“It doesn’t take many face holds to ruin a perfectly good off-width.”
Craig Luebben
Traditionally, rock routes followed crack systems so the climbing team could set anchors and use the handholds and footholds provided by the crack. Even today many longer routes follow crack lines. Cracks can be fun to climb once you learn the techniques, but at first crack climbing can be painful. Learning from an experienced crack climber will help immensely.
Pulling on face holds comes naturally to most climbers, since we cling to things every day—we open drawers, carry suitcases, crank pull-ups, climb ladders, et cetera. Crack climbing, however, is initially counterintuitive. Rather than grabbing a hold with your fingers, you slot your fingers or hands above constrictions in a crack or, if the crack is parallel, you expand your hand inside the crack to create opposing pressure between the crack walls. During the initial learning period, count on losing some skin and getting slapped around (you can save a lot of skin by taping your hands—see the section on taping later in this chapter). Learning to climb cracks opens the door to an amazing wealth of routes, including short crack climbs and long traditional routes. Jamming can also provide the best hold on a sport route.
In this chapter, the basic jams—fingers, hands, and fists—are covered first. The ability to perform these three jams will take you far. But remember that these basic jams are merely a starter toolkit for crack climbing—use your own creativity to develop crack-climbing prowess, combining techniques, face climbing around difficult sections, and developing your own style.
The “off” sizes—thin fingers, off-fingers, thin hands, wide hands, and off-widths—present a mighty challenge. Those are covered later in the chapter, after a foundation of the basic jams. Placing good protection is a fundamental part of climbing cracks on lead; you’ll find that information in chapters 5 and 9, which address anchors and trad leading.
Shoes for crack climbing. Supple slippers work best in thin cracks, because their slim toes fit in the crack. In hand-size and bigger cracks, it’s nice to have the support of a stiff shoe, especially when you’re expecting extended sections of wider cracks or cracks with sharp, painful edges. Most climbing shoes are cut low, but a shoe that covers the ankle offers much-needed protection on wider cracks.
Take a smooth face, cleave it with a crack, and you have a splitter. Crack climbers salivate over beautiful splitters—a splitter may be the only climbable line up a rock face. With a splitter, it’s just you and the crack. If you’re lucky, you may find some face holds for resting, but splitters can be continuously difficult. The tough spots will be the off-finger and off-width sections, where the size of the crack doesn’t fit your specific fingers, hands, or body.
Corner cracks can be striking features, too, and they often offer possibilities for stemming and liebacking. Corners offer more options for resting and moving than do splitters.
In a perfect world, you’ll find an opening in a crack that accepts your fingers to the second or third joint, with a constriction just below to lock them in place. This is called a fingerlock. You can finger jam with your thumb down if the crack is wide enough. In a thin or shallow finger crack, you may get only a first-knuckle fingerlock, which is strenuous and insecure. For tight cracks, or if your fingers don’t fit well thumbs-down, try jamming thumbs-up for a better fit.
Finger jam
A common mistake on finger cracks is failing to find the best locks. With experience, you’ll look at a finger crack and see the good locks, and know whether to jam with your thumbs up or down. Some sequences aren’t obvious, and even experts have to feel around to find the best jams.
If the crack is parallel and no locks exist, insert all your fingers, then rotate your elbow down to cam them in the crack. The finger jam torques your fingers to create opposing pressure across the crack. It’s more strenuous than a fingerlock, but it can be surprisingly secure if your fingers make a tight fit.
If you can’t set a good finger jam you might lieback the crack rather than doing a jam. This works best in corners where you can oppose your feet and hands. Liebacking can be fast, but it can also be strenuous. Protection is often hard to place while liebacking, because you can’t see into the crack. On splitter cracks, liebacking is often an energy-wasting approach used by climbers who don’t know how to jam. But sometimes cranking a few lieback moves is the best way through a tough section.
In a corner, look for stemming possibilities to get weight off the jams. Push your right foot off the right wall opposed by the left foot on the left wall. Or you might push a hip or shoulder off one wall countered by a foot on the other wall.
