Drytooling

[pozorvlak]

Just realised I never posted these here.

A couple of weeks ago, my friend Dan and I went along to watch the first round of the Scottish Tooling Series at Glasgow Climbing Centre. Drytooling, for those of you who haven't heard of it, is climbing (usually outrageously overhanging) rock using ice-axes and crampons. It initially developed as a way of

Comments

[dynix]

props for trying it though! I didnt realise you could do this at walls

[pozorvlak]

Normally you can't: this was set up specially (see the squares of carpet behind the holds? They're to protect the wall). But Alpkit make these rather nifty gadgets which give some of the same effect without causing as much damage. Though I don't know how comparable they are - I don't think you'd get the same "Yes, that placement feels totally secuAAAAARGH!" feeling that I demonstrate so well in the first video :-)

[r_e_mercia]

That looks like AWESOME FUN :-)

I've just got back from a nice evening's climbing...hurrah for autumn and the temperatures in the hall being now back to bearable on the last 8m of climb! Though of course in two weeks's time the entire hall will be freezing. Anyway, did my first 5A+ which is not bad after nearly 2 months' break.

Anyway, back to the point. What I wanted to ask was - are you wearing crampons in the vids? It doesn't look like you are wearing regular climbing shoes. What's it like to attempt climbing with them?

[pozorvlak]

That looks like AWESOME FUN :-)

It was! But very hard on the arms. After an hour and a half I couldn't grip the axes any more.

Anyway, did my first 5A+ which is not bad after nearly 2 months' break.

Good work!

are you wearing crampons in the vids?

No, but I'm wearing crampon-compatible (ie, extremely stiff) boots. Which was weird: they've got very nice edges and grip, but you don't have the same level of feedback as normal climbing shoes. Not as bad as axes versus fingers, though...

I've done some easy climbing in crampons outside, and I felt pretty insecure on rock. I'm told you get the hang of it after a while, though.