C4C Climbing Dictionary

Bouldering involves climbing routes that stay near the ground, requiring neither a rope nor a harness. Outside, boulderers carry crash pads out which act as a safety mat that protects your fall. It is the form of rock climbing that involves only the essentials; you, your shoes, and a chalk bag.

Top rope climbing is rope climbing where the anchor has already been established at the top of the route. The climber is tied into one end of the rope, which goes through the top-rope anchor and back down to the belayer, who is holding and managing the other end in case of a fall. It is a generally safe method of climbing, so the majority of indoor rope climbing is top-rope climbing.

Sport climbing is climbing that relies on pre-placed bolts in the rock. The climber clips quickdraws into these bolts and then clips the rope through the quickdraws in order to arrest a fall. The challenge with lead climbing is that if you slip or miss your clip, you will fall more than the distance to your last clip which is a farther, scarier fall than you would have with top-roping.

Trad climbing, or traditional climbing, involves carrying and placing protective gear (pro) rather than clipping into preplaced bolts. It is equally a mental challenge in addition to a physical one. Trad climbing is considered more dangerous than sport climbing as it is possible for your protection to fall out of the rock.

Multi-pitch climbing is climbing a route that is 2 or more “pitches”. This can be done in either sport or trad style. The leader climbs first, placing protection as they climb until they reach an anchor point. This marks the completion of the first pitch. Once they secure themselves to the anchor, they belay from above as the second climber ascends, who removes the protection as they climb. This system continues until the group reaches the top of the route.

The Yosemite Decimal Rating System is a system to classify the difficulty of walks, hikes and climbs that is most frequently used by mountaineers in the Americas. It is broken up into 5 classifications:

Class 1

A walk/hike

Class 2

Steep hike with some scrambling (use of hands)

Class 3

Scrambling with hand use necessary, more exposed

Class 4

Simple climbing, falls have fairly high risk but is like climbing an angled ladder.

Class 5

This is the Class you will see used to rate the difficulty of climbs at the gym and at outdoor crags. It is defined as technical roped free-climbing; belaying is used for safety. Un-roped falls have very high risk. Class 5 has a range of sub-classes, ranging from 5.0 to 5.15d, that correspond to progressively more difficult free-climb moves. Sometimes Climibs will be rated with a - or +, or a number with either a, b, c or d following. These act as sub categories within a level of difficulty, with -, a or b, being on the slightly easy for the grade and +, c or d being on the hard end of the grade

The V Scale is used to grade bouldering problems in the United States. Starting with VB(beginner), and then a progression from V0 (easy) to V16 (hard)