You may want to tape your first and second knuckles to protect your skin on long, continuous finger cracks, especially if your fingers are already damaged from other climbs. Clean your hands, then wrap a ¾-inch-wide piece of tape three or four times around each knuckle. Press it hard onto your skin to “set” the adhesive. Don’t be sloppy: A bad tape job can unravel on a route and prevent your fingers from getting into a crack. Clean up your tape scraps when you’re done. More details on taping are offered later in this chapter.
Finger cracks often present a challenge for footwork because they can be too narrow to insert your foot. Thin-toed slippers usually work best for jamming a toe or smearing the edge of the crack. If the crack opens up or flares, you can turn your foot sideways, with the big toe up, and slip your toes into the crack. Otherwise, search for face holds outside the crack to edge or smear.
The best sequence of hand and foot movements is determined by the location of the finger jams and footholds. Alter the sequence of moves to suit the crack you’re climbing. For example, you might advance both jams before moving your feet, or advance one hand twice before moving the other hand. When moving your hands up, reach for the highest good jam that doesn’t force you to overextend or hyperextend your arms. If the jam that you need is beyond reach, move your feet up first.
Finding the correct hand sequence on difficult finger cracks can be crucial. Sometimes the obvious sequence leads to a dead end. For example, you might arrive with your left hand reaching for a jam that will only work well with your right hand. In this case, move down a jam or two and fix the sequence to reach the jam with your right hand.
A good hand jam can be the best hold on a route—if you know how to use it. A pitch full of hand jams is nirvana for many crack climbers. Hand jamming feels unnatural at first; it’s strange hanging off your hand wedged in a crack. In time, hand jamming becomes intuitive, and eventually no hold beats a good hand jam.
Foot jam
When hand jamming, find the best spots in the crack to set your hands. If the crack tapers, set your wrist in a constriction so the meaty part of your palm locks into the constriction. Cup the palm of your hand as if you’re trying to hold water in your palm to fill the space around it. This type of hand jam requires little strength. Relax your hand muscles to save energy.
If no constriction exists, jam the crack by cupping your hand, pressing your fingers against the wall and squeezing your thumb into your palm. On one side of the crack, you’ll press your four fingertips, the outside edge of your thumb, and the meaty part of your palm against the crack wall. On the other side of the crack, your knuckles and the back of your hand will press against the rock. Squeezing your thumb into the palm creates most of the jamming force by expanding the “thumb muscle,” which creates outward pressure on the crack walls, which in turn creates friction to give the hand jam its holding power. If the jam doesn’t feel secure, look and feel around for a better jam. For slightly bigger cracks, cam your hand by twisting it toward your thumb until it fits the crack.
Efficient jamming requires good footwork. To do a foot jam:
1.Orient your foot in the crack with the sole of your shoe positioned vertically by pointing your knee out to the side and twisting your ankle so the sole of your shoe is flush against the wall of the crack.
2.Bring your knee back in line with the crack, which torques your foot in the crack.
3.The opposing pressure of a foot jam is extremely secure when done right, so twist no harder than is needed to keep your foot in the crack—this is how you execute a foot jam without pain.
4.To remove the foot jam, release the twist by moving your knee back to the outside and relaxing your ankle.
Common mistakes beginners make while foot jamming:
Placing the shoe in the crack with the shoe’s sole positioned perfectly horizontal. The shoe then folds as you weight it, jamming your foot securely, but in a way that becomes quite difficult to remove, costing you precious strength best used elsewhere. Instead, add a slight twist as described above so you can untwist to remove your foot.
Jamming deep in the crack when perfect jams can be found at the lip. Jamming your feet too deep is awkward, painful, limits your mobility and reach, and can make the rock feel steeper than it is.
Jamming really hard when only a subtle jam is needed.
Focusing entirely on the crack when perfect face holds are available.
Focusing on the face holds when perfect jams are available.
To move fast on straight-up hand cracks, jam both hands thumbs-up. A good sequence is left hand, left foot, right hand, right foot, and repeat. If the crack is straightforward, you can make fast progress by windmilling—reaching through each time you jam, right hand over left hand, left hand over right, and the same with your feet. Find an efficient rhythm with few pauses. On a straight-up crack, you might climb with your hands working like the blades on a windmill from jam to jam while driving upward off your foot jams. More often you’ll reach for the next jam with the lower arm cocked and your legs driving the upward motion. Keeping your shoulder close to the hand jam minimizes the leverage and the load on your biceps.
