In the Czech Republic, there is amazing climbing on sandstone that isn't really held together well. Climbing protection like nuts or cams can damage the rock and there are very few bolts or "rings" to clip too. It has been a tradition there and is the actual rule, that you can only place textile protection. Tie knots in ropes and webbing and wedge them in like nuts or hexes. But does it actually hold a fall??? Thank you Jenny Fischer for narrating this episode and explaining where and why the rules exist, how it isn't ideal to be whipping on them, and how they can get stuck. OUR TESTS We tested overhands, double overhands, figure 8s and monkey fists wedged in our adjustable crack jib with granite slabs inside. This was in the drop tower and slow pull slacksnap machine to see if we got wildly different results, and the slow pull machine is easier to get a camera to show what's happening inside the crack. DON'T take these numbers as gospel. this was backyard science and the jib was flexing and the load cell app may not have been fast enough since it isn't the full 1280hz like the LineScale3 device itself is. It also really depended how constricted we made the crack. HOW they broke, got stuck or slipped out is way more interesting than the number itself and I encourage you to watch the video to see that. Timestamps will help you skip around. SO WHAT KNOT TO DO - Test Summary 1" webbing tend to not slip as easily and the loop didn't break until 7-10kN. The surface area is pretty good as friction plays a big role, but also probably because we could pinch the jib pretty tight below it. The 10mm knots almost all came out because the tightest the bottom of the crack can be is 10mm but one held 8kn which would hold a typical lead fall. Roll your dice. Paracord isn't strong enough at 3.5kN and only held when a rock was inside the monkey fists which you can't use. 6mm is barley good enough because when it did hold we would get around 6kN. Our slow pull 8mm monkey fist was impressive at 25kN but it slipped in the drop tests. 10% Supports us Buy pro that works! Totems, Aliens, C4s and more are in stock. How KNOT to Test Many people wonder why we do certain things in our test. You can see in the video we started with a 90lb dummy named Decker. We can move him around easy and it's more entertaining to see a dummy than steel weights but as you can see, that didn't work out. We aren't trying to see the force if A, B or C is done, we are trying to find out the breaking strength of each of these tests, so steel weights it was. We only do 2x 75lbs for a 150lb "dummy" because we just need to break the gear and really heavy weights free falling on only 9" of rubber gets complicated fast. When we use a "static" rope on the samples, it is too stretchy, believe it or not, to break most of the stronger gear 8kn and up. We have to go with more static or more weight so we chose a more static item - an industrial sling. It holds up to abrasion well and is plenty strong enough. Most ropes break around 16-20kn in a figure 8 so even if we went with more weight, ropes are quite limited. Load cells have to be FAST if using a STATIC attachment. The pro itself stretches enough that 1280hz, or 1280 readings per second, is probably super fast enough, though we will be testing this with a 10,000hz load cell to find out how short our peak force is soon. The app however is only able to feed at 40hz and the first few samples was only the app's number until we discovered that. Based on the numbers we got, it was super close enough because HOW this stuff broke or slipped was more interesting than the actual number itself. I think it's super helpful to know the flaws in any test because most testing has some flaws in it. If a polished graph is put on instagram or in an article, it is a mess with lipstick on it. We want so badly for a single number to explain everything and that is the problem with even MBS or minimum breaking strength, a number that has all variables removed so sterile that it doesn't even represent reality anymore. Reality is messy and that's ok. Understand your gear holistically and don't lean on 1 number to explain the entire story. The Rules Are Knotty You can see the rules that state you must not use metal protection in the Czech Republic and also on the rocks in Saxon Switzerland. You also can't top rope these climbs as the rope rubbing the rock will damage the rock. Textile-only protection is intended not to damage the rock but if the gear is weighted, AND HOLDS, then it gets stuck. This leaves permanent plastic trash stuck in the rock for a very long time. Bolting everything could be an eye sore and a slippery slope to making more of an impact and more traffic to otherwise routes that wouldn't get climbed, but are bolts really uglier than hanging tat? Climber impact has left groves like this on top of the routes. You can see more worn away spots in this VIDEO. Monkey Fists In an effort to keep this 25 break test episode from getting too long, and that we are not experts in tying monkey fists, here is an ANIMATED KNOT VIDEO but we kept both tails out for a loop. You can tie it around a rock but that isn't street legal for the areas you would use it, you can tie around a smaller monkey fist that is pre-tensioned, or you can just do it with nothing in the middle. Another Option? Soft shackles technically are textiles, but if pretensioned, can get as hard as a rock. Diamond knots can have long tails coming out of the head for easy(er) removal. Button knots are bigger for the stem size. We did not test this with real rock but we did test this in our previous episode, and without friction and enough pressure also deformed and slipped out regardless of the constriction. However it was at 18kN or above which is technically as strong as your climbing rope. Check it out here.

