All You Need to Know About Sport Climbing

Sport climbing developed in France and gained popularity in the 1980's and has grow in popularity ever since.

Sport Climbing is very similar to traditional rock climbing, except for the difference in the climbing gear used. You still need to have the same rope techniques but the protection in this case comes from using bolts. By placing bolts close to each other, safety really does become second place with the new emphasis by the climber on the sheer difficulty of the route.

Started by French climbers, sport climbing evolved by bolting unprotected limestone faces that otherwise would have been impossible to climb using traditional methods. Sport Climbing is mostly rock face climbing and tends to stay to much shorter climbs that are really not much longer than two pitches or rope lengths.

There is no doubt about it, there is a large element of danger in sport climbing but experienced and skilful climbers are able to forget about that and put the emphasis on technique and doing harder moves instead.

Sport climbing is a great way to improve your trad climbing. It will also get you much fitter than trad climbing ever will. So if you go on a two-week sport climbing trip there is no doubt about it that you will come back so much fitter and ready to take on some trad routes that seemed impossible before.

Here are some great tips for anybody starting out in sports climbing.

· Warm up properly. Do an easy route or two first to get you buzzing and ready to go.

· Carefully work out all of the moves in advance, (this includes the clips). Try to determine the most efficient sequence for you. Remember that a move that feels achievable on its own is often too hard when you're feeling tired. Instead try finding a sequence of smaller, easier moves.

· Remember to tie a knot in the free end of the rope when lowering off long routes. This will prevent the rope shooting out of control through the belay device. It sounds obvious but many experienced climbers have been dropped in this way.