Posts by Ben Crowell
I normally climb with a single 10 mm x 60 m rope. On some multipitch trad climbs, I don't expect to have to rappel off, but I might have to in an emergency. Many people carry a special-purpose 6 mm...
For trad climbing, I normally carry shoulder-length slings racked on my harness, set up in Alpine draws at 1/3 their full length. When I'm leading and need to extend my protection, I either use the...
I'm joining a rock climbing club that requires an evaluation test in order to become a member. (I think this is a great idea.) They have a detailed handout listing exactly what you need to know for...
Iztaccihuatl would use about the same skills as Aconcagua, but is lower altitude and can be done in a day, rather than the 2 weeks usually required for Aconcagua. I acclimatized by spending several...
There are a lot of myths about water and dehydration: Drinking Water for Hiking: Myths and Facts. One of these is the belief that people are in danger of being dehydrated without knowing it. Dehy...
This depends a lot on what you plan to do, and I don't think there's any such thing as an all-purpose knife. I mostly use mine when hiking and backpacking, when it would be silly to bring a big, he...
When you're following a pitch on a trad climb, what is a good method for racking and handling the nut tool? My goals are to be efficient but not to drop the tool. My current system, which I'm not ...
It sounds like what you want is a personal locator beacon (PLB). They cost about $250, and there is zero cost after you buy it. It's not a phone. It's just a beacon that broadcasts your position so...
IMO you totally don't need a tent. Plenty of people, including me, prefer to sleep out under the stars even if there's no hut. It can be difficult to sleep with a wind blowing across one's face, bu...
Maybe Pinnacles National Park. Or if you go across the Golden Gate, Point Reyes is gorgeous. Watch out, because some of the trails in the more remote central coast backcountry areas have not seen ...
American black bears They are somewhat common in some wilderness areas of California, mostly in the mountains. In their natural state, black bears are thinly populated on the landscape because it ...
The US doesn't have anything like the Scandinavian right to roam (Swedish allemansrätten, etc.). Private land is usually fenced, and it's against the law to enter private land while hiking without ...
I see an ultralight tent as an expensive piece of backpacking equipment, with the alternative being a tarp. Compared to the tarp, the tent is slightly heaver, much more expensive, easier to set up,...
Google maps is free as in beer but doesn't usually show hiking trails. Open Street Maps is a free and open source site that works sort of like Wikipedia, and it often has good coverage of hiking tr...
You could think through some of the possible problems based on your knowledge of the area: roads with fast traffic; cattle that could hurt the dog; livestock such as chickens that the dog could kil...
You certainly don't want to climb so high that your hips are above the clip before you do the clip. Your arms aren't long enough to reach down that far. When leading trad, I would typically prefer...
Others might be able to give a more authoritative answer to this, or relate personal experiences where too much distance was a problem. However, I think there would be a clear problem if you were t...
Big, heavy "waffle stomper" boots are mainly a relic of the past, along with wool knickers and steel canteens. For most conditions, modern running shoes work far better. Any weight on your feet cut...
Here in California, a lot of trails have signs with a triangular diagram, showing that cyclists should yield to hikers, and both cyclists and hikers should yield to people on horses. I don't have a...
What do you mean by a directional figure 8? Is that a figure 8 on a bight? An overhand on a bight is quite secure if carefully dressed and pre-tensioned on every strand in opposition to every stra...
Although theoretically one can do canyoneering alone, in reality it's not something you can safely start doing all by yourself, especially since you don't have mountaineering or rock climbing exper...
Welcome to outdoors.SE! Older buildings often contain asbestos in solid form, and it may be sealed up (under floorboards, in tape around heating ducts, etc.). As long as it's not ground up into dus...
This is an example of a general topic called self-rescue. There are textbooks on the subject: Reference request: books on self-rescue while climbing . The simplest situation would be where the arm...
One method is to build a brake out of carabiners. The minimum equipment for this is three oval biners plus a locking biner, and the diagrams below show how to construct the system with only this ma...
The diagram shows three situations that are easy to understand without knowing a lot of math or physics. In the first example, the angle between the anchor strands is zero. Both anchors pull str...