If the crack is awkward, leaning, in a corner, or overhanging, you might shuffle the jams, so you never reach through but instead constantly lead with the same hand. When shuffling, you may move with your thumb down on the leading hand and thumb up on the lower hand, particularly if the crack is diagonal or is in a corner.
To move the jams:
1.Lock off on the lower arm with your shoulder near your hand jam to minimize leverage.
3.Hang straight-armed off the high jam and advance the lower jam.
Push or drive with your legs to move your weight up. On a leaning crack, one or both feet may stand on face holds.
Sometimes you find great jams in a horizontal crack. Look for a pinch in the crack and lock your hand palm down behind the constriction. If possible, get your thumb behind the pinch to secure your hand; ideally, you’ll have your left hand just left of the pinch, or your right hand just right of the pinch. Fish around to find the most secure jam. If you can’t find the locker position, milk the crack to get the best jam possible.
One beauty of hand jams is that you can reach far between them. Often the trick for passing thin or wide spots in a crack is to make long reaches from hand jam to hand jam, thereby reaching past the bad spots. You can even rotate a hand jam so you lieback off of it or pull up on it to make a long reach.
Avoiding painful jams is important for success on long, hard cracks, and it definitely makes the climb more enjoyable. Taping your hands prevents being mauled by a crack and allows you to climb aggressively rather than tentatively.
On slightly bigger cracks, turn your hand sideways to get a fist jam, but don’t expect the same security as a hand jam. Using your feet well is the key to success on fist cracks. The outside edge of your index finger and back of your lower thumb will contact the rock on one side of the crack, while the outside edge of your pinky and palm contact rock on the other side. Like all jams, the best fist jam will be just above a constriction in the crack. Set your wrist in the constriction and your fist in the opening above it to lock your fist in place.
Fist jam
If no constriction exists, find a spot where your fist fits tightly in the crack, and clench your fist to expand it. Your fist cannot expand nearly as much as your hand when jamming, so you need a fairly tight fit to make the fist jam stick. To improve the security of fist jams:
Experiment with your palm facing in or out.
Jam with your palm facing out, toward you, allowing you to reach farther with the next move.
Shuffle your hands, rather than windmilling, with the palm of your upper hand facing into the crack and the palm of your lower hand facing toward you, and make long reaches off the lower jam to advance the higher one.
Feet fit well in fist cracks, so you can put a lot of weight on your legs. Plant your feet inside the crack and torque them toward your big toes, or just set them across the edge of the crack. Confidently walk your feet up the crack for efficiency. Stiff shoes work best in fist cracks. In the old days, people got away with using lug-soled hiking boots in these kinds of cracks.
If all cracks perfectly fit fingers, hands, and fists, crack climbing would be almost easy. It’s the in-between sizes—the microcracks, off-fingers, thin hands, and off-widths—that can make crack climbing really hard. And the transitions—where the crack rapidly changes sizes—frequently make climbers sweat, pump out, and fall off. Having a good handle on the techniques for all sizes of cracks helps get you through the transitions.
The tiniest cracks—tips cracks—accept just the tips of your fingers. This is a good size for those with small fingers, but difficult for fat-fingered climbers. Sometimes it’s hard to set good protection in ultrathin cracks; other times you can find solid protection in the crack and climb mostly face holds. Look for the best slots and jam with your thumbs up to get your pinky in the crack. Edge or smear your feet off the crack if you cannot find good face holds. Good face climbing technique is the key to success on hard thin cracks.
One of the most strenuous and least secure crack sizes is off-fingers, just bigger than your fingers. Thin-toed slippers excel for this size crack, and good footwork is essential because of the tenuous nature of the jams. There are three basic techniques for off-fingers cracks:
There are several methods for taping the hands. The one shown here is the most durable, but it covers the palm with tape, which may hinder you on hard face climbing. A roll of 1½-inch-wide athletic tape is ideal. Don’t wrap the tape too tight or your hands will cramp when you try to climb. If necessary, shave the backs of your hands to make removal less painful.
