learning to climb cracks

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Tom

Big Wall climber

San Luis Obispo CA

Jul 21, 2007 - 11:39pm PT

Way back when, on my best day, I could lead easy 5.10 cracks, so my advice is suspect, at best.

Taping up is kinda cool, especially when the sweat kills the adhesive, and you can pull off the offwidth mitts and use them the next day. Sorta like a custom-fit glove. You can tape the fingers and discard that, but keep the fist/OW part for later.

Thumb-down for a typical fingerlock seems the way to go.

Campus-boarding on the door frame trim in your house (pull-ups on 1/2" wide wooden ledges) seems to be a cheap/easy way to find out if your forearms are in shape.

Get some Altia high-tops if you are going to climb wide cracks. You'll appreciate the protection of the maleoli.

Now, that's a five dollar word you don't see very often. . . ..

Todd Gordon

Trad climber

Joshua Tree, Cal

Jul 22, 2007 - 12:01pm PT

Australia (ACT maybe?)

Todd Gordon

Trad climber

Joshua Tree, Cal

Jul 22, 2007 - 12:07pm PT

Boney Fingers. Whitney Portal, Ca.

Todd Gordon

Trad climber

Joshua Tree, Cal

Jul 22, 2007 - 12:12pm PT

Australia. This crack climb (5.10d) was on-sight free-soloed by Tobin Sorenson; at the time, it was one of Australia's hardest crack climbs. (That's the story I heard anyways;....anyone else heard different?),,,...

Todd Gordon

Trad climber

Joshua Tree, Cal

Jul 23, 2007 - 09:20pm PT

Todd Gordon

Trad climber

Joshua Tree, Cal

Jul 23, 2007 - 10:02pm PT

Bony Fingers

Todd Gordon

Trad climber

Joshua Tree, Cal

Feb 5, 2008 - 02:10am PT

Hand Slams. Blue Mountains, Australia.

Karl Baba

Trad climber

Yosemite, Ca

Feb 5, 2008 - 02:18am PT

Here's something I posted a long time ago on Rc.Com. Hope it helps

I frequently teach or climb with folks who want to focus on crack climbing, Here are some of my observations:

1. The majority of beginning crack climbers don't "really" have a clear grasp of the mechanics of a hand jam. This is hard to convey in words, and needs practice until you "get it" but...the main hand muscle for hand jamming is the fleshy area at the base of the thumb. For a thumbs up jam, this fleshy base of the thumb flexes and applies pressure against the back of the hand, particularly against an area on the bone just less than an inch below the index finger's third knuckle. The fingers play no role in most hand jams and you should be able to hang all your weight on a bomber hand jam and still wiggle all four fingers.

2. It can't be overemphasized that the arms are mainly to keep you from falling backwards. It helps to keep your arms straight when possible or locked off (when placing pro or reaching up for the next jam)

3. Folks complain about foot pain but it hurts feet less for feet to be clamped into the crack front to back rather than side to side. Get used to standing on your feet with your ankle twisted. I'm used to it but it might help to try walking around bowlegged on the sides of your feet. Just like you can stand on a dime edge, you can stand on a jam that merely consists of the end of your big toe twisted into a pin scar, particularly if you hold your body in such a way that pastes the toe into the crack.

4. Hold your body in such a way that your weight stays over your feet. This might involve creative body position.

5. Some cracks suggest that you keep one foot in the crack while the other smears the face while you quickly hike the crack foot up to the next jam. Sometimes you keep both feet in the crack and leapfrog one foot over the other. Sometimes it is less awkward to shuffle the feet up the crack, with one foot staying low and the other high. The same goes for the hand jams, it could be one hand over the other, or one staying low and the other high.

6. Choose the jam that feels most solid. Thumbs up is preferable to thumbs down since those jams are most solid when you bring them down to chest level or lower.

7. For finger jams, try to have the constriction bind on the area between the knuckles not on them. The strongest finger jam stacks the middle finger over the index finger with the arm/elbow oriented straight down, not pulling to the side.

