Big Wall Hauling Big Wall Bible Hauling 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. Hauling can be a nightmare, or just a chore depending how you do it and if you stay organized. Keep it simple applies here as well. Jumping straight to a 2:1 or worse a 3:1 (which needs a redirect) may not give you much advantage but add 2x or 3x the amount of work to get the bag up. Hauling is also an indicator that your partner rope is fixed and ready to ascend. It's essential to haul and dock the bags on the side of the anchor the bag is GOING, not coming from. Access to your stuff is easier if you dock the bag as high as you can instead of it hanging 15 feet below you. Get Some Traxion Protraxion is the big brother of the micro traxion. It's larger pulley makes hauling way more efficient and if you are taking more than 100lbs in a haul bag, the slightly heavier pulley is worth it's weight. You can also open and close it to install the rope without unclipping it and having it free solo while you do that. Get High You can never haul the bag higher than you clip your protraxion so get it as high as possible. If your bag is docked too low, it's a pain in the ass to get anything out of it or get your rope unstuck when it slips behind it or even getting to sit on it to relieve your hips from sitting in your harness. You do NOT need to equalize two bomber bolts to haul. You can haul off a single bolt if that bolt is integrated into your anchor system. It's still redundant at that point and yes you may go for a ride if it blows but a good bolt is a 10:1 safety ratio above the load you are putting on it. Now if you are hauling 800lbs up with two counter weights and a 3:1, you might rethink how you do this but even those who do this, haul in the load in 2, 3 or even 4 separate loads. Clipping the bolt hanger directly does orientate the pulley the way you want but you already have a carabiner in the hanger for your anchor and it just won't sit right. We did test this a little in this EPISODE. Another downside to clipping a second biner to the hanger, especially something that will be quite heavy, is it smashes the carabiner under it really restricting access to it, and that is where you will be docking the bag later. If you clip the HMS Pear Locker that's already in the hanger, it does not orientate your protraxion so the rope is coming out towards you, but to the side. To solve this, yes, you need another carabiner but now you have a lot of ways to stay organized. One trick is to have a quickdraw with Lockers and you can clip the quickdraw on the anchor HMS biner, clip the protraxion to that, and then your "backup" quickdraw is already built in. You lose two carabiners worth of height clipping like this but it makes staying organized so much easier. Get Connected After you pull up slack and keep it organized, you can't just grab the rope and pull down with your hands. You can connect your belay loop to a grigri or microtraxion which requires you to pull the tail up each time while you stand back up, or you can use an ascender which requires you to keep the tab open when you stand back up since you may not have the weight of the rope allowing you to slide it up automatically. Get Pumped Sometimes, you can just attach your aider to an ascender, put it on the pull strand and just foot pump the bag up. Dig your toes into the rock facing down and your heel up, and then use that leverage to drop your heel. It only pulls the bag up 4-6" but you can repeat this with minimal energy exerted. See Ryan Sheridan foot pump a bag most people would have used a 2:1 on in this EPISODE. Get It Up - On Your Own MOST of the time you can just haul a bag, especially up to your weight, with a 1:1 and by yourself. I'm 160lbs and can do 200lbs with any of these methods. Push against the wall with both hands with just your knees against the wall. Though you can do this with your feet, it makes standing back up take longer and you have to do this 100x so just get 12" sucked through the pulley and be happy with that. If that is too hard grab the loaded haul strand and pull up and towards you while you sit as I joke is a "Ryan to 1" when I do it. Get Dead Weight Friends Honestly, do anything to avoid a 2:1 on a wall. Have your partner transfer to the haul line loose end, the side you are trying to pull down and bam, your bag is that much lighter. You can foot pump that 200lb+ bag up now in a few minutes. Just make sure that the pulley is backed up if your friend is on the other end. Get Mechanical (dis)Advantage Friction and stretch kills the "advantage" you think you'd get and then you have to haul 2x or 3x more to get your bag up. WHEN you go practice hauling, switch to a 2:1 or a 3:1 with a redirect and demystify the romance of an "easier haul". So don't do this, but this is how you do it. 2:1 Connecting independent pulley system makes it "easier" to haul a heavy