1.Start wrapping on your palm just below the index finger. Wrap around the edge of the finger and over the knuckles on the back of the hand. Pass around your palm and wrap again closer to the wrist, overlapping the tape a little bit. Those with big hands might make a third wrap. Spread your fingers as you wrap to help prevent the tape from getting too tight.
2.Keep wrapping lower across the palm and angle toward where the thumb joint meets the wrist. Wrap straight up toward the index finger and tear the tape off at the knuckles.
3.Split the tape into ¾-inch-wide strips. Wrap two strips through the junction between the index finger and the middle finger, and two strips between the middle and ring fingers. These should overlap the tape on each side by about an inch.
4.Add a couple of extra patches of tape to cover the back of the hand.
5.Start wrapping again from the starting point (on the palm below the index finger). Wrap across the knuckles again, and over the palm, and keep wrapping three or four passes until you’ve covered the entire back of your hand all the way to the wrist.
6.Repeat with the other hand.
There are many variations of this taping technique. For wider cracks, you might want more tape, and for thinner cracks, less tape. Practice will help you perfect the taping ritual. When you’re done with the climb, you can cut the tape off on the front of your wrists. Later, you can put the “tape gloves” on again and wrap three passes around your wrists to hold them on.
Thumb cam
Thumb stack: Stack your fingers behind your thumb to span the crack. The fleshy part of your thumb (opposite the thumbnail) contacts the rock on one side of the crack, while the back of your fingers press against the rock on the other side. Think of your thumb as a spacer to narrow the width of the crack while your fingers perform a finger jam.
Finger stack: Fits slightly different crack sizes and shapes than a thumb stack and uses different muscles. Stack your index and middle finger against each other to span the crack and pull straight down, almost as if you are wrapping the two fingers around an imaginary bar in the crack. The jamming action comes from the two second knuckles expanding against each other as you bend your fingers.
Thumb cam: With your thumb oriented downward, wrap your fingers around one side of the crack and cam your thumb against the facing wall. The pressure of your thumb helps your fingers cling to the opposite edge of the crack.
If the crack feels too hard to jam, consider liebacking past the difficulties, especially if the crack is in a corner, or if it’s slightly offset, with one crack wall protruding more than the other so you have conveniently located footholds.
As a crack gets bigger than off-fingers, you get thin hands, where you can almost—but not quite—get your hand in the crack to hand jam. Search for pods or openings where you can set a better jam. Otherwise, stuff your hand as deep as you can into the crack and be careful not to overjam, which wastes strength. Often you’ll jam thumbs-out, but sometimes thumbs-in offers a good jam. Move fast to get through this size of crack before you pump out. Use only a thin layer of tape or none at all; otherwise your jams will become even worse because the tape makes your hands fatter. Slippers sized so they don’t bend your toes work best in this size of crack.
Thin hand jam
Wide hand jams—bigger than good hands but smaller than fists—can be strenuous and insecure. A thick tape job helps fatten your hand and protect your skin. In a wide hand crack, you cam or cup your hands to jam.
To cam your hand: Twist it sideways in the crack toward the thumb so your fingertips and the outside edge of your thumb rest against one side of the crack, and the outside edge of your palm is on the other side.
To cup your hand: Make a very wide hand jam, with the thumb pressing your index finger into the crack. Your fingertips and the fleshy part of your palm press against one side of the crack, while your knuckles and the back of your hand rest against the other side. In a tight hand jam, the fingers may be nearly parallel to the crack, but in a wide hand jam, they may be at a 45-degree angle or more to the crack walls. You might twist the cupped jam slightly, toward your thumb, thereby cupping and camming simultaneously to increase the jamming action.
Off-width cracks are avoided by many climbers because they’re physical, technical, sometimes painful, require specialized gear, and are often baffling. With practice, they can become much easier and even fun. The trick is in translating the outward pressure that you create between two planes of rock into upward motion. Small inefficiencies when climbing off-width cracks create vast amounts of wasted effort.