Big Wall Episode #2 - PREPARATION Big Wall Bible Preparation The lightest but most useful thing you can take up a big wall is knowledge. Welcome to a resource that will help you be successful in getting up big rocks. Big walling is a big topic so we broke it into bite-size "pitches" with a video to START each one. The aim is to have lots of videos, photos, and written content in each section, not just of our stuff but your stuff as well. See HowNOT2 contribute your beta below. Our courses are A-Z content in blog format, glued together with an overarching blog we call a textbook. A blog format is easy to read, easy to update, and easy to translate. Be sure to begin at the TEXTBOOK and at the end of each episode we'll point you to the next. I know you are excited to get on the rock but you have a LOT of prep ahead of you in order to live in a vertical world for several days. This is your 2nd NON-SEXY big wall topic but if you get this wrong, you're coming down early. This might not be in a logical order but it's the order in which we pack things. How much water we take determines the hiking strategy which determines the haul bag prep etc. Water Getting the gear to the base Prepping Haul Bags Food Sleeping Pooping Electronics Clothes Toiletries Free Carabiners Knife Spare car stuff Pissing Blood Water The first ascensionists up The Nose had rations of 1 quart/liter per person per day, and apparently weren't in great shape by the time they got to the top. These days we are getting soft and take 3x-4x that! But water is a double edge sword. Take too much, and you are not getting up the rock, and take too little and you're pissing blood at the top. In nice weather, 3L per person per day. Hot is 4L or about a gallon per person per day. Some cold winter projects can be 2L per person per day. At about 2lbs per 2 liters (yes, mixing metric with freedom units is fun, try it), a 2 person x 3-day ascent at 3L rations is 18 liters or 36lbs. A 3-person x 5-day ascent at 4L rations is 60 liters or 120lbs!!! Don't forget you have to hike to the base and hike off the top, but it weighs a lot so only take what you need. If you climb The Nose in under two hours, just take a drink before starting, and you'll be fine. Also consider your meals, if every meal is freeze-dried, you may have to take more water for that. If you do Lurking Fear, El Cap in 2 nights 3 days with 2 people in 70F degrees with freeze-dried meals, 3L is a good ration (18 total liters) plus 2 extra liters for food and the hike down. There are two main methods of transportation. 2-liter bottles or gallon jugs. 2-liter bottles are easier to pack without gaps at the bottom of your haul bag creating a solid base. They are also easier to clove hitch or barrel knot the neck for an attachment point. If you buy 10 bottles, get the generic tonic water for $1 each and it doesn't have syrup at the bottom that takes forever to rinse and wash out forever tasting like coke. Unless you like tonic water, pour it out, cut off the labels so you don't risk littering, and give it a paracord attachment point around the neck. If you want gallons, don't buy the milk jug-looking kind!!! The lids are NOT bomber and can break in your haul bag. Also, like any bottle, cut the labels off these before you go up - don't litter. Gallon jug necks are not prominent enough, especially for size and weight to just paracord under it. The safest way to make it so you can clip them in is to run webbing under the entire thing. Duct taping it in place can be nice because you have duct tape if you need it. Jeremiah's Nalgene he climbs with is also covered in duct tape so it's ready at a moment's notice. Just make sure your attachments are bomber or they could kill someone if you drop them. Humping Your Loads Hiking Strategies Are you a one-load wonder or do you like to do two loads over more time? If you are under a total of 120lbs, just carry 60lbs each up the wall. Above this, you got options. Carrying 60-90lbs each makes you slow and you have to decide if two "lighter" trips to the base are worth it. If you are carrying 100+lbs then you might get away with it if you are just hiking a short wall like the nose. Remember, you have to hike it all back down except for the water, so be careful not to take too much stuff if you do the two-load strategy. 1 Bag: If you do one load and one haul bag, one of you carries the pig (nickname for haul bag), and the other carries the two ropes mountaineer style and all the gear on their harness and chest harness. Without pitons, this could be approximately 45-55lbs. With water, the haul bag could be 60-80lbs. This can be nice if rappelling later to just be managing one haul bag without water, assuming there are no fixed lines, then each person could manage a bag, otherwise the first person down is generally bagless. Multiple Bags: Each person having a haul bag can be nice for hiking or staying organized on the wall. This could be one large and one medium or just two mediums. Or 9 bags if you plan on doing something gnarly or silly. See our Hauling chapter on how to haul multiple bags and Rappel chapter on how to go down with multiple bags. Multiple trips: Now with the permit system, you might as well run a load super early in the morning, come back to get the permit right at 8 am, grab some biscuits and gravy at Degnan's when you pass it, and then run back up with the rest of your shit. Another idea is to hike up with water and all your climbing gear and fix pitches. You can fix all the way to the Sickle Ledge on The Nose with two ropes knocking out 4 pitches. Leave your rack at the high