load. You will have to reset 2x as much as a 1:1 and pull the tail through the protraxion while pushing the ascender on the load strand down which are extra energy sucking steps, all for a 1.5 to 1 at the most. 3:1 This Z drags the haul rope itself through a pulley connected to a downward facing ascender on the load strand, pulling up on that strand gives you a theoretical 3:1 advantage but it's more like a 2:1 actual advantage in the best case scenario. Pulling up sucks though and so it has to be redirected down and if you just a carabiner then you reduce the actual advantage to about 1.2 which means you are wasting your time because you have to do 3x more hauling and getting almost nothing out of it. See Rope Access Channel's math explanation EPISODE why Z drags with carabiner redirects can kill efficiency. There is a place for all this and it's a good tool to have in you knowledge tool belt. Just don't follow the fad because it is called a 2 to 1. Too many newbies use the right tool in the wrong application and waste time and energy. Get Docked You must dock the bag on the side it will be going or it will be a PITA to get out of the way when the bag wants to swing towards plumb of the next anchor. If you use a daisy, then the weight of the bag has to be lifted before you can release the bag which sometimes doesn't work if the haul is 90 degrees to the side. An adjustable daisy is very limited in how much you can release it but if you have a 6mm or 7mm accessory cord about 5-10 meters long and tie a MMO, then you have all the releasability you need later. A barber pole tie off method is having that accessory cord attached in the middle to the haul bag and using both strands for the MMO. This limits you to only half the length of that rope for releasing the bag. If I carry 5 meters of rope, I want to be able to use the whole thing. To each their own I'll write more later!!!!! I plan on making this chapter way more thorough but this covers the concept super good enough until the fun fall shenanigans are over. Come to GGBY.org and play with us. Sign up for our emails on our HOME PAGE and I'll let you know when I make progress on this. 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 is respectful to other view points 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 11 will be live 11/16/2022. 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.

This post was written by Andrea Nicole. You Or Us Or Uterus Having a uterus is a lot of work, but it’s even more work on a big wall. Although I’ve climbed long multipitches in the past, I was always on the ground by the end of the day to take care of business. However, managing your period on a big wall - when you’re on the wall for several days at a time - is a completely different ballgame. My first big wall was Leaning Tower for the Dano jump, and I ended up bleeding onto one of my only two pairs of pants on the very first day. Thus, I ended up wearing my one unbloodied pair the rest of the time. Not a huge deal, but I also learned on that project that hauling sucks, so consequently I now only take one pair of pants up a wall, making the stakes for managing my period effectively higher. In the video, I discussed pads, tampons, and reusable period underwear. Several comments mentioned menstrual cups, and I think this is worth discussing. I didn’t address them in the video because the thought of using one on a big wall didn’t even occur to me - the logistics of emptying and cleaning one at belays seemed a lot more cumbersome than just swapping a tampon or pad. However, if you have experience with a menstrual cup on a big wall or a setting that simulates the challenges that are relevant to a big wall, please don’t be afraid to share your thoughts. A community of experience is more valuable than that of one gal who has two big wall periods under her belt. Plus, I’m always on the lookout for period solutions that create less waste, so if I could make menstrual cups work on a big wall, I’m super down. As an aside, this content is obviously geared toward people who have periods. There are a variety of options that minimize or avoid periods altogether (usually hormonal contraception that either regulates or alters the frequency with which menstruation occurs) that are beyond the scope of this. These are all either prescription medications or medical devices/procedures that need to be performed by a professional. If you are interested in any of these, please consult your healthcare provider. Pads These are absorptive liners with adhesive backsides that stick to the crotch of underwear and absorb blood. They are probably the easiest menstrual product to use and also the one that allows you to see clearly how much of the absorptive capacity you have used at any point in time. They come in numerous different capacities, ranging from 10 to 15 mL of blood. Tampons This is an insertable