Hand-to-fist stack
When climbing wide cracks, dress for the occasion. High-top climbing shoes will protect your ankles and a long-sleeve shirt will help save the skin on your shoulders and arms. Depending on the size of the off-width, you might tape your hands up like a mummy or not at all. If the crack is in the 4- to 6-inch size range, where you may be hand-stacking, tape for battle. You may also want to tape your inner knee if you expect sustained knee jamming, and your ankles if you lack high-top shoes. For wider cracks, tape doesn’t help much, but kneepads might.
Fist-to-fist stack
Hand-stacking may be the ticket on cracks too big to fist jam. To stack, set two jams side by side to fill the width of the crack. You can stack hand to hand, hand to fist, and fist to fist to adapt your hand-stack to the crack size. Cross your arms at the wrists when setting a hand-to-hand jam, so your palms face the rock on both sides of the crack. A hand-to-fist or fist-to-fist jam can be set with arms crossed or not crossed, depending on what feels most stable. Experienced stackers cross their arms more frequently than those who have less experience with the technique.
To move the hand-stack up, you must lock yourself in the crack with your knees or legs. If the off-width is less than vertical, you just stand over your feet to advance the hand-stacks. On steeper cracks, try to get a good—if painful—knee jam. Slide a knee into the crack, then fold your lower leg back so your foot wraps around the edge of the crack. The foot of your other leg cams in the crack below to stabilize your body. You’ll be amazed at how much holding power the knee jam gives.
With a good knee jam, you can hang out in the crack and let go with both hands to move up your stacks. As the crack gets bigger, bury your entire thigh in the crack and fold your leg back at the knee to expand the width of your leg jam. Just don’t get your knee stuck in the crack!
Knee jam
If your knee does get stuck, relax the knee and try to remove it the same way it went in. If you are lead climbing, set a piece of protection above—you may need to hang on the gear to unstick your knee. Don’t thrash too hard or you’ll inflame the knee and get it really stuck. Relax and take your time to work it free.
One of the most vicious sizes of off-widths is just bigger than your fists but too small to fit your knee. You can climb this size using traditional off-width technique (see the next section), or you can use hand-stacks and foot cams. To foot cam: Set your foot inside the crack and twist the ball of your foot hard against the crack wall, opposed by the outside heel on the opposite side of the crack. You might cam your lower foot by pressing the inside heel against one wall and twisting the outside of the front of your foot against the opposite wall. This maneuver requires immense abdominal strength if the crack is vertical or steeper.
To move the hand-stacks up:
1.Cam one foot deep inside the crack, almost at waist level.
2.Cam the other foot below, on the crack’s edge.
3.Pull your torso in with the high foot, and support your weight with the low foot.
4.Crank a sit-up to move your hand-stack higher while suspending your weight off your foot cams.
5.Move your foot cams up and repeat.
Traditional off-width technique, using arm bars, chicken wings, and heel-toe jams, can see you through when the crack is too big for hand-stacks, or if you have little experience hand-stacking. Sometimes traditional technique is easier than hand-stacking if the crack is too narrow to accept your knees. To set an arm bar, reach a full arm’s length into the crack and press the forward wall with your palm (thumb up), countered by pressure from your triceps and shoulder pressing against the back wall. The other hand can Gaston the edge of the crack (grab it with your thumb down and elbow out and pull away from yourself) or grab face holds when they are available. Both feet should cam in the crack unless a useful face hold appears.
In a crack that’s too large for foot cams, use heel-toe jams. Jam your foot straight across the crack, with your toes against one wall and your heel against the opposite wall. With stiff shoes, your feet will lock across the crack. With supple shoes, you must maintain pressure on your toes.
If the crack is wide enough, a chicken wing allows you to hold on using little strength. If the chicken wing fits tightly, your elbow will point almost horizontally into the crack.
To set a chicken wing:
1.Bend your arm sharply at the elbow and point the elbow in and up so it looks like a chicken wing inside the crack.
Chicken wing
2.Press your palm against the front wall and your triceps against the back wall.
3.Pull down on your upper arm to cam your lower arm across the crack and lock it in place.
To climb a wide crack:
1.Set a chicken wing if the crack is big enough and an arm bar with the inside arm if it’s not.