point, your ropes can stay hanging there for 24 HOURS, and leave the stuff to haul at the base. Just don't yard sell like it's your dorm room, keep it tidy, and out of people's way. Since you are probably going to take your haul bag back down empty, take a weightless Ikea bag to leave your items in and put a note on the handle. DON'T LEAVE FOOD, bring that up the day you start. A common strategy on Salathe/Free Rider is for climbers to go up the fixed lines up to the base of the heart, haul their bag(s) up there and come back down. The next day they start the Free Blast which is awful to haul and then meet their bags halfway through the day and keep going with them up to El Cap Tower. Plan this part of the trip well for the best momentum on the launch day of your climb. Wrangling Pigs Haul Bags They don't come out of the bag ready to go, get it? Haul bags come in the mail in a bag... never mind. How will you dock it, where do you plan on storing the loose straps, and do you need a bottle to protect your knot? If your bag is new to you, practice pulling it all apart and putting it back together. Do it in the dark. Get good at it. There is enough detail about this that Chapter 3 is literally dedicated to the topic. Planning the Menu Food Bag your bags. Have every meal pre-bagged so you know your ration and it stays organized. It's also easier to pull out your daily ration before you start climbing for the day so the stuff you don't need can live safe-r near the bottom/middle of the haul bag. Put those bagged bags in another bag for your haul bag - tripled-up grocery bags have bomber handles and you can place your trash in between layers keeping the core compartment clean. Put tape labels on the handles so you don't have to open the bags to see who's stuff or what stuff is inside. Don't bring rigid containers like round apple sauce packaging, but the squeezy baby food type packaging. Don't bring a large trail mix bag! Pre-bag it in zip locks. Freeze some of your bottles of water to make a refrigerator in your haul bag. This can take days to freeze solid but keep in mind it could take that long to melt too. Plan accordingly so you don't have to bail because you are thirsty and then rappel with 80lbs of frozen water. This isn't the time to experiment with new recipes, flavors, or ideas. Take what your body loves! If you are addicted to sugar, then take sugar. Don't go vegan for 4 days if you are a carnivore. You won't feel like eating so take really yummy stuff, some quick and easy, and something to cook. A hot meal is good for the soul. Don't take 8 cliff bars per person per day and think you're clever, believe me. I still can't eat them to this day. Do some math - how many calories do you need/normally eat? Figure on needing a few more calories and pack accordingly. Prep your cooker for hanging. If you have a JET BOIL, holding some webbing on with a 4" hose clamp is the cheap option or you get the HANGING KIT. Don't cook IN the jet boil so you don't have to clean it, bring food you can pour hot water into like most freeze-dried packaging or oatmeal packets. Ryan Jenks' Menu: 1 Oatmeal packet in morning, trail mix+bar+snickers for snack, PB&J (squeeze packets) on smashed bagel or tortilla for lunch. More junk type snacks. Freeze dried dinner, chocolate for dessert. Or you can take ingredients for fresh guacamole and a bbq for filet mignons like we did in this video. Your Name Menu: Submit at ryan@slackline.com Sending Z3+ Sleeping You are going to live in a vertical world so make sure everything can be attached. If you are using a portaledge, set it up on the ground first... A LOT. Can you do it in under 5 minutes WITHOUT moving your feet? Can you do it in the dark without a headlamp? It can help to write WALL and VIEW on the sides so you aren't guessing which is which when you are setting it up. Don't sleep on a portaledge without a pad. There is a LOT of air under you to suck the heat right out of you. A foam mattress you put in your haul bag as a liner is super good enough but an air mattress is plush. Just figure out whatever method you are going to use to attach that air mattress to the cliff when you blow it up. If down gets wet, you are coming down. It does compress better though. If you have great weather you can risk taking a down sleeping bag but synthetic is the safer option. Girth hitch your stuff sack string to your bottom sleeping bag loop so they stay together. A bivy sack can be nice regardless of rain. At night, Lost Arrow Spire Direct has massive wind storms but El Capitan is usually calm (not during the day!). If it's a low chance of rain, the bivy sack could be more convenient than the hassle and weight of a fly. You want good sleep and a pillow can help. If you want to stuff your jacket into your sleeping bag's stuff sack, that could work but a DE-STUFFED airplane pillow stuffed with your jacket is so nice! If you never slept in the vertical world before and a trip to Yosemite/Zion is a special occasion for you, then go do a trial run on real rock where it's legal to camp just 100 feet off the ground. It's a great way to work out the kinks and honestly it's the best part of big walling. Dropping Bombs Pooping and Peeing This video is ironically the most viewed video on the entire channel. The number 1 question people have is how to number 2. It's not rocket science. Lower your pants just right below your junk, because that is where the hole is, and evenly squat staying balanced. Don't try to drop your pants to your ankles or you risk shitting literally in your pants. Don't try to lean backwards on your invisible toilet. Just