Shoes are a Climber's Best Friend

This week, I looked up some general information on indoor rock climbing. Rock walls vary by height (20 to 60 ft) and difficulty (5.7 being the easiest and 5.14 being the hardest). For those walls, you need at least two people: one person is the climber and the other is the belayer. A belayer is responsible for controlling the slack of the rope that is attached to the top of the wall/ceiling and the climber. Bouldering is a type of climbing that can be done alone; the height of the bouldering walls are shorter than regular climbing walls, and no harness or belay device is need for it. Many mats and pads surround the walls for comfortable falls and landings.

Some important equipment needed are harnesses, locking cabiners, chalk bags and chalk, and shoes. This week, I focused more on shoes than the other equipment.Similar to running and other sports, shoes are really important to rock climbing. I knew that the type of shoes you wear are important to climbing because you don’t want your feet slipping, but I never knew that there are many parts to climbing shoes to keep in mind when buying them.

http://www.indoorclimbing.com/Rock_Climbing_Shoes.html

There are actually ten important parts to a shoe: the rubber, sole, midsole, heel rand, heel, heel loop, lining, material, lacing, and curvature. Type of rubber corresponds with the type of climbing you will be doing (soft rubber for edging and hard rubber for face climbs). The sole and midsole deal with the flexibility of the shoe. The material and lining are important factors of comfort; your foot should be able to "breathe" and padding is optional but does add weight. Basically, the shoes should be tight, yet comfortable for your feet.

So far, I've learned more about the basics of climbing and more about the equipment. I was not able to visit Stone Summit this weekend, but I'm hoping to be able to go soon. I want to be able to try it out before researching any techniques for climbing so that I can get an idea of where I'm starting from. I haven't decided on a goal yet; it will most likely be to be able to climb a wall of a certain difficulty, but I won't know for sure until I can go to the gym. For the upcoming week, I'm hoping to wrap up researching the purposes of the equipment and get into how to use it, and I'm also going to look at safety. There's a lot of information to take in, but I've been enjoying researching so far, and I'm really excited to start climbing.