product that is most commonly made of cotton. It is inserted into the vagina and absorbs blood. The only clear indicator that the product is full is if you start to see blood on the string, your underwear, or if your pee begins to turn pink. The maximum recommended time a tampon should be left in is 8 hours, though with a heavier flow, many people will find that they need to change them much more frequently than that. They also have different absorptive capacities, usually ranging from 3 to 12 mL of blood. Reusable Underwear Period underwear, of which the two best known brands in the US are Thinx and Knix, are reusable underwear that have additional inserts in the crotch designed to absorb blood. They come in an overwhelming number of styles, cuts and absorptive capacities, generally ranging from 15 to 60 mL, depending on brand and absorbency. They are a replacement for pads and one of two reusable products on this list. The main downside for these is that when they are full, you have to completely change your underwear (PITA if you’re wearing a harness). This could present problems for someone with a very heavy menstrual flow, though that can be mitigated to a large degree by pairing these up with one of the insertable menstrual products. An additional downside is that the absorptive insert is black (likely for discreteness), making it a little more difficult to tell how “full” it is. Menstrual Cups A menstrual cup is a little cup that is inserted into the vagina and catches menstrual blood. When full, it must be emptied and sanitized before reuse. The maximum recommended time it should be left in is 12 hours, though with a heavier flow, it will need to be changed more often than this. The capacity is generally around 25 to 27 mL. This is the second of the two reusable products on this list. I have not used a menstrual cup on a big wall, because of what I have perceived to be possible challenges in doing so. If you have used one on a big wall, I’d love to hear your experience and tips for using. I think one of the biggest limitations to menstrual cup use on the wall is arguably the cleaning aspect. Remember that you must carry all of your water for the entire climb with you from bottom to top and still have enough water to get back down. If you are using a menstrual cup that needs to be cleaned, you need water to do that, and that means you are using some of your very finite (and very heavy) water supply to clean up. If you have a relatively light flow and can get away with a full 12 hours between changes/cleanings, then this might make sense for you, as long as the weight and volume of that water you will need to clean and maintain the cup is not more than the weight and volume of the equivalent amount of other menstrual products. If you’ve never been on a big wall before, weight, volume and water are VERY important considerations. Disposal of the blood is also something to consider. Usually, I dispose of used menstrual products in ziplock bags, which keeps them out of the way until I can transfer them to my poop tube. However, ziplocks might not be water-tight enough to keep liquid blood from leaking out and then you’ve potentially got blood leaking onto your gear. It would be tempting to empty the cup onto the rock. But keep in mind that parties climbing below you might be a little worried if they see blood running down the C2 they’re about to jump on. It’s bad enough that everyone pisses all over the rock, making it even more important to dispose of the blood in a responsible and respectful manner to others climbing. Side note: After we got down from El Cap, I was talking to a woman in El Cap Meadow who swears by menstrual cups. She said her flow was very light and that she could get away with leaving her menstrual cup in for a full five days without emptying or cleaning it. Although the risk of staph toxic shock syndrome is low with use of insertable menstrual products (more on that below), this does increase the risk and is not a safe practice. Toxic Shock Syndrome (TSS) TSS became a household term in the 1980s when a rash of people (no pun intended) were diagnosed with the life-threatening disease after leaving insertable menstrual products in for a prolonged period of time. While the risk of TSS is relatively low, it gets brought up a lot in relation to insertable menstrual products, and I think it’s helpful to understand what it is and what causes it. Normal vaginal flora (bacteria) contains staphylococcus aureus that produces a toxin called TSST-1 (toxic shock syndrome toxin 1). This toxin causes massive activation of the T cell branch of the immune system and leads to a life-threatening distributive shock (distributive shock is where all of your blood vessels relax and are unable to effectively circulate blood to your vital organs). The levels of these bacteria in the vaginal flora are usually pretty low. They