go to the bathroom like we did in 99.99% of human history until toilets showed up. It lines your plumbing up better that way too. Don't build a poop tube. So bulky. Shit isn't so scary you need a vault for it. Zip lock bags folded over 3 times have an easy to hold rigid top. Use wet wipes, not toilet paper. Trust me. Put 3, make that 6, wet wipes in one of the gallon size zip lock bags, and deposit your (enter joke here) in the other zip lock bag. Put your wet wipes as you use them in poo bag and you wont' even see it anymore. Now for the crux, pushing the air out. Seal it up and put your treasure in the 2nd zip lock bag and cut open one of your water bottles half way, shove it inside and duct tape it shut. Hang that as low as you want below your haul bag assuming your bottle connection is BOMBER. You can use paper bags and then place them single bagged in a mesh bag and hang that (way) below your haul bag so it can all dry out, weighing less. Only do this if the route is overhanging, not popular and no chance of rain. Think about it. Bringing gallon jugs for water can be nice to pee in when you are on a popular area. Don't pee in the stove legs if you are on Dolt Tower. You can smell piss 50 feet away from that ledge. If you bring a gatorade bottle, you can avoid getting out of your warm sleeping bag in the middle of the night to balance precariously on the edge of a portalege to half-awake-pee only to find out you just made a puddle where you have to now lay your head. That is if you are lucky to be hydrated enough to even have that problem. Stay Charged When Unplugging From The World Electronics Unless you are climbing in the far North during July, chances are you will have at least one electronic item with you. Do you have spare batteries for your headlamp? Are they convenient to get to??? 11 out of 10 people recommend you put fresh batteries in your headlamp before starting. 12 out of 10 people recommend bringing a 2nd headlamp. Ideally both headlamps use the same types of batteries. The STORM 450 is rechargeable but can take normal batteries too. Put your headlamp on your helmet and leave it there so you have it when you need it. Solar panels are a hassle and if you are only on the wall for up to 5 days, just bring a BATTERY BANK. Or just turn off your phone if you aren't using it or keep it in airplane mode and skip all that extra crap. It's nice to have in case you have an emergency. Try to unplug for a few days. Ruining Underwear Clothes Bring layers not changes of clothes. A long sleeve thin hooded shirt can really protect you from the sun. Nylon clothes absorbs water quickly but dries slowly, so avoid that. Layers on your leg are a real hassle because of your harness, so sometimes it's just worth over-layering the upper half. Toss your underwear in the garbage after 5 days if they are that bad. Combing Your Teeth Toiletries If you brush your teeth, you won't have to comb them when you get down. Bring a travel size toothpaste and ideally a toothbrush that has a way to keep the part you put in your mouth clean.
Put on deodorant before you leave and hope it lasts until you get off. Style your hair when you get back down to the car before you take your stereotypical El Cap meadow photo. Think about your daily routine, what you can cut out and just take the bare bones - get it? Connecting the Dots Free Carabiners Yes, this gets its own category. If you don't have a big chain of free carabiners, you will be combining entire racks of cams onto just one biner in order to have a way to clip the things you take out of the haul bag. Do you really want your shoes and your food bag and your sleeping bag leash all clipped to the same carabiner at night? You can lose so much momentum shuffling things around just to get a usable carabiner. This is where the tiny light weight carabiners can be handy but CAMP PHOTONS weigh the same and are full size. Unless your shoes are taking whippers, you don't need a locking carabiner for them. PRE-INSTALL a carabiner to each item in your haul bag with the exception of the water at the bottom. Those you are just using 1 at a time or leaving at the bottom. THEN, AFTER DOING THAT, bring a dozen free non lockers and a dozen free lockers. Create a Safe Haven Spare stuff for your car Coming back to your car thirsty, and not having water is awful. Make your car the end of your journey. Have some flip flops to get out of your shoes, a gallon of water to drink or rinse your face off, and spare clothes to feel human. Pro tip: have some plastic bags to put your shoes and clothes in that you take off! Make sure you can get comfortable when you arrive to your car but more importantly, make sure you can get back in it! Have a hide-a-key or spare key that you don't take in case you forgot where you put it in that now clustered haul bag or even lose it. 10% Supports HowNOT2 Get 90% of your big walling gear here. This leads you to a detailed buying guide. HowNOT2 Contribute Please send video, image, or words, that are respectful to other viewpoints and helpful to Big Wall education. Please be kind by delivering something ready to add and tell us where you think it best fits. We'd also like to link to anything you found helpful online. Maintaining the quality of this resource is important so please submit something worthy of 100,000 people seeing it. We reserve the right to not post what you send us. ryan@slackline.com What's Next? BigWalls.com leads to our textbook and was donated by John Middendorf who runs BigWalls.net. This course is free but not free to make. If it really helped you, please consider SUPPORTING US.

