method for passing a knot is easy to master, safe and efficient.

Climb long enough and you’ll have a close encounter ... or several. Of the myriad ways to kill yourself climbing, rappelling is the quickest, but also the easiest to safeguard.

Britney or Christina, Frappuccino or half-caf vanilla latte, Maxim or FHM, trad or sport—our world is full of crucial, life-defining choices. Your sling choice, however, truly is life affecting. Read on to find out why.

Jason Kehl is high. Twenty-five feet up the Grandpa Peabody boulder, the 60-foot monster testpiece in the Buttermilks near Bishop, he has just pimped a sustained, overhanging V10 section, but isn’t out of the woods yet. The seven-move sloper crux is still ahead.

No commitment—not even the one to your SO—is as binding as that of the belay. When you hold the rope, your partner’s life is in your hands. Screw up this marriage and you give new meaning to the vow “till death do us part.”

"I felt something in my ring finger and heard a pop."

Why one little-used technique can make or break your fall. I’ve always viewed trad- or ice-climbing falls as more serious than sport whippers.

How you hold the rope is just one aspect of the belay—no more or less important than vigilance, rope management, how and where you stand, and communication.

So your buddy tells you that he took a Factor 2 over the weekend, eh? That sounds bad. Or is it? What does that even mean? Everything you need to know about falling, but were afraid to ask.