Trad (Traditional) – A climb that relies on protection being placed (by the leader) in natural features such as cracks and knobs. The pro is not permanent.

Sport (aka Bolted) – A climb that has had holes drilled into the rock and bolts glued or hammered in, permanently. As you lead the climb, you put a quickdraw carabiner onto the bolts. (No messing about trying to find the right size wire then getting it to sit properly in a crack.) (For some bolts you need to carry a hanger with you to fit on the bolt.)

As Toc said, some climbs have a mixture of styles and both are fun.

A single pitch climb is when you start at the bottom and finish at the top in ‘one go’. Obviously your rope has to be long enough so generally single pitch is less than 50m.

For climbs longer than this, or if the climbers want to break up the climb you’ll do a multipitch climb, where half way up the leader stops and sets up an anchor. The seconder is brought up to the half way point, they swap gear and the leader starts the next pitch.

I don’t know of any multi pitch climbs in Perth. There are plenty of multi pitch climbs down south, West Cape Howe, Mt Frankland, Bluff Knoll, Peak Charles. The last two have climbs seven pitches long. A certain amount of experience is required to climb multi pitch. It’s an awesome experience though!

Some more:

Free climbing is what most climbers in WA do – only using your hands and feet on rock to climb.

Aid climbing is pulling on gear and hammering things into the rock as you go. It’s slow.

Solo climbing is not using any protection, no rope. You fall, you die or hurt yourself.

Bouldering is climbing on boulders or near the ground. No gear or protection is used except perhaps a crash mat and some buddies to catch you. No gear is used because you normally don’t go very high.

Hope that helps.

Chris

Chris Dorrian wrote;

>Aid climbing is pulling on gear and hammering things into the rock as you go. >It’s slow.

It can be slow.

… BUT, Aid Climbing these days is hammerless. The name of the game is CLEAN Aid!

>Solo climbing is not using any protection, no rope. You fall, you die or hurt yourself.

Hmm.

Roped solo is often called backroped free.

You use a rope and place protection as normal. If you fall you do not neccessarily die!

By the time you top out, you have ascended the route twice and descended it once!

IdratherbeclimbingM9 wrote:

>Roped solo is often called backroped free.

>You use a rope and place protection as normal. If you fall you do not neccessarily die!

I’d call that self-belay or I think I’ve heard it called Z-belay or something like that, not solo.

Q. What came first, ie which is more traditional – bolts or cams/nuts/hexes?

A. – Bolts! The first bolts were placed in… oh I think it was about 1780 or so, during an ascent of the Materhorn. Nuts weren’t used until about the 1950’s. Cams cam in the 1970’s.

Just a suggestion; perhaps CAWA could put a glossary on it’s web site.