Big Wall Episode #1 - LOGISTICS Big Wall Bible Logistics The lightest but most useful thing you can take up a big wall is knowledge. Welcome to a resource that will help you be successful in getting up big rocks. Big walling is a big topic so we broke it into bite-size "pitches" with a video to START each one. The aim is to have lots of videos, photos, and written content in each section, not just of our stuff but your stuff as well. See HowNOT2 contribute your beta below. Our courses are A-Z content in blog format, glued together with an overarching blog we call a textbook. A blog format is easy to read, easy to update, and easy to translate. Be sure to begin at the TEXTBOOK and at the end of each episode we'll point you to the next. The number one thing that can cause you to bail and fail on a big wall is poor planning, getting late starts from difficult Yosemite logistics, bad weather, or bad partners. This is definitely NOT why you are looking at this course but it is 100% the MOST IMPORTANT rudder that will steer your ship. Season and Weather Picking your partner Topos and Routes Big Wall Permits Where to sleep and park Weather Or Not To Climb Seasons Yosemite's best conditions are in the Fall (Early September thru early December) but in the Spring (March thru May) you might get good weather, it's just that the rain can be more unpredictable, especially if planning 2 weeks out. Zion has similar weather but keep in mind you CANNOT climb that sandstone if it recently rained. It will damage the rock because it is so fragile. Apparently, you risk going extinct if you don't like having sex when people are watching. Peregrine Falcons live high on the cliffs to be left alone until these hairless monkeys showed up out of nowhere. Apparently, they are sensitive during nesting season and make babies better when we aren't yelling off belay next to their nests. They win the raddest bird award because they are the fastest animals on earth. They are bouncing back from not existing in Yosemite and Zion to having about a dozen-ish nesting pairs. Climbers have helped the park monitor and protect this species and we need you to do the same. RESPECT PEREGRINE CLOSURES. This typically starts in March and can vary when it ends, but typically it's mid-July. About 20% of Yosemite is off limits and 80% of Zion's climbing routes are closed, though a few areas remain open, most notably the Temple of Sinawava in the upper canyon. YOSEMITE CLOSURE STATUS ZION CLOSURE STATUS Weather Let us interpret the forecast for you. A 10% chance of rain means 100% chance small droplets are coming. A 90% chance means you will be canyoning on your wall. Choose your timing wisely. If weather is sporadic and you have time, you can plan on fixing a few pitches and humping loads to the base so when a 2-3 day patch of good weather happens, you can have momentum and stoke. After sitting out 5 days of rain in the Yosemite Lodge's cafeteria, you'll have big wall blue balls and it makes getting on El Cap that much better. Take heat seriously. If your wall is in the sun long enough on a hot day, you can't drink water faster than you lose it. 100F in the valley can feel like 200F on the wall. You can fix pitches and hump loads at night or super super early but don't be on the wall when it's hot. REAL FORECAST EXAMPLE FROM 9/6/2022 - 9/9/2022: Yosemite 209-372-0200 press 1, press 2 NOAA - National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - Yosemite Valley Mountain-Forecast.com - Pick specific mountains for specific weather Zion 801-772-3256 NOAA - National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration-Zion NP Mountain-Forecast.com - Pick specific mountains for specific weather Anywhere Garmin Inreach Walkie Talkie - National Weather Station Mode Belaytionships? Finding and choosing a climbing partner. Are you monogamous in your belaytionships or do you like hooking up El Capitan with just anyone? The saying "who you do something with is more important than what you do" is also true for big walls. You can have a grand ol' time even if you don't get to the top with the right person and a terrible time while sending it. However, you don't want to just pick your favorite person. They have to be super safe enough. Otherwise you could get a STD... Severely Timely Descent (that's the best we could come up with). Where to find a partner Camp 4 Bulletin Board (Yosemite) El Cap Meadow Bridge (Yosemite) Big Wall forums on Facebook Mountain Project Find a Partner Near and around big walls or where big wallers camp. Things to look for in a partner A resume: if they've done two multi-pitches and you've done 2 walls, don't jump on anything too serious with them. You want someone who matches or compliments your resume. Sharing stories of rad epics can usually tell you what someone is capable of, or help you learn how many pathological liars are out there. Low sugar competency: can they do everything safely when they are bonking? Are they bipolar when they haven't eaten? Can they put a rope in a grigri correctly or even do a complex anchor building with no sleep for 36 hours? Unless you are really good at logistics and live in a unicorn wonderland, you and this potential partner will get very very tired climbing a wall and you want to make sure they can still function. Don't trust anyone fully you just met. At the bare minimum, hike up an 80lb load at 4 am and fix two pitches