are aerobic bacteria, meaning they need oxygen to reproduce, and the vagina is not a very oxygen-rich environment. However, when you insert a menstrual product, either a tampon or a cup, this increases oxygen levels in the vagina, allowing the bacteria to proliferate. Left in too long, the bacteria can proliferate to levels where the amount of TSST-1 they are producing becomes dangerous. Risk of illness from TSST-1 is highest in younger people. The reason is that by the age of 40 years, about 80% of females have developed antibodies against TSST-1, rendering them far less susceptible to illness. But that still means that 1 in 5 do not have antibodies against the toxin and are at elevated risk. Signs of illness are fever, fatigue, flu-like symptoms, and a characteristic rash that is like a peeling sunburn. Your best protection is following the guidelines surrounding the use of insertable menstrual products, which are designed to limit TSST-1 producing staph aureus growth in the vagina and minimize risk. Pee Funnel University Even if you manage to dodge your period on a big wall, you can’t dodge peeing. If you didn’t come equipped with a handy hose to water the rock, you’re going to have a few more steps and a little more hassle involved in taking a piss, but it’s a fundamental skill you need to master if you’re going to climb anything big. Fortunately, peeing is not much more cumbersome than changing a menstrual product. If you’re just peeing at a belay without the use of a pee funnel, you simply unclip the straps that connect your leg loops in the back, lower your pants a little and either squat if you’re on a ledge, or dangle your backside out enough to not pee on yourself if you’re at a hanging belay. There will be times, however, when you would be best served to pee in a bottle (parties climbing below you, at night when you don’t want to fully get off the portaledge and dangle in a swami belt over the side, etc.), and in these situations, it can be helpful to have a pee funnel. There are more pee funnels on the market than I can count, with different designs, materials, etc. I’ve used the SheWee in the past, and it worked fine. More recently, I bought a Freshette, which I have yet to use. If you are going to go the pee funnel route, you should definitely try using it at home before doing so in the wild, so you know how it works and can be certain you’re not going to pee all over yourself. Another thing to consider is that these do need to be rinsed with water after each use, so keep that in mind when thinking about how frequently you’re going to use it and the amount of water required to rinse after each use. What's Next See all the ways to poop on a big wall

Big Wall Anchors Big Wall Bible Big Wall Anchors 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. Anchors can be the leak in your time boat. You can lose so much time if you don't have anchor skills dialed. If you can't build the anchor quickly, if heavy stuff smashes down what you want to unclip later, if the bag is on the left and you have to haul towards the right, or are just completely unorganized. You can shave your aid leads down to a quick half hour a pitch but lose it all at a 2 hour anchor cluster... OR you can take a casual hour to lead something but make up for that by doing your anchor, hauling and change over in 10 minutes. Rant I just watched several parties as I was on El Cap shooting some stuff, take literally forever to do change overs and anchors. They could climb a pitch as fast or even twice as fast as I could but they lost HOURS... literally HOURS... from the time they got to the anchor to the time the next person was climbing. Granted it was hot which causes brain fog but this was purely a lack of anchor skills. They knew the SERENE anchor concepts but they didn't know how to get shit done. It made them suffer badly. Showing up to the anchor without a bullet proof ritual had them clustering the two bolts with quick draws(!?!?!) and personal anchors rather than just throwing the quad on the bolts and building off that. It was at least 30 minutes to fix their partner. They wouldn't haul off one BOMBER bolt so adjusting themselves super duper low on there super equalized but low hanging separate hauling anchor causing an hour from the time they started to set up to the time the bag left the OTHER anchor. Ropes were EVERYWHERE and got behind their pigs once those got up there a long time later. Not having a plan for the follower to arrive made it take at least one hour from the time they did arrive to the time they were leading the next pitch. I've had the bag on the left side of me at the top of pitch 5 of the Nose. To haul from the top of pitch 6 is literally 90 degrees to the right. It took 1.5 hours to get the bag lowered so they could haul it. I've shown up to an anchor cluster f*** before that took 2 hours to undo and reorganize.
