In this section I’ll cover the basics of roped climbing in a mountaineering context, though most general mountaineering in North America targets summits that can be reached without a rope. Many people find mountaineering immensely satisfying without ever roping up; they happily use nontechnical skills for 99 percent of their climbing. But there’s no definitive separation of the skills underlying third-class climbing—where a rope is carried “just in case”—and fifth-class climbing. The fundamentals are the same; they relate mainly to safety, so if you carry a rope, you need to master the skills. Fourth-class climbing is essentially easy fifth-class climbing with long runouts, whether the medium is rock, snow, or ice. The climbing moves on lower fifth class may be a little more difficult or continuous, and the medium a little more vertical, but the equipment and techniques required are substantially the same. Fourth-class climbing doesn’t mean fifth class done ineptly, and when a third-class climb requires a rope, because of exposure or objective hazards or if a rappel is required, you’d better be in command of proper equipment and sound technique. Good technique isn’t complicated; in fact, a skilled climber will reduce complexity to the minimum—she wouldn’t carry extra equipment or waste time fiddling with inefficient methods. The material in this part may strike you as highly technical as you read it, but work out the techniques using your own equipment, and you’ll see that I’ve actually kept things pretty simple, even though the material is more upto-date than you’ll find elsewhere.