before getting your permit later that morning to find out if you want to do the rest of the climb with them. Some people can sound pretty good and have all the gear, but then you watch them put a rope in a grigri and you start getting more red flags than a bull in a pen. Ideally, you go climb a few easy days with them and find out if you are down to go risk your life and a precious week off work with who met. Don't Pick The Nose Topos and Maps For the love of the Captain, please don't pick The Nose as your first route. If you think you are that amazing, go smash out a climb on Washington Column in a day FIRST, and then the next day go for the Nose. The first 6 pitches wander 1000ft sideways making hauling and following more complex. This slows the newbs down substantially and gets in everyone's way. Mountain Grades with Yosemite Examples Grade 1 - Your grandma could join you Swan Slab Grade 2 - Bring a snack Manure Pile Buttress Grade 3 - Bring a lunch and water East Ledges Grade 4 - Bring lunch and dinner because your coming down hungry and tired Sentinel Rock Grade 5 - Unless you're something special, bring a sleeping bag Normal people spend 1 night on the wall like Washington Column, Leaning Tower, or Half Dome, then it qualifies. More and more people do this in a day now. Grade 6 - Plan on calling in sick on Monday Most of El Capitan qualified until some guy decided to downgrade it to a boulder by just taking a chalk bag and shoes. Pretty much this includes Reticient to Lurking Fear as it takes multi days for most people to climb either the easiest or hardest routes on El Cap. Grade 7 - See you in a month, hope you don't get hurt There is no grade 7 in Yosemite. The reason is that you can see the pizza shop from the wall and your cell phone works to call search and rescue. You need a 10-day approach in Pakistan, Baffin Island, or Patagonia and spend 10-30 days on the wall before you get to claim this. Grade 8 - People who think their grade 7 was too hard There is no 8 Climbing Ratings A = Hammer Aid and C = Clean Aid so follow along and try not to get lost here. A0 = Bolt Ladder! Bolts took hammers but they are bomber. There is no C0 C1 = Every piece you place can take a whipper. With new gear technology, there is no need to use a hammer when it's this easy so there is now no A1. C2 = You might have to hook once or twice or place something that may not hold you. Again, not hard enough to justify a hammer if you've purchased any gear in the last 30 years so there is no A2. C3 = You're hooking and clipping some gnar shit. To do something pretty damn hard without smashing in the tiny gear with a hammer can feel tougher than an A3 A3 = Thin stuff that probably won't hold a fall but will most likely hold you, at least the hammer makes you feel that way. You might whip a few times but whatever. A4 = Longer sections of thin shitty placements. To properly qualify, you have to be over a ledge or something where you can break at least a leg if you blow a piece and unzip the route. C4 technically exists but a hammer usually shows up eventually so it's not officially getting counted here. A5 = Nothing is good and neither is your anchor. Some debate that if a team hasn't died from everything ripping out then it's just a A4+. A6 = You already died and think you are still climbing. There is no A6. If they put a free climbing grade on there, that means that is the minimum you have to climb unless they use the word "or". So The Nose is Grade VI 5.8 C2 or 5.14a. In English, plan on spending 2-4 nights on the wall, you better be GOOD at 5.8s and plan on clipping some thin stuff in the great roof; OR just cruise at 5.14a all the way up before dinner. If they add a + or an F labeled next to the difficulty of the pitch, like C2F+, this means assuming all the hard spots already have fixed gear but half the wires are frayed and you'll be scared shitless while you aid it. The Starter Pack YOSEMITE: In Erik Sloan's "Yosemite Bigwalls Ultimate Guide", he broke down the routes by beginner shorter and beginner longer. Then intermediate, advanced and expert of short and long routes as well. It is quite common for people to start at the easiest of all walls, South Face of Washington's Column at Grade V 5.8 C1. Just make sure you see Episode 13 to avoid bailing. Haul to pitch 3, fix one or two pitches and camp at dinner ledge. Blast to the top in the morning and rap back down to the ledge. Don't haul to the top and hike off! Stoke tip: If you want to make it worth hiking you shit up there and still have enough water, do Skull Queen. Fix one pitch of it after dinner and knock it out the next day. Another common one is West Face of Leaning Tower at Grade V 5.7 A2/C3. Its only challenge is that it is 110 degrees overhanging at the beginning. Don't let that rating scare you, any hard aid is fixed and the 5th pitch might require one hook if you have offset aliens and totems. See my BUYING GUIDE for the ultimate big wall gear. You have a plush ledge at pitch 4 and at the top so it's easy peasy. As you walk to the start of the route, look up at Roulette and see the endless A4 hooking first pitch that Sheridan did called "Pancake Potential" in this VIDEO . Now for something taller, Lurking Fear El Capitan is a Grade VI 5.6 C2+. It's 2000ft tall and you are bringing a portaledge. It's up the west side (left side) and takes an hour and half to hike up a heavy load. This is where