I have spent 1 hour trying to lift a 200lb haul bag to get the weight off since it was on a biner clipped last in a hanger, pinching the thing I NEEDED. Even if you aren't the fastest climber, get these skills dialed and KISS (Keep it super simple) and you can make up the time just in your anchor skills. ANCHOR CONCEPTS Redundancy is #1 - In big walling, this is what you want!!! Have as many points as makes sense incorporated into your anchor. Minimize shock loading if 1 anchor point blows, though if your weight is on the rope attached to the anchor it's unlikely to create a huge force - see that VIDEO Death Triangles are shitty anchors and only a dangerous problem if one of your anchor points can't handle 1.4x the load. A proper built anchor shares the load mostly evenly between the pieces. See more about death triangles in this VIDEO Equalization is last on the priority list if you have bomber bolts. Popular acronyms to remember anchor concepts SERENE Strong Equalized Redundant Efficient No Extension ERNEST Equalized Redunant No Extension Solid (or strong) Timely Cordelette Clove, Clove, Super 8 This method gives you the most flexibility. Doing this with a 7mm cordelette is bomber but bulky. Quad Anchors Clip, Clip, Done The fastest and least bulky option is to do a quad with a 240cm sling. It does require two bolts to both be good and a normal distance apart. You can do a trad anchor with this or even a 3 bolt anchor which you can see in the video. We broke tested them in this VIDEO and also doing a quad with a 6mm cordelette in this VIDEO. Trad Anchor Good luck More than 3 pieces. I prefer 6 if I have the gear for it. It takes more slings and takes a bunch of gear you might need on the next pitch, assuming you even have what you need when you get up there. Trade routes on El Cap and other walls are bolted anchors usually. Stay Organized!!! Fix the line Fix your lead line to the master point for your follower to ascend. Don't haul until your followers line is fixed in case there is any mis-communication. If you don't pull up the rope, leave enough tail to move around, especially on a ledge because you aren't going any further than your rope is going to allow. Pull up the rope if you can keep it organized and it helps them out if you are faster at hauling than they are at ascending. Don't pull up the rope if they need to lower themselves off the anchor and they plan on tying into the middle of the rope and using the leftovers to lower off with. Haul high so you can dock high Where is your bag GOING next? Do not haul base on where its coming from but where it is going. Don't haul until your followers line is fixed. Hauling directly off one of the quad upper carabiners allows you to get the haul bag knot/bottle/microtraxion as high as possible because those bags can't get higher than this later. If you have a good bolt, it is a 10:1 safety ratio between your hauling and the hanger/carabiner. You don't need to equalize two bomber bolts to haul off of them and have your bags hanging way lower than you unless you want that on purpose. Who's next? sIf the route goes right and your partner is leading, scoot over the left and let them be on the right. Your bags will be on the right but you can see this is the order you are leaving the anchor so get in that order from the beginning. Switching around later can be a cluster. Two Words Rope Bags!!! Clustered ropes can add hours if they get stuck or wrapped behind your docked pigs. I'll write more later!!!!! I want to add photos and love into this chapter. This is the one area of big walling I focus on to compensate for my slow ass climbing skills. November is my busiest season with using the last good weather for adventures, filming a huge batch of episodes and rigging some rad stuff at GGBY festival. Here is a sneak peak to Saturday's VIDEO (which might be the funniest video we have ever released) to make up the fact I'm falling behind on the written portion of the Big Wall Series. 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 is respectful to other view points 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 10 will be live 11/9/2022. 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.

How strong are ice screws? Plenty strong enough, but the question is more about how strong is the ice. We did 9 tests in this video and found the aluminum hangers on the Petzl Laser Speed breaks at 14kN, long 21cm screws are stronger than a carabiner, and of course that screws in tension hold better than when placed in shear, like so many tests in the past have confirmed. LineScale 3's are finally in stock. I don't recommend using them to break stuff but they are great for live loads on your projects. You can get our discount code and the link HERE You can do epic Iceland adventures by contacting: https://icepicjourneys.is/https://www.stepman.is A great guest house (bed & breakfast) in Hofn is http://www.dynjandi.com/en Our team: https://www.instagram.com/andrea.nicole.photography/ https://www.instagram.com/betweencontinents/ https://www.instagram.com/icepicjourneys/ https://www.instagram.com/whyistheiceblue/ https://www.instagram.com/acdcrokkarinn/ https://www.instagram.com/asgeirmar/ https://www.instagram.com/stepman/ https://www.instagram.com/prin.skia/ Buying Ice Screws From ExtremeGear Supports Us 10% Behind the Scenes We planned for 6 months and finally went to Iceland to test ice and do an ice rope swing. We went in April, 2021 and filmed this, edited it in June over two weeks to make it super tight and entertaining and then painstakingly sat on it until it was seasonally relevant for when winter started. This was a fun one and we learned how to generate almost 30kN with just pulleys, when the Linescale3 screen starts to get really mad. Only recently did we learn how not to break the LS3s 😂 . This "Mechanical Advantage is a Myth" episode was literally me testing different systems out for this very video. Watch this one next