2.With the outside hand press with your palm, grab a face hold or the edge of the crack in front of you.
3.Set a heel-toe inside if the crack’s big enough, and do a foot cam if it’s not. Do the same with the outer foot on the edge of the crack. Both feet must be secure.
4.Jam the inside hip and buttock inside the crack if they fit, but don’t get so jammed in that you can’t move.
5.Use your arms, inside leg, and wedged hip and buttock to hold your body in place.
6.Move the outside foot up and set a stable heel-toe jam or foot cam.
7.Ease the outward pressure on your arms, inside leg, hip, and buttock so your body can slide up.
8.Press your body up with the outside foot and leg, then reapply the outward pressure.
9.Let your inside foot slide up with your body and reset it.
10.On easier cracks, you can let one or both arms slide up with your body. On harder ones, move your arms up one at a time and reset them.
11.Repeat steps 6 through 9 to climb the wide crack.
Many variations to this technique exist. Don’t be afraid to adjust the technique as the crack dictates. All wide cracks are different, and each has its own best solution. Creativity is key.
Most of the time, use your outside foot to drive your upward progress, while your other foot, arms, hips, and buttocks stabilize you in the crack. Also, look for helpful footholds and handholds inside and outside the crack to make the moves easier. Sometimes face holds will make an otherwise imposing off-width or other wide crack trivial.
On many wide cracks, it’s easy to hold your position; it’s just hard to move up. Rest between moves by letting your body relax as much as possible. Take your time and milk the rests to keep your heart rate at a reasonable level.
Transitions—where the crack changes quickly from one size to another—can be the crux of a wide crack, because the hand and feet combinations get tricky. Often the trick is getting your feet or knees through the transition. There are as many solutions as there are transitions: The best solution may be to lieback through the transition; maybe you can find face holds to help you through; and sometimes you have no choice but to grunt it out with some good old-fashioned off-width moves. When using traditional off-width technique, you usually have one side facing into the crack. Which side depends on the crack and its features. In a left-facing corner, you’ll often put your right side in the crack so you can work the face to the left with your foot and the right wall with your hips and back. Sometimes you’ll climb with your left side in for awhile, then switch when the crack changes—you might switch sides several times to find the easiest passage up a wide crack. When you turn, you want to be able to get the rack out of your way. Carry all your gear—protection, quickdraws, belay devices, everything—on a single gear sling. That way you can easily move it from one side to the other as the crack dictates to keep the rack out of the crack.
If you feel like upward progress is impossible, relax and be creative. Try something different. Use a combination of the techniques described here. Most of all, relax every chance you get.
If you can get completely inside a crack, but just barely, you’re in a squeeze chimney. If it’s super tight, you can lock yourself in with a butt jam by flexing your gluteus muscles. If your feet don’t fit across the crack, use knee bars, by smearing your knees against the front wall to oppose your feet and butt on the back wall.
It is often hard to move up in a squeeze chimney that’s too wide for heel-toe jams. The sidewinder technique works great here. Facing toward one of the chimney walls, turn your body almost horizontal so your head is slightly higher than your feet.
To support yourself in the crack:
1.Set a chicken wing with your upper arm.
2.Set a reverse chicken wing with your lower arm. Your triceps jams the back wall next to your torso, and your palm presses the front wall below.
3.Twist your upper hip forward against the front wall so it cams against your lower buttock pressed against the back wall.
4.Press both knees into the front wall, opposed by your heels on the back wall.
To move up the squeeze chimney:
1.Slide your arms and torso upward and reset the chicken wings.
2.Move your hips up and twist them to cam across the crack again.
3.Move your legs up and reset the knee bars.
4.Repeat, slithering up the crack like a snake.
This technique allows you to quickly pass through tight chimneys.
The shoulder scrunch can be invaluable in tight or awkward chimneys. While pushing your back off the wall behind, “reach” up with your shoulder blades, press them against the wall, then move the rest of your back up. Believe it or not, this technique works great for small moves in tight spots.
Several sequences of moves can be used to climb a chimney, depending on the specific features and crack width.
Chimney move
1.Place your feet against the front wall.