you can decide to do two trips and on your first one, fix two pitches. I know you'll be near the top after pitch 17, but 10 out of 10, you should sleep in that cave bivy. If you are up there too early, just fix your two ropes to the top and come back down. Thanksgiving ledge is just dope! You won't remember in 5 years what you did the next day, but you remember every night on every wall. If you made it in one piece on those routes, feel free to climb The Nose, or just avoid the crowds and go climb one of the other hundreds of options! ZION: Prodigal Son, Moonlight Buttress and Organism is rumored to be the starter pack here but if someone who has spent a lot of time there wants to chime in, HMU ryan@slackline.com Reading Between The Lines You don't get credit for RE-establishing a route so you might as well take the map. At the beginning of every topo, it shows you how to interpret their chicken scratch so take the time to read the details. Just know "OK Bivy for 2" means you're probably sliding out of your sleeping bag all night or have most of your legs hanging off the cliff. Jeremiah shows you how to read a topo by going over The Nose in "Big Walls The Ultimate Guide" Don't just take photos with your phones. Make physical copies! Put them in sandwhich size zip lock bags and fold them tall ways so you don't have to open the bag until end of each day, but instead just flip it over to see that day's quota. Keep one with each person and several spare in the haul bag. Take the descent as serious as the climb. DON'T FORGET THE EAST LEDGES DESCENT TOPO IF YOU CLIMB EL CAP. I'm sure you are stoked to get down but if you've never done east ledges before, don't do it in the dark. Your best bet is to wait till morning to get down. Leaning Tower's gully that you rappel has a lot of loose shit and is pretty tricky at night as well. Hiking off the top of Washington Column can suck with a pig (haul bag) so sometimes it works out better if you don't haul the final day and rap down. Half dome is an obvious trail back to the valley. Big Wall Permits Suck But we have to evolve with a growing sport Do you know who probably hates the permit system more than you? The park! No one likes it but as the sport grows, something needs to be done to manage the impact. For Yosemite, it's pretty easy to fill out ONLINE and it's free, the problem is you have to pick it up during 8am-5pm and they are closed for lunch. Not a problem if you are there for two weeks, but weekend warriors are going to have some glitches. Oct 31st - April 29th is self registered which really helps the timing problem. What's nice about the Yosemite permit, is it gets you access through the park gates during peak hours WITHOUT needing a reservation. Anyone can enter the park without a reservation slot before 6am or after 4pm during peak season, May 20th-September 30th. Keep the permit with you, not in your car. Leaving a note in your car is not required but can be helpful in case there was a problem with you or your car. You can park in El Cap Meadow or Curry or the backpacker parking lot as they all have bear boxes for you to keep your food that you don't take. Keep our bears safe and keep food out of your cars but also keep our bear boxes from being a shit show and date your food! In Yosemite, this is still in its pilot program and new rules will emerge in 2023. We will update this when that happens. If you have helpful permit information, email it to ryan@slackline.com. Sleeping Around Park Rules Figuring out how to stay in Yosemite sucks, good luck! Just kidding... sort of. Camp 4 is on a lottery system and you might as well buy a lottery ticket with it because you need to be that lucky to win either one. Backpacker's campground is quite inconveniently located a very long ways from your car in case you plan on packing everything up before heading up your wall. If you know your plans 5 months right now and know how to write scripts to machine gun your submissions right as they open their reservation portal online, this is an option for you. The lodge only costs one kidney per night. AirBnb in Yosemite West is 45 minutes outside the park. Sleeping in your van is going to get you kicked out of the park and mess up access for everyone. No, you can't sleep at the base of the walls except for Half Dome. If Yosemite wasn't strict with the rules, that place would look like a homeless camp in no time, but it is harder to get around on the ground there than on the cliffs. This book only covers easy stuff like big walling, not complicated stuff like operating within the park. 10% Supports HowNOT2 Most of what you need for Big Walling can help support us if you buy from here. HowNOT2 Contribute Please send video, image, or words, that are respectful to other viewpoints and helpful to Big Wall education. Please be kind by delivering something ready to add and tell us where you think it best fits. We'd also like to link to anything you found helpful online. Maintaining the quality of this resource is important so please submit something worthy of 100,000 people seeing it. We reserve the right to not post what you send us. ryan@slackline.com What's Next? Episode 2 will be live 9/14/2022. Patrons have early access BigWalls.com leads to our textbook and was donated by John Middendorf who runs BigWalls.net. This course is free but not free to make. If it really helped you, please consider SUPPORTING US.