Big Wall Episode #8 - Leading Big Wall Bible Lead Climbing 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. Leading is a methodical and repetitive motion if done correctly. Get as high as you can on your aiders, place your gear, bounce test it, commit to it, get off your last piece, clip your rope to it, or back clean it, and repeat. Fear or exhaustion can make you do stuff out of order or take unnecessary steps. If you have 30 pitches of climbing and you can save 30 minutes of each pitch because you can aid faster, this is an entire day you can save which means less water and food to haul which also makes you faster. Chicken Or Egg Is trad climbing a prerequisite to aid climbing, or is aid climbing a pre-requisite to trad? Some debate that you need to be a solid trad climber to know how to place gear before attempting to aid climb. Others debate that practicing aid climbing can help you understand what holds and what doesn't instead of hoping after placing gear as a newbie. Also, where does one get practice placing micro nuts, cams and hooks? Not trad climbing! Trad climbing first can help with overall systems of leapfrogging up a rock but don't be afraid to try out aid climbing just because you have not used cams and nuts much. It might even make you a better trad climber. Most big walls do require some normal hands and feet climbing and those sections might be terrifying for you if you never learned to actually climb before attacking your first wall. Don't show up totally green to climbing just because you might be able to learn placing gear better in an aid environment. PRO TIP: You can top rope aid climb if you are not confident in your placements. It's also a great way to get introduced to hooks. Do you really want your first hook 2,800 feet off the ground and take 2 hours to move from the bomber bolt right next to it and fully weight it??? Hypothetically speaking of course. PAS-ology How are you connected? PAS or Personal Anchor System or Daisy is your tether. Adjustable daisies allow you to tension yourself tight as you stand up and some even allow you to extend them under tension (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED). If you climb your aiders and keep your PAS loose, and for some weird reason slip and fall hard on them, it can really hurt, pop your gear or even break them. Most of them are very static and even the "dynamic" ones are too short to absorb enough force. The Alfifi changes the game since you can just connect yourself to the next piece with this and this alone. Let your rope do the catching if you fall. Your back and your gear are going to thank you for it. It is less to untangle, it's adjustable and you don't have to open a carabiner gate 1000x to get up El CAP. Keep in mind the Alfifi is strong in one direction, but you can bend that metal sideways if you clip a bolt hanger with a biner inside and it levers it weird when you stand up. Understand your gear before you use it! A risk with only using an Alfifi and no PAS while leading is your ladders are not clipped to anything. If you blow a piece they could fall. You need something bomber at the anchor to attach yourself. Metolius easy daisies are the lightest option but can't be extended under tension. You have to pull the tab away from your body to release it, limiting the range you can do with one hand. The biggest problem is that it's not rated to be a personal anchor. You could literally break these if you fall 2 feet on them at the anchor. The Yates Adjustable Daisy is the easiest to tension and lower yourself, but the buckle is heavy. The Petzl Evolvs Adjusts are dynamic ropes and fully rated but can't be extended under tension. There is no perfect PAS but you want a solid one while you are at the anchor. Ladder-ology Some like 1, some like 4. The less stuff to organize the faster you can go, but standing on one foot can suck. One ladder is simple to keep tidy and you can clip your Personal Anchor System (PAS) or Alfifi to the next piece, sit on it and move it up. You can have 2 ladders, one clipped to each of your PAS's and just go up one at a time, or you can keep both those ladders on one piece so you can have one for each foot, sit on your top piece and move them up together. 3 allows you to have 1 for each foot and 1 to get on and then leap frog them but that is a lot of clipping. 4 allows two for each foot on each PAS but its a lot to keep tidy. Straight aiders with a spreader bar like YATES are the absolute best. It requires no thinking about which way it goes and it doesn't crush your poor feet. Clip-ology What goes on first and last? Shifting carabiners will help you shit if you didn't do it earlier that morning. You get all the sensations of falling without going anywhere. That comes from placing two carabiners in the same spot that you change your weight from one to the other like sitting in a daisy to standing in an aider. The solution is to clip carabiners in a chain in the order you plan on removing them later, or share two things on one carabiner. If you connect your PAS and one aider to one carabiner it is easy to keep tidy, you only have to open one carabiner to get on the next piece, and you don't risk dropping the aider. The downside is your