Trad Climbing 101: 8 Basic Practices in Trad Climbing

In traditional climbing, or trad climbing, a climber affixes their own anchors as they ascend a rock face and then removes them (called cleaning) on the way back down. A completed trad route should be clear of equipment, with no trace of past climbs. Like sport climbing, traditional climbing uses anchors, but trad climbers insert them into the wall, as opposed to sport climbing routes, which always have anchors and pitons attached to the rock face.

Climbers referred to traditional climbing as simply “climbing” throughout the 1980s without making a distinction. The term “traditional” was later added to distinguish traditional climbing from the increasingly popular type of climbing called “sport climbing”—an alternative style that utilizes pre-bolted climbing routes.

The traditional style of climbing got bolstered after climber Ray Jardine’s late 1970s invention of the spring-loaded camming device, which allowed climbers to deploy protection—protective gear they affix to the rock wall—faster than they previously could when they used gear known as “pitons,” “chocks,” and “hexes.”

While sometimes compared to aid climbing (in which you stand on gear to assist your climb) or free climbing (in which you can use gear for safety but not for progress), trad climbing is more commonly compared to the sport style of rock climbing. Here are four key differences between trad and sport climbing:

• Location: Trad climbing takes place primarily outside, while you can sport climb outdoors or at an indoor climbing gym using preset sport routes bolted to a wall.
• Protection: Trad climbing involves more equipment since you carry and place your own anchors (gear you can run your rope through) and protective gear, like chocks and camming devices, as you go. By contrast, on a sport climb, you clip yourself and your personal climbing gear into preplaced bolts using carabiner devices and special knots.
• Route: Trad climbers utilize their route-finding skills—this requires them to look for the best handhold and foothold combinations—whereas sport climbers follow predetermined bolts to ascend a route, eliminating some of the necessary mental guesswork.
• Skills: Unlike sport climbing, traditional climbing requires significant technical knowledge revolving around making anchors you can use on your climb.

Trad climbing consists of a leader and a follower who place and remove gear as they ascend their route. Here are eight key practices that are part of traditional climbing.

1. 1. Anchoring: Building a climbing anchor—a construction of gear that can bear your weight as you climb—is one of the most important and most challenging skills in trad climbing because you need to be able to build safe anchors quickly. To build an anchor, you can use fixed hardware along your route or the gear on your person. In placing a good anchor, you must ensure that the load (weight) is evenly distributed across all the involved pieces of gear; every piece of gear is correctly angled and redundant (meaning you’ve incorporated a backup in case one should fail); and each piece of gear is independently strong and placed securely in the rock.
2. 2. Cleaning: Trad climbing requires you to remove your gear throughout your climb (called cleaning) so that you are effectively cycling gear from rock surfaces below you to rock surfaces above you. Although you can typically remove the bulk of trad gear by hand, you might sometimes need to use a nut tool—a device designed especially for removing a piece of gear called a “nut” from rocks.
3. 3. Extending: As you climb, you might need to lengthen (extend) certain gear using equipment such as quickdraws and long slings, also known as runners. This is a necessary practice in situations involving gear placements to your left or right on what would otherwise be a straight, vertical climb. By extending your gear to connect your rope to these protection points, you allow your rope to hang straight up and down rather than zigzag. A zigzagging rope is dangerous because it causes friction (also called rope drag), which can weaken the rope or knock gear out of rock surfaces.
4. 4. Following: One climber leads and another follows. The following climber ties into the end of the rope opposite the lead climber using a figure-eight follow-through knot and then clips into their belay device. The lead climber ascends the pitch (a section of a wall or climb), placing gear as they go. After the lead climber clips into a top anchor, the follower begins to climb, retrieving removable gear and organizing it on their harness or sling along the way. At the top of the pitch, the follower also clips into the anchor.
5. 5. Knot tying: Climbers must know many different knots for reasons of both safety and practicality. Trad climbers frequently use two knots: a clove hitch, which is good to use when clipping into an anchor because you can adjust the length of a clove hitch without untying it; and a figure eight on a bight, which is another secure knot for tying into an anchor. Note that the latter knot isn’t adjustable nor is it as easy to untie as the clove hitch.
6. 6. Lead climbing: A lead climber places protection into cracks, fissures, and slots as they ascend, while the following climber serves as belayer below. At the top of the pitch, the person lead climbing builds and ties into an anchor, pulling up the slack in the climbing rope and coiling it. They will then put the follower on their belay harness or directly on the anchor to prepare for the follower’s climb. As the follower climbs, the lead climber continues to pull up additional slack in the rope.
7. 7. Rappelling: Rappelling is a method for rapidly descending a rock wall, and you can utilize either a single-rope rappel or a double-rope rappel. The former uses one rope and enables you to rappel as far as half of that rope’s entire length, while the latter utilizes a pair of ropes tied together at an anchor point in such a way as to enable you to rappel the full length of the shorter of the two ropes.
8. 8. Route-finding: Footholds, handholds, and gear placement locations might not be clear, so trad climbers must scope out any complex routes during their approach, matching the features of the rock with a description in a guidebook or other resource. Popular routes might have clues—such as chalked handholds or footholds polished by climbing shoes—to indicate a path, but good trad climbers know how to scout these ahead of time.

You have to place gear for safety—also called “protection gear”—on a trad climb, meaning you need additional equipment beyond what might come in a standard climbing kit. Specifically, trad climbers use active protection (or active pro) and passive protection (or passive pro) gear to secure their ropes and themselves.

Active protection has moving parts. One example is a spring-loaded camming device, also known as an SLCD or friend, which has three or four cam lobes (curved pieces of aluminum) that expand to fill a crevice. By contrast, passive protection lacks moving parts. One type of passive pro is a regular chock, also called a nut or a chockstone—a tapered metal wedge or rounded cam threaded on a wire that you can push into a crack. Due to their shape, you can twist or rock cams to jam them into place in the rock. Another example of passive pro are tricams, which consist of small pieces of metal you can position against the walls of a crack.

Tube chocks, another piece of protection, consist of one tube that slides back and forth inside another tube to make the entire tube chock expandable or retractable. You can fit tube chocks into large cracks (also called off-widths), large pockets, or holes where other cams would be too small. Climbers differ as to whether tube chocks qualify as passive or active pro.

Outdoor climbing comes with risk, so it’s important to have a solid foundation of basic climbing knowledge and hands-on experience before you try trad climbing. Beyond that, here are a few key considerations:

• Seek out an instructor. An experienced trad climbing instructor can teach you how to create solid anchors and place protection so that your climbs are as safe as possible. Additionally, an instructor can identify other areas of your climbing technique that you can strengthen while you attempt easy pitches to gain confidence in the sport.
• Learn the gear. Trad climbing gear sets can be large and complex, so you should familiarize yourself with the tools and equipment. Stand at the base of a cliff or big wall and practice fitting wedges, cams, and hexes into different areas of the rock until you become proficient at it.
• Find a partner you trust. You can start looking for a trad climbing parter at your local climbing gym, where an instructor or staff member can evaluate the skill level of both you and your would-be partner. For example, an instructor can judge your abilities as belayers and as leads on a single-pitch crag before you and your potential partner move on to more dangerous, multi-pitch routes.

Climbing is a high-impact activity with an elevated risk of serious injury. Practice, proper guidance, and extensive safety precautions are essential when attempting a climbing pursuit. This article is for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional instruction or guidance.

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