2.Oppose your feet with your back and buttocks against the back wall.
3.To move, push both hands off the back wall and slide your back and buttocks up.
4.Step both feet up, one at a time.
5.Repeat.
Or:
1.Place your feet against the front wall.
2.Oppose your feet with your back and buttocks against the back wall.
3.Set one foot against the back wall and push with that foot and both hands to move your body up.
4.Return the foot to a higher point on the front wall, and move the other foot up.
5.Repeat, perhaps alternating the foot that pushes off the back wall.
In a wider chimney, you may have one foot on one wall and the other foot on the other wall. In this case, you’re stemming across the chimney. Push one or both hands off the right wall to move your right foot up, then push one or both hands off the left wall to move your left foot up. Seek the best footholds for placing your feet. If you have no footholds, consciously press your feet or smear them into the rock to make them stick.
In the biggest chimneys, if the walls are too far apart for your legs to span, you can do a full-body stem. Put your hands on one crack wall and your feet on the other, then walk your hands and feet up. This position forces you to look straight down into the bowels of the chimney. It’s strenuous and hard to climb out of, too. Luckily, it’s a rarely used maneuver.
EXERCISE: CRACK MACHINE
You can build a crack machine to improve your jamming. Next to spending months in Yosemite, Indian Creek, or Vedauwoo, the best way to improve your crack-climbing prowess is to spend hours suspended from all different sizes of overhanging wooden cracks.
Take 2x10-inch boards, from 10 to 16 feet long, depending on how much space you have available, and bolt them parallel to each other with threaded rods spaced 2 feet apart to simulate a crack. Build a support for the boards on both ends so they’re inclined between 30 degrees and 60 degrees, overhanging like a very steep roof. You’ll be climbing the underside of the “roof.” If you use two boards you’ll get one crack, and three boards bolted together gives you two cracks. Ideally, you’ll make one crack that fits your hands perfectly, another for thin hand jams, and perhaps one for fists and one for fingers. You may want to paint a nonskid (or anti-slip) coating on the boards to better imitate rock; check at a paint or hardware store. Tape your hands when you climb using the crack machine or risk having the skin stripped off them.
Want to get dialed on crack climbing? Pack your bags and head off for Indian Creek, Utah; Yosemite, California; Vedauwoo, Wyoming; Turkey Rock, Colorado; Paradise Forks, Arizona; Cathedral Ledge, New Hampshire; New River Gorge, West Virginia; Chamonix, France; Mount Buffalo, Australia; Orco Valley, Italy; Squamish, Canada; or another great crack-climbing area. If you’re really serious about improving your crack skills, you need to pay your dues.
Plan for a long weekend, or much better, a week or two (or several weeks), and hit the road to crank some cracks. If you’re really serious about getting the maximum gain, hire a guide who’s noted for his or her crack-climbing skills to show you the finer points of crack climbing. A guide will also have local knowledge of the crack routes that will be good for you to work on so you can make a tick list.
After a guided day, work on the following exercises:
Find a good finger crack and set up a top-rope. Climb the crack many times, finger jamming many different spots in the crack to find the best locks. Climb it using the maximum possible number of finger jams, and the minimum number. Pick a finger crack that’s challenging but not desperate for your climbing level.
Find a straight-up hand crack and climb it many times. Try jamming thumbs-up, thumbs-down, thumbs toward each other. Climb the crack as fast as you can. Climb it once just focusing on getting the best possible foot jams. Climb it with the maximum number of jams and then make huge reaches to climb it with the minimum number of jams.
Find a fist crack and crank some laps. Concentrate on getting solid fist jams and being really stable on your foot jams.
Find a low-angle, 5- to 6-inch-wide crack and try hand-stacking. Stack hand to hand and hand to fist, and try crossing your arms versus not crossing them. Practice setting and hanging off knee jams.
Climb the same crack with traditional off-width technique. Try to climb it right-side-in and then left-side-in. Concentrate on getting good foot cams or heel-toe jams and solid arm bars and chicken wings.
By the end of these exercises, you should be able to cruise cracks and crank them much more efficiently and at a much higher level than you did before.