aider is now married to that PAS. If you want to connect your second aider to stand more comfortably, you now have trapped both PAS's. Moving sideways or up steep terrain can be nice to be able to separate them. But it's a PITA at the anchor when you want to be connected differently than where you want the ladders. If you have everything on separate carabiners, then you can pull the entire puzzle apart and rearrange it to your liking for the ever-changing context. You just don't clip both the daisy and the aider to the same spot. Since you have 2 daisies, you can put one on the gear first and stay committed to that until the ladders you clip on next come off. You can only have two ladders and always stand in two if they are removable from each daisy, but this is extra clipping and try standing in your living room and clipping a carabiner 1000x and see that minimizing how often you clip carabiners matters. This method shines when you get to the anchor since you want your ladders clipped behind everything so you don't smash shit when you step in them, but you want your PAS free to keep you right where you want to be and to be able to pull them outwards when you lean back. Warning: keeping your ladders independent from a tether means the aiders are free soloing when you transition them from one place to another, DON'T DROP THEM. If you use an Alfifi, you can't hook it to the bolt hanger itself or where gear doesn't like to have an upward force (since you will be pulling up and out while you top step). So you clip your aider/daisy combo to the gear THEN clip the alfifi to the highest biner. You will need to remove this first and there is nowhere to clip anything to the Alfifi so you can't put it on first anyways. You definitely don't want to put a carabiner on top of the Alfifi and weight the biner or you will bend the hook. You don't want to put the alfifi in the hanger after other carabiners are in there and lift up or it lever it and bend it. THE ORDER OF WHAT YOU CLIP MATTERS! Order of Operations Clip, test, fully weight, clean or leave, get high, repeat Don't go up two steps and start looking around, get as high as you can before strategizing what you can reach. Don't make bounce testing a ceremony, just make it part of the process of getting on it. Don't bother clipping your rope to the piece you are already attached to (in most cases) because you are only falling if it comes out so what good is that going to do? Bad habits can slow you down. Let's go through each step in detail: Get Connected - Clipping A nut has one place to clip, a cam typically has an eye or the sling you can clip and a piton needs the carabiner spine against the wall which can be tricky to clip if you are reaching for the stars. You want to clip as high as you can if there are options, even just a carabiner length can make a difference in where you can place the next piece. Ladder or Aider: depends on your style. If you need to sit on the gear to lift up your ladder(s) then it will be your PAS you connect. If you are on low angle C1 and trying to top step as high as possible, you would clip your ladder to it since you don't plan on ever weighting your PAS. Try both methods on low and steep angles to see what makes sense for you and the two different contexts. Don't clip your rope to the gear you just got on. You are only falling if it comes out and typically you now just pulled more rope out of the system actually making your fall even farther. Wait until you are on the next piece. The exception to this is if you are preparing to transition to free climbing or need to be lowered for a pendulum. Blowing Ain't Bad - Testing Bounce testing isn't a ceremony. As soon as you clip an aider to the gear, jerk test it with your hand. As soon as you put your foot on it, drop your heel and lean into it a little while still staying balanced on the last piece. Bounce as you fully weight it while still being right on the last piece. It's ok to fall if you don't hurt yourself in the process. Careful what you grab if it blows. Don't put your fingers in a place they will get pinched. For example, grabbing behind the carabiner or sling on the previous piece will smash your hand against the rock when your weight goes back onto that last piece. Don't look at the piece if you are bounce testing it, especially if you have a heavy buckle attached to it like the alfifi or Yates adjustable daisy. Counter to what you might think, the sketchier the gear, the faster you want to unclip your PAS from your last piece and get your rope connected to it. YOU DON'T WANT TO FALL ON YOUR PAS. When you bounce test, you are typically only going to fall a few inches onto your last piece but once you fully commit to the next one, get your PAS off the last one. Your rope is a soft catch, your PAS is not. The crux to momentum is when you are super top stepping your last piece but not trusting your next one. If it has a 50/50 of holding and you really want to bounce the crap out of it, you might have to connect a PAS/Alfifi and down step to be more hip level with your last one so you don't shock load it if you blow your next piece testing it. This is when a PAS longer than the full reach of your arm, or 6 step aiders are handy. Dealing With Your Past - Back cleaning You are constantly doing math. How many more pieces of that size do you have? Will you need it higher up? When was your last bomber placement? Are you about to do something sketchy? All this has to be considered to know if you are going to pull out the last piece or clip your rope to it. If you are traversing, you have to