8. It's a good idea to place your hand jam so you don't have to move it while your using it.

9. When it gets too big for bomber hands, use "cupped hands" by rotating the thumb further from the index finger, if wider go to fists, if wider, complain, then pull on the edge of the crack with one hand while you press on the far edge of the crack with the bone of the forearm of the other.

10. When it gets too small for bomber hands, first try to get away with thin hands, thinner? ..look for constrictions in the crack and wrap your index and middle fingers around the constriction from the top and thumb up around the constriction from the bottom. This is called a ring jam. It's hard to hold your whole weight on this kind of jam so pay attention to standing on you feet. Softer shoes, like slippers, work better in thin hand and finger cracks than Kaukulaters, Aces, or other stiff shoes.

11. When the crack gets too wide for bomber feet. cam one side your foot against one side of the crack while the other side of your shoe presses on the other side. As it gets wider, move towards Heel/toe jamming.

12. I hate tape because it's hard to keep it from constricting the muscles used in jamming. You wind up wasting power fighting the tape. Tape gloves are usually less offensive. A client gave me a pair of hand jammies (thanks) which I find useful for walls and rough fist cracks, but in general, it's way easier for me to climb with naked hands, so it's hard to consider tape or jammies to be cheating.

13. If you want to learn crack climbing, stop resorting to standing on face holds and/or liebacking. These crutches just hold you back and will only take you so far.
Peace

Karl

+++++++++++++++++++
This wide crack post, from Petsfed, was well done. I’m pasting it in to complete the beta:

Off-widths require a vaguely similar technique. If you try to hang off just your arms, you will make it about 12 feet before pumping out, no matter how strong you are.

The first thing to remember is that you have to use you appendages like tube chocks. That is, try to put your weight soley on your bones. Arm bars, knee bars and heel & toe jams are good examples of this. If you can put your hand low and your elbow high and holds, its bombproof. More often than not though, that's squeeze chimney territory.

If it truly is an off-width climb, you have several options. If you can lie your back flat against one face of the crack, you'll have to use the chicken wing, or reversed chicken wing. I can never keep the two separate so here's a brief description of both. Put your thumb in your armpit. Now imagine cramming your elbow to your shoulder into a crack then straightening your arm until you have a jam. There's one. Now point your arm straight out from you. Imagine bending your arm until you get a solid jam from that. That can and will work in some situations. Use your other arm to push or pull (whichever works) on the side of the crack, or use any face holds in the area.

For smaller offwidths, you have to start stacking body parts. Handstacks are obvious. Basically hand and fist jams as depicted above, but as opposed to jamming between two opposing faces of rock, each hand is touching only one face (presumably the opposite face from what the other is touching) and jamming between the rock and the other hand. Sounds scary huh? You can also hand-forearm stack, hand-torso stack, and my personal favorite, hand-head stack.

This begs the question though, how do you move your hands without falling out? If its narrow enough, you can simply use foot jams and stand up while barely touching the crack as you move your hands up. That's difficult. What works better is to jam your knees in and then flex the surrounding muscles. With both knees in, you remove your hands entirely, place pro perhaps, then reset your hand stack higher. You don't fall because you have mega-ripped abs . The entire process (hand stack, knee jam) is called levitation. In larger offwidths however, levitation simply doesn't work. You must use a heel and toe with one foot and flag with the other. Sometimes the crack is too big for that. Then you use a knee and heel, or better still a knee and toe. In such a situation, there is no way to look truly graceful. Indeed, you can only pick out a skilled off-width climber by the sheer lack of profanity. Alas, I sound like a sailor when I climb off-widths.

Resting in an off-width is an exercise in creativity. Arm bars work well as do knee bars. If you're skinny or nearly in a squeeze chimney, you can place an arm across your chest and breathe in. My god, you're resting! If possible, swap out hand stacks for arm stacks. The idea is to get you muscled relaxed without falling. Of course, in an off-width or squeeze chimney, falling is often more akin to a horrifically obese person going through a child's tube slide lined with sand paper. You don't free fall per se , you simply slide.

Knee pads are recommended, but only thin ones. My girlfriend gets bruises covering her entire knee after off-widthing such that she cannot wear shorts for several weeks (from pain and from the sheer nausea that those around her get from looking at said bruises).