Bobby and John broke some cave anchors. They tested the Climbing Technology's Soft Anchors and also the homemade ones by Andrzej Rudkowski. CT's dyneema broke at 14kn without affecting the circle anchor. They rethreaded it with 4mm Marlow max sk99 and the dyneema broke at 16kn and in tension broke at 11kn. The circle was mostly unaffected. Soft Shackle homemade anchor broke the metal round stock at 18kn, then the soft shackle at 23kn and then the bolt itself at 25kn but when pulled in tension, the soft shackle destroys the circle at 17kn. We also tested some random clown hangers I had laying around. They get installed with the rope around the actual bolt stud but are shaped to prevent sharp edges on the rope. Since there is very little pressure on the hanger itself the broke the ropes first and at super good enough forces. I'm quite impressed how strong they are and would totally rappel on them. However, I don't think they are available anymore. Behind the Scenes I had these homemade soft shackle cave anchors laying around for well over a year, maybe even two. I don't just make episodes (anymore) out of obligation. It has to be interesting, have some story, and be worth watching to enough people. What is nice about some obscure things like lightweight cave anchors is we were able to get Climbing Technology's version and clown hangers and even got John, who actually uses them, to talk about them and their uses so this turned out to be a "full value" episode on the topic.

We tested 7 qualities of Dyneema. Dyneema is Ultra-High-Molecular-Weight-Poly-Ethylene or strong plastic for short, and it's 15x stronger than steel BASED ON WEIGHT but can float on water. It's slippery, very static and has a low melting point. Tying knots in it can reduce its strength over 70% if the knot even holds as they more often just slip. However, you can tie knots in it to create a head for a noose to go over to make a soft connecter that can be stronger than some metal connectors. Dyneema is a thread that comes from DSM in the Netherlands and Samson, and Marlow are some of the companies that make 12 braid ropes out of it. It comes in all sorts of qualities. It's labeled "SK" for the names of the two people who invented the modern version, Paul Smith and Rob Kirschbaum. Back in the 60s, SK60 was what was available, but DSM improved it, and in 1996, SK75 came out and started to become more mainstream. In 2003, SK78 was developed. It wasn't stronger but had 3x less creep and was more durable. Then in 2013, they figured out yet another way to make it, so it had all the SK78 properties but was "20% stronger". But according to the Average Breaking Strength on SK78 and SK99, it's only like 14%. THEN they figured out how to make it even better and with biomass, so it's more eco-friendly, has all the minimal creep and durability but is about 2x as strong. You can see the bio fuel promo from DSM in this VIDEO. Read about the story of Dyneema at The Dyneema Project This was a very interesting ARTICLE about Dyneema This is who ACTUALLY discovered it University of Groningen We tested name brand and "synthetic rope" off brand and we got some crazy results. The name brand stuff didn't break as high as I thought and the off brand broke higher than I thought. HOWEVER, as seen in the video, John tested the diameters and they ranged from smaller than 4.8mm to barely fitting in a 6.0mm hole. So the eBay and Amazon stuff is way bigger than the rest of them, so I'd expect them to break higher. Making your purchase based on strength is similar to buying a car strictly based on top speed of a car you are only ever driving in speed limit zones. The brand name stuff lasts longer, like way longer. Also, in these videos below you can see that when chineema is tied in a soft shackle, it breaks 30% lower than the rest of the soft shackles, even though the eye to eye was stronger relatively to the brand name stuff. Here are our two of our other Dyneema / HMPE videos Our Results 10% supports us They sell Samson SK75 & Marlow SK78 & SK99 Dyneema Samson Amsteel Blue Sk75 - https://tinyurl.com/mr3zvsa6 Marlow's SK78 - https://tinyurl.com/mufez42t Marlow's D12 MAX 99 - https://tinyurl.com/y64emcwh Behind The Scenes I've wanted to do this test for YEARS but it's a lot of work to prep all these tests and we've had other fish to fry. I did a lot of dyneema testing when I was strictly making slacklining content but it's fun to revisit the topic with more use cases in mind. If you can't tell, the last part of the diameter tests in the video was added on the night before publishing since John sent me a few of the videos but not all because he couldn't get them all to fit. I told him that was more interesting that if they did. So before he left for Turkey for another cave exploration project, he shot all that stuff and I re-rendered the whole thing and re-time-stamped it because I thought 6mm diameters were extremely relevant even though it's very confusing why they are bigger. How is everyone using a different measuring stick?!?! After Posting Thoughts This was a great PDF about different qualities of HMPE. If you have other great thoughts, I can add them here. Hit me up at ryan@slackline.com Next Video: Are tapering splices that important in Dyneema / HMPE?