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Climbing Safety Checks

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  • denzuki Flag

    Tying On
    Having watched the excellent video - 'How to tie into the climbing harness', why is it, that each time I see a photograph be it in an official climbing magazine, a newspaper advert relating to adventure sport, a TV adventure program, the climbing rope is almost always merely clipped into the front of the harness via a karabiner? Young people at UK climbing walls in the main, just clip a karabiner at the front of the harness.?

Jason Montecalvo
www.sportrock.com  
703-212-ROCK

Jason Montecalvo is an instructor of rock climbing for Sportrock Indoor Climbing Centers. Jason has been leading individual and group indoor and outdoor climbing programs for children and adults for over eight years for multiple organizations including Horizons Adventure Camp where he created, organized and lead team building programs for public, corporate, and at risk and disabled youth, in areas such as hang gliding, caving, scuba, white water kayaking, and high ropes course facilitation. In addition, Jason has been teaching for Northern Virginia Community College as an adjunct climbing professor for over five years. Jason has an Associate in Science as well as a B.S. from George Mason University with his expertise being health and fitness in parks and recreation management. Jason also holds several national certifications in his area of expertise including being a Top Rope Site Manager for the American Mountain Guiding Association as well as having a Wilderness First Responder certification from Wilderness Medical Associates. As an avid outdoor athlete, Jason most memorable climbing accomplishment was climbing multi-pitch routes out west in the Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming and tough single pitch sport climbing routes in the east at the New River Gorge in West Virginia. Jason has lived and in the Northern Virginia DC metropolitan area for 28 years but has a great passion for the west coast and New England regions of the country for all areas of outdoor recreation and sport; in particular, climbing, snowboarding and mountain biking.

Climbing Safety Checks

In this video, professional climbing instructor Jason Montecalvo describes the techniques and basic skills required for indoor rock climbing. The video is designed for the beginning indoor rock climber, but includes skills and techniques that would transfer over to the outdoor climbing world as well including harnessing, knot tying and belaying. This video series includes an overview of the basic equipment as well as the practical skills needed in order to begin to safely rock climb in an indoor environment.

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Hi! My name is Jason Montecalvo with Sportrock Climbing Centers and today were learning how to safely top-rope climb in an indoor rock climbing facility. Remember, climbing is inherently a dangerous activity and you need to seek professional assistance from certified instructors prior to engaging in this.

Now, what were going to learn is our 10 safety checks as a climber and belayer. We are not only responsible for checking ourselves but checking each other out as well. In order to do this, we have an easy way to remember our safety checks and were going to do our A-B-C's, A standing for Anchor, B standing for Belayer and C standing for Climber. We start by looking at the ground anchor and we have two checks on the ground anchor. Check number one is the ground anchor tight. Second, we want to make sure that our carabiner we use to clip in is locked. Next, well move to B, B for belayer. The first check a belayer gets is, making sure their harness in on properly meaning that it is closed, and snug on your body. The second check is the fact that I have clipped in to my belay loop with my carabiner appropriately. Third check, my carabiner is locked and I can do that by squeezing it. The fourth check is, by making sure that my belay device is loaded properly with a brake coming out in front of me and the climbing rope inside the carabiner.

The last check will be C, C stands for climber. On the climber we have four checks as well. The first check is at the harness, is fit on her properly meaning that again, it is snug and all three buckles are closed then we will work our way out by making sure the climber has tied into the crotch strap as well as the bridge, the two points worth of contact. Third, were going to look that this knot, the Figure Eight Follow Through, is tied correctly, where we see three sets of parallel lines and last, for our fourth check, we want to make sure that our backup knot or our double overhand knot is tied correctly as well with a little equals and a multiplication sign leaving us a little bit of access to finish. Next, we will be learning how to use our belay commands properly and our belay vocabulary.

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