Lessons From My Second Outdoor Climbing Trip

I recently went on a two week climbing trip to Red Rock Canyon, my second ever climbing trip. This blog summarizes my learnings from the trip. The goal is to provide a reference for my future self to improve performance on climbing trips.

I'll work through these lessons in roughly chronological order from when I learned them on the trip:

• Take longer rest: During indoor climbing sessions, I am used to taking ~3 min rest between max effort attempts. When projecting outdoors, where skin is more of a factor, every attempt should be as high quality as possible. I found ~6-10 min rest was optimal for me. Any longer and I started to get cold. In striving for optimal attempts, visualize the entire climb a few times before each burn, even the easy moves.

• Stop before bleeding / splitting / bad skin: On a relatively short trips like this, you'll get less climbing days than you think (considering weather and logistics, I think we got ~7 climbing days in Red Rock, while we were there for 15 nights). You really don't want to miss climbing days because you wore through your skin when working on a project for too long. I know its tempting (particularly if you want to do a climb in a session, like I did with Meadowlark Lemon), but unless it is the last day of the trip or you are going to have many forced rest days for whatever reason, it is always better to stop early and come back first thing the next day.

• Feel as many holds from the ground / stacked pads as possible: Feeling holds from stacked pads can lead you to new beta that can totally unlock a climb. When I was working Burnt, I punted a few times on the V7 ending section. After stacking some pads to feel a hold, I realized I had been grabbing a two-tiered crimp in the wrong spot. Next time I got to the ending, I easily sent it.

• Pay attention to your breathing: Most of the time it helps to inhale and brace before a hard move (or short sequence of moves), hold and brace through the moves, and then exhale afterwards. This was helpful on the compression on the start of Meadowlark and the moves on Power Slave. Include these breathing patterns during your visualization.

• Wrapping thumbs over holds: There were a few instances where wrapping my thumb over holds greatly increased friction (e.g., left hand crimp on Meadowlark). This isn't just a regular full crimp; the skin on your thumb is actually touching the rock and giving lots of friction. Look out for these weird but useful grips!

• Where you pull of the ground for a heel hook matters: On Burnt, I was having trouble making the tricky heel hock / toe claw at the beginning consistent. When I sent it, I found that the position I pulled off of the ground really mattered in setting up properly for the move. Take note and think about this for for techy foot positions.

• Bandaids and moisturize for skin damage: As I alluded to earlier, after my first session on Meadowlark I had very thin skin (my right pointer was bleeding). I found that with a combination of constant moisturization (with ClimbOn), band-aids overnight with Polysporin, and taping during non-crucial attempts, I was able to climb again tape-free in 2-3 days. As for taping thin tips, some climbers we met recommended Leukotape (which is stong and sticky) cut into a thin strip and wrapped tightly around the finger and anchored on the nail. You can also do a single vertical strip anchored on the nail prior to the wrap for extra protection.

• Good crag snacks: My favorite crag snacks this trip were: oat flour flap jacks (oat flower, baking powder, protein powder, optional cocoa powder and fruits, almond milk) with a home-made sauce (e.g., vegan yogurt with sweetner and seasonings), apples (both sweet and hydrating), energy bars.

• Tips and tricks for flashing outdoor boulders: (1) watch other people work the boulder if possible; video beta might help with beta but don't give you information about failure cases, (2) feel as many holds and positions as possible from the ground (without pulling off obviously), (3) use the above information to visualize your sequence and (perhaps more importantly) what it will feel like on the wall. Nearing the end of the trip I had learn't these lessons and was able to flash my first V10, Digital Black, in Joshua Tree. I also want to implement more flashing practice during my sessions, probably on set boulders near the end of my warmup.

• Full body strength matters: Prior to this trip I had this weird idea in my head that finger, grip, and wrist strength were the only things that mattered in being a good climber. While I still think they are very important (and weaknesses that I am continually working on), and think this is a pretty naive view. Having the fully body strength and tension to put your hands and center of mass in the correct positions to optimally utilize the foot and handholds is very important. Note to self: every climbing position and movement should be thought of as a free-body diagram! With this in mind, my next training cycle is going to more heavily target the strength of my upper arms, shoulders, and trunk.

• Moonboard style is not that applicable: I trained alot on the Moonboard prior to this trip. Partially this was out of convenience, but I also enjoy the style and thought it would be applicable. After this trip, I feel like I am getting diminishing returns at this point from trying to send the last benchmarks I have. The high-end Moonboard climbs emphasize dynamic moves on relatively good holds, whereas hard outdoor climbs (at least in Red Rock) are usually more about poor hand and/or foot holds that you need to keep tension on; cutting feet usually means falling. While the Moonboard style is certainly useful (e.g., Red Wave, Ackrite), I think I need to spend more time on alternative styles that emphasize body tension, bad hand and footholds, weird grip and wrist positions, and overall body strength.

• Be strategic about the boulders you try: As I mentioned before, of the 15 nights we stayed in Red Rock, we only got ~7 climbing days. Of those climbing days, I didn't even get to start projecting anything! I had at most roughly one session on any given climb! Next trip, I want to be more strategic about the boulders I am trying (which is a function of many things including controllable variables like tactics, planning, and logistics, and uncontrollable variables like conditions) to prioritize projecting climbs closer to my limit. I think re-visiting an area more than once (like Red Rock) will help as well, because going for the first time you are just overwhelmed by the number of amazing moderates to try (which is totally fine btw, everyone has different objectives with climbing).

• Bring microwaveble bowls and tupperware: These are super useful for cooking in a airbnb with only a microwave and bringing quality food to the crag. Bringing them isn't that hard because they can be used to holds other things. On a side note, I think this encourages eating more "real" food (i.e., not just candy and packaged foods) when at the crag. I find spending multiple weeks eating processed food at the crag hurts recovery and performance by the end of the trip.

• Checking big pads on a flight isn't that hard: We flew with one big organic pad, and rented three small pads when we landed. In retrospect, we should have flown with two big organic pads, because we were not charged any oversized fees (when flying with Air Canada).

• A Toyota Corolla can fit one big pad and three small pads and four people!: Nevertheless, if you are going to Red Rock get a car with more ground clearance so you can easily get to Black Velvet Canyon.