Gym to Crag - 102 3-Day

Location

Seneca Rocks, West Virginia

Group Size

3 people per guide

Duration

3 days

Gym to Crag 102

As gym climbing continues to rise in popularity, we are seeing more of our students arrive with a solid foundation of movement skills, and an understanding of how to tie in and belay. However, they may lack many of the skills to safely climb outside. Our Gym to Crag course will focus on translating the gym experience you have into skills applicable to outdoor and multi-pitch trad climbing and rappelling.

Course Objectives:

• Essential knots (review and expand)

• Outdoor climbing technique

• Climbing equipment necessary for climbing outside

• Communication skills

• Building ground anchors

• Rappelling: Single and multi-pitch

• Seconding a leader

• Moving in a multi-pitch environment

• Risk assessment, evaluation and mitigation

Prerequisites 

• Comfortable with climbing movement

• Functional knowledge of tie in knots

• Ability top rope belay and lead belay

All necessary equipment is provided. If you have your own equipment and wish to use it, by all means bring it! Prior to use on a course, an instructor will evaluate all equipment to ensure its safety and suitability.

Our Gym to Crag course will review all of the information covered in our comprehensive basic but at an accelerated rate. This ensures you have all the basic skills before we move on to more advanced material. We will review tying in and lead belay technique before moving on to ground anchors and climbing techniques not normally found in a gym. Students are then introduced to hand placed anchors and how to remove them from the rock and properly rack them on the harness. The rest of the day will involve putting these new skills together in a multi-pitch environment.

The second day allows us to customize this course to the students and introduce new material as the students demonstrate competency with previously covered course material. Many groups climb to the South Peak of Seneca to experience a true technical summit while reinforcing old skills and learning new ones. Available topics include advanced rappel techniques, introduction to self-rescue concepts and preparedness, as well as building top rope anchors.

A third day offers continued practice of techniques with an instructor helping students walk away from the course “owning” the skills they have been taught. Long-term retention is the goal and we find that almost all students need this third day to cement their new skills. If mastery is apparent, our skilled and flexible instructors can seamlessly integrate content from a higher-level course. Though this course is also offered in an abbreviated two-day version, please note the enormous amount of information to be learned is best suited to a three-day course.

This course is taught with a maximum of a 3 to 1 ratio.