Six Tips to Prepare for a Successful Climbing Trip
Trip planning of any kind can take quite a lot of time and careful consideration. If you have a climbing trip coming up, here are six things you should do beforehand in order to increase your chances of having a successful trip.
Get the guidebook
If you can, get your hands on the guidebook for the area you’re visiting as soon as possible. A good guide will contain important information for your trip like the best time of year to visit, the orientation of the rock faces, and details on the climbs, gear, or landings. It also may offer accommodation and transportation tips, some history of the area, insights about the local community, and suggestions for rest days.
If you can’t purchase the guidebook where you’re located, do your research online. 27 Crags, The Crag, Sendage, Mountain Project, and 8a.nu are great resources, as are personal blogs and larger climbing media websites like Gripped, UK Climbing, Planet Mountain, and Climbing.
Monitor the weather in the days and weeks leading up to the trip
It can be very useful to have knowledge of the weather leading up to your visit. Recent weather conditions may affect road or trail accessibility. If there has been a lot of rain, you may want to dog-ear some areas in your guidebook that are more likely to dry quickly. Limestone tufa crags can seep for prolonged periods, as can granite cracks. Sandstone can be extremely fragile after rain. If the weather is looking hot and sunny, knowing where to find shade will prove useful.
Choose the correct footwear
Packing the right climbing shoes can make or break a trip. The shoes you’ve been wearing in the gym are likely not ideal for the types of climbs you’ll face on your visit. If you’re travelling to Squamish for a bouldering trip, for example, you’ll want a shoe that works really well for heel- and toe-hooking and granite smedging. If you’re going to Smith Rock, you’ll need a strong edging shoe. If you’re heading to Mexico or Europe or Asia for some tufa’d limestone, you’ll want a pair of flexible downturned shoes that don’t destroy your feet on monster 40-metre routes.
If you’ve never been to the area you’re visiting, bringing several pairs of shoes is a good idea, especially if a quality gear shop isn’t available in the area. It’s also worth noting that you’ll spend a lot of your time in approach shoes, and choosing those wisely can mean more comfortable feet and safer approaches and descents on your trip.
Train for the area
If you want to get the most out of your visit, it’s a good idea to tailor your training in the weeks and months prior to your departure to the style of climbing you’ll be doing. This will not only help you send, but also prevent injury. Research the style of the area and do what you can to get your body ready.
For example, if you’re going to be sport climbing on pockets, train that grip type and get those lumbricals bomb-proof. If you’ll be bouldering on slopers with lots of heel-hooks, climb this style in the gym. If you’ll be tufa climbing, work your pinches and get your calves and groin ready for strenuous kneebars.
Plan a de-load week
If you want to make the best of your gains, plan a de-load week leading up to your trip. You don’t need to stop climbing and training completely, but you do need to take it easy to allow your body to recover from a rigorous period of training. If you are heading to another country and time-zone, you can coordinate your de-load with exploring the new place in which you have arrived.
If your visit is longer, you could use your first few days of the trip as part of your deload, sampling easier climbs and getting used to the rock and climbing style. Whether you’re visiting an area for the first time or the fifth, a short period of familiarizing yourself with the rock is both necessary and inevitable.
Set goals
We all have big expectations when we set off on a trip, but setting goals can be a good way to stave off feeling crushed when we just aren’t crushing. It’s exciting to set big goals like bagging a new grade or climbing a king line. But when these big goals don’t pan out for one reason or another, we can sometimes feel like the entire trip was a bust. Smaller achievable goals can serve as a good consolation prize. These can range from things like working on your mental game and facing some of your fears when climbing outdoors to choosing a few climbs you want to onsight, flash, or redpoint.
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