Rock Climbing
Rock climbing is a part of mountaineering in which clibers climb up, down or accross natural rock. It is a physically and mentally demanding sport, one that often tests a climber's strength, endurance, agility and balance along with mental control.
Because of the wide range and variety of rock formations around the world, rock climbing has been separate into several different styles and subdisciplines. The Thrill of climbing to the new heights and taking in the surrounding landscape is a different feeling all together. Here in Camp India Adventures and Adventure Training Academy, we have variety of rock climbing patches for trainees and there is artificial climbing wall also available for children and youth those are doing climbing for the first time.
Rock climbing involves strength, control and finesse. Using the muscles in your arms and legs to pull yourself up a sheer rock face takes strength and control. Using your brain to place your hands and feet so that your muscles can do their job -- that's finesse.
Rock climbing is a little like skydiving. Both rock climbing and skydiving have an element of danger. Both are sports where people participate mostly for their own personal satisfaction -- these sports do not offer much for spectators. And both are sports where potential participants either "get it" or they don't. In skydiving, either you are excited about leaping out of a plane into the abyss, or you aren't. In rock climbing, either you are excited about scaling a vertical piece of stone, or you aren't.
The basic premise behind rock climbing is extremely simple. You are trying to climb from the bottom to the top of something. If that was all there were to it, then you would need nothing but your body and a good pair of climbing shoes. The other part of the sport comes if you slip anywhere along the way. Because of the possibility of falling, rock climbing involves a great deal of highly specialized equipment to catch you when you fall. When you're rock climbing outdoors on "traditional" routes, learning to use and properly place this equipment is at least half of the sport!
Types of Rock Climbing
- Traditional rock climbing - Traditional climbing is the sort of climbing you typically see in movies and in nature documentaries. Connected by a rope, pairs of climbers wearing harnesses scale a rock face carrying racks of specialized equipment. As they go, the climbers place wedges, nuts and other forms of protection from their racks into cracks in the rock. The rope is hooked to these pieces of protection so that, if a climber falls, the rope catches them.
- Sport climbing - Sport climbing is like traditional climbing in most respects, except that the protective pieces are permanently bolted into the rock. The climber doesn't have to carry protection with him/her or place it along the way. This makes sport climbing safer, faster and less expensive than traditional climbing.
- Free solo climbing - Free solo climbing is like sport climbing except you use no rope. If you fall, you die.
- Indoor climbing - Indoor climbing is like sport climbing, except that climbers scale indoor climbing structures made of plywood or concrete and hold onto artificial handholds/footholds bolted onto the structure. The fact that it is indoors means that the height of the structure is limited by the height of the ceiling in the room. However, there are no weather problems and it is easy to unbolt the handholds and footholds to reconfigure the wall.
- Ice climbing - Ice climbing is like traditional climbing except that the climber is scaling an ice formation (such as a frozen waterfall or a glacier) rather than a rock formation. Specialized equipment that can screw into the ice is used instead of the wedges, nuts and cams used on rock formations.
- Bouldering and buildering - Bouldering is like sport climbing, but you are climbing on boulders (or the sides of chimneys and buildings) rather than on cliffs and crags. Because the maximum height of a boulder is typically ten feet or so, bouldering is often done without ropes.