clip all or none of the pieces. If you clip all then your follower will be able to clean and reach each previous placement. If you back-clean all of the gear, they can just lower off the last piece and avoid having to clean any of the traverse. Just remember if they have to lower off, that piece stays, so ideally that is either a bolt or fixed gear. If you clip your lead rope to the gear you have to decide if you clip directly to the gear or put a quickdraw or sling on it. If it's a traverse, the length of the extender is how far away the follower will be from that piece. It's best to clip direct. However, if you are going straight up after traversing, you will get a 90-degree bend in the rope creating enormous drag. Typically the best place for a quick draw is right off the anchor to allow a little flexibility but keeping the fall to a minimum. Higher up doesn't matter if you fall an extra 2 or 20 feet but if you place a nut or clip a piton and you only have one carabiner per sling, a quick draw can be nice. If you have done a pendulum, and are lower than your last piece, you must back clean you just created the worst Z drag ever. STOP: This is point you need to FULLY extend your PAS if you use two, tensioned it, and just took it off the last piece. Don't wait until you are top stepping precariously to get this ready to clip the next piece. Clip to to your chest harness, throw it over your shoulder or just let it dangle but for the love of rock, extend it so it's usable. Get High - Top Stepping You are rarely not going to top step, so don't diddle-doddle and only go up part of the aider and start site seeing. It doesn't hurt to have a spot you are aiming for but get as high as fast as you can. If you only progress 3-4 feet per placement and you can stand up 12" higher, that makes you 25%-30% faster. However, if it takes a lot longer to dial in a micro placement fully top stepping, is it worth it? Don't waste twice the energy trying to reach a crappy placement at full arms reach when at eye level is a perfect blue totem placement, or in this case a bomber bolt. Now get some gear in and repeat these steps. The Transition Aid climbing to free climbing tricks If you are feeling cozy in your aiders and have to transition to free climbing, it can feel awkward. Set yourself up for success and you'll be a climber again in no time. Free climbing part of a route can save an enormous amount of time, even if you know you can aid this next 30 feet and it isn't worth getting into free mode. If you clip your PAS to the gear first, then clip your aider to your PAS, you kinda locked yourself down to that piece. If you clip your aider to the gear first and if you are near the end of the pitch, you can just stand in it and abandon it. Don't pinch the part you can clip the rope so you can do that before taking off. If it's like a nut or piton with limited places to clip, put the quickdraw/sling on first, then your rope, THEN get yourself on the system. Fully extend your PAS so you can use it quickly when you get back into aid. Plan for the transition and stay organized. STORY TIME by Ryan Jenks: I was belaying Ryan Sheridan up the first pitch of Roulette on leaning tower and could not see him on the 2nd half of the pitch. He carefully moved up the endless hooks at the beginning and then finally the rope started to move faster and all I could hear him yelling is falling falling falling yet nothing happened. He started free climbing without having his PAS re-extended and ready to clip. He couldn't let go with one hand and couldn't extend it with the other for whatever reason. He was within reach of the next piece and just stood there helpless knowing he was going to fall. He yelled falling not because he fell, but because he knew he had to and I've been belaying for 3 hours so it's nice to let your belayer know it's time to wake up. Getting Right With Jesus For God's sake, add a Jesus draw When you leave the anchor to start your lead and have no pro in yet, you will yank your belayer down if you fall. The belayer is below the anchor so if you clip a quick draw to the strongest point of your anchor in the direction you are headed, it will pull them up to that piece if you fall, instead of down and sideways. This is sometimes referred to as a Jesus draw so no one has to see Jesus if you blow the beginning moves of a pitch. Obviously, this doesn't matter when you are leaving the ground, just DFU (Don't eff up). The Process Leading theory Pick your poison on how you want to go up the wall. But perfect your process and write down or say each step as you go up when you practice so you know what your system is. Once you get tired and scared, you are going to start doing unnecessary steps, not finishing each step as you go, getting tangled in your shit, and slowing way way down. Have a plan for easy bolt ladders vs hard aid and different angles since low angle is so so different than steep angle. This can all be done with... you guessed it... PRACTICE! Pick a place you can practice whether that's a really supportive climbing gym, a local crag or just a series of butterfly knots in a rope fixed high in a tree that you pretend are "bolts". Once you become an old dog that doesn't like new tricks, challenge yourself to do it in a completely different way, just so you understand why you like your method or have another tool to use if the context changes. What you like might be amazing for C1 low angle but complete shit for super sketchy roofs. PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE. 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.