Aid climbing is a style of climbing in which fixed or placed protection is used to make upward progress. UserStan Shebs for a timetable --> Climbing is the activity of using one's hands and feet (or To make Climbing as safe as possible most climbers use protection to prevent injury to themselves and others In the Yosemite Decimal System used in the US, it is sometimes called "6th class" climbing. The Yosemite Decimal System is a numerical system for rating the difficulty of walks hikes and climbs primarily used for Mountaineering in the United States and
The term contrasts with free climbing in which no artificial aids are used to make progress. Free climbing is a type of Rock climbing, in which the climber uses no artificial aids to make upwards progress In aid climbing, the climber ascends by hanging on, and climbing on, his or her equipment; in free climbing the climber ascends by holding onto, and stepping on, natural features of the rock, using rope and equipment only to catch them in case of a fall, and to hang on at belay stations. Free climbing is a type of Rock climbing, in which the climber uses no artificial aids to make upwards progress Belaying is also a Nautical term describing the act of making a line fast to a cleat, pin or other fixed object In general, aid climbing places less emphasis on athletic fitness and physical strength but more on technical skill, though the physical aspects of hard aid climbing should not be underestimated. Aid techniques are most often utilized on extremely steep and long routes, demanding great endurance and stamina, both physical and mental.
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Technique
In a typical ascent with aid the climber places pieces of equipment ("protection") in cracks or other natural features of the rock, then clips an aider (a ladder-like device, also called stirrup or étrier) to the protection, stands up on the aider, and repeats the process. Just as in free climbing, the usual technique involves two climbers, a leader and a belayer. The leader is connected by a rope to the belayer, who remains at one spot (the "belay station") while the leader moves up. As the leader advances, the rope is let out by the belayer, and clipped by the leader into the pieces of protection as they are placed. If the leader falls, the belayer locks off the rope and, assuming the protection doesn't rip out, catches the leader's fall on the rope. When the leader, moving up, reaches the end of the rope, or a convenient stopping point, he or she builds an anchor, hangs on it, and fixes the rope to it. This then becomes the next belay station. The belayer then ascends the fixed rope using mechanical ascenders, retrieving the protection that was placed by the leader. Meanwhile, the leader sets up a hauling system and, using another rope brought up for that purpose, hauls up a bag (the "haul bag" or "pig") containing the climbers' food, water, hammocks or "Porta-ledge", sleeping bags, and so on. A portaledge is a deployable hanging Tent system designed for rock climbers who spend multiple days and nights on a big wall climb Many variations on this basic technique are possible, including solo aid climbing and climbing with a team of three.
Until the 1940s the only protection was the piton, driven into a crack in the rock with a hammer. The 1940s decade ran from 1940 to 1949 Events and trends The 1940s was a period between the radical 1930s and the conservative 1950s which also leads the period to be This article is about the rock climbing tool There is a pair of mountains known as the Piton Mountains. Today, aid climbing uses a considerably larger array of hardware than the pitons used by the first climbers although the primary technique of ascension has not much evolved. The typical gear of an aid climber includes pitons, hooks, copperheads, nuts, camming devices, ascenders, hauling pulleys, aiders, daisy chains and wall hammers. For other uses of the word see Copperhead In Rock climbing, a copperhead is a small nut made of a soft metal originally Copper An ascender is a mechanical device used for ascending on a rope The invention of camming devices or "friends" and other non-damaging rock gear has resulted in the practice of clean aid, where nothing is hammered, a great bonus for popular routes which could be disfigured from continual hammering. A spring-loaded camming device (also SLCD, cam or friend) is a piece of Rock climbing or Mountaineering protection Clean climbing is a style of Rock climbing that avoids damage to the rock by eschewing the drilling of bolts and the hammering of Pitons The style became
The hardest aid routes are poorly protected and the climber must make long sequences of moves using hooks or tenuous placements. On these routes, a climber may have to commit to moving up onto the most marginal of placements. For example, if a copperhead is pounded into a shallow crease in a rock, and if it rips, the climber is in for a wild ride, as a whole string of tenuous pieces rip out one by one.
History
Until the 1960s or so, aid climbing was normal practice in most climbing areas. The 1960s decade refers to the years from the beginning of 1960 to the end of 1969 But as improvements in technique and equipment meant that many aid routes could be climbed free, some influential climbers began to criticise the use of aid as being against the spirit of mountaineering. Reinhold Messner wrote, "Rock faces are no longer overcome by climbing skill, but are humbled, pitch by pitch, by methodical manual labour … Who has polluted the pure spring of mountaineering?" (from "The Murder of the Impossible"). Reinhold Messner (born September 17 1944) is a Mountaineer and Explorer from the Province of Bolzano-Bozen in Italy
Free climbing is now the mainstream of climbing. But aid climbers have answered the criticism of Messner and others by climbing routes where the absence of holds or features in the rock make free climbing impossible, and by eschewing purely mechanical techniques (such as repetitively drilling bolts). In Climbing, a bolt is a permanent anchor fixed into a hole drilled in the rock usually consisting of a glued in or Expansion bolt.
Today, many routes which were originally done using aid are being climbed free by a new generation of climbers with immense skill, physical ability, and significantly advanced equipment including modern ropes, sticky rubber shoes, and modern camming devices. Ironically, some of the techniques used to achieve free ascents of aid routes, for example placing extra bolts for protection (retro-bolting), are now sometimes thought to have "polluted the pure spring of mountaineering" by destroying the route as it was climbed by the first ascenionists. Within the Rock climbing community retro-bolting is the addition of new bolts to an existing climb The solution is often a compromise in which an absolute minimum of bolts is added to allow safe protection for free climbers, while not totally destroying the challenge of the route as an aid climb. However, as with most compromises, this is not a solution that satisfies everyone.
Grading
The grading scale incorporates difficulty of placing protection and the danger associated with falling. The original scale was a closed gradation scale from A0-A5, modern aid climbers have adopted "new wave" grading which compresses the scale but still uses A0-A5. A parallel scale of C0-C5 has been used to describe routes which can be climbed clean. Clean climbing is a style of Rock climbing that avoids damage to the rock by eschewing the drilling of bolts and the hammering of Pitons The style became [1] Clean in this context refers to routes that be completed without a hammer and the associated pitons even if the route still uses previously installed expansion bolts.
- A0 Pulling on solid fixed gear.
- A1 Easy aid, no risk of any piece of protection pulling out. Safe falls.
- A2 Moderate aid. Short sections of tenuous placements above good protection.
- A2+
- A3 Hard aid. Involves many tenuous placements in a row.
- A3+
- A4 Runout, complex and time consuming. Many body weight placements.
- A4+
- A5 Serious, hard aid with huge falls and possibly lethal results. No bolts or rivets.
Literature
Long, John and John Middendorf, Big Walls, Chockstone Press, Evergreen, Colorado, 1994. For other persons of this name see John Long. John Long (born 1953) is an American Rock climber and author John Middendorf (born 1959 in New York City) is a big wall Rock climber, who achieved world-wide recognition in the rock climbing world when he climbed ISBN 0-934641-63-3
Videos (and related materials) demonstrating fixed-line ascending using mechanical ascenders.
Dictionary
aid climbing
-noun
- a type of rock climbing characterized by using equipment to make upward progress, as opposed to using the equipment solely for safety or for belays.
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