Welcome to the Series

Your first summer trip to the alps is a formative moment in many British climber’s careers. Expectation, excitement and healthy apprehension are some among the many emotions you will feel ahead of, and during your trip.

Impostor syndrome is fairly common, understandable, and natural. But, having the right gear, experience, and skills can go some way to calm the nerves and ease your transition into the ‘big hills’. This article series seeks to breakdown not just what you need to bring, but also what you need to know, and what you should have done first, in a ‘packing list’ style article.

Not all recommendations here are universally applicable since the Alps are a vast and varied region, but this article should serve as a good general starting point. Always read ahead, know the intricacies of your route and its requirements, seek out current and general beta, and remember there’s always another trip, but you wont have another life; at least not this one.

Part 1 - Clothing

Part 2 - Technical Gear

Part 3 - Packs, Camp and Bivvy

Part 4 - Skills, Knowledge & Experience : Below

What do I actually need to know?

In most walks of life, ‘having all the gear but no idea’ is little more than mildly embarrassing. Unfortunately, in the alpine arena, there’s a very real possibility that this will get you killed.

The most dangerous times in any alpinist’s career are at the beginning and end of it. At both ends of the spectrum climbers are operating beyond their relevant scope of competency. New climbers eagerly take to snowy peaks, armed with sharp objects on the hands and feet, but a dull appreciation of the hazards presented, and the techniques to manage them. Seasoned alpinists on the other hand are often seeking to push their limits going on longer, harder, more remote and complex routes. The competencies required may then rise to exceed the experienced climber’s level of competency.

Typically aspirant alpinists are drawn from one of two camps, hillwalkers/trekkers and rock climbers. Trekkers can and do make the transition successfully and over a number of years will build up to tackling technical objectives. Some rock climbers have made the transition very quickly and compiled an impressive alpine tick list at a dizzying speed. Others may take a little longer, and many will never successfully make the switch. There seems to be no universal correlation between technical rock ability and alpine success. Why? Well, it comes down to ‘soft skills’.

‘Soft skills’ include intuition, mountain sense and self-care among other things. Trekkers have usually developed these from time out in the mountains, even if in a non-technical non-glaciated setting. Rock climbers, in spite of their talent or athleticism, often have not had the chance to develop these skills. Adventurous traditional and big wall climbing being notable exceptions. Time spent on the wall will make you very good at getting up a technical alpine rock route, but will teach nothing about getting to and off it.

This article addresses the skills, knowledge and experience required to succeed. Competencies are catagorised from ‘low physical barrier to entry’ to ‘high physical barrier to entry’. This likely also reflects most aspirant alpinist’s progress from low tech to high tech routes. The elusive and nebulous ‘soft skills’ are left to the end, as truly these are often the hardest to master.

Snow Travel

Anyone wishing to operate in truly ‘alpine’ terrain can expect to encounter snow at some point during the itinerary. However, there are an increasing number of ‘alpine rock’ objecives in the alps which have entirely snow free itineraries except for early in the season.

Avalanche safety knowledge and rescue skills are often overlooked by summer alpinists. However, those operating high early in the season (mid-late May), do so at their peril.

• Crampons

  • Comfortable walking in crampons on variety of mediums and gradients.

  • Familiarity and proficiency with French technique to 40deg.

  • Transition in and out of crampons on steep ground.

• Piolet/Ice Axe

  • Familiarity and proficiency with self-arrest techniques.

• Avalanche

  • Weather and climate, how it builds a snowpack and snowpack mechanics (more here).

  • Terrain management (more here).

  • Single burial transceiver search, probing and strategic shoveling (more here).

  • Multiple burial transceiver search (more here).

  • Multiple rescuer techniques (more here).

Glacial Travel & Crevasse Rescue

Many itineraries can now completely avoid an glacier travel due in large part to glacial retreat. Similarly, a number of popular ‘alpine rock’ destinations are unglaciated; for example, the Dolomites, Kaiser Range or Cerces Massif.

• Rope Skills

  • Kiwi Coil

  • Knots: Figure eight and overhands on a bight, alpine butterfly.

  • Hitches: Autoblock and classic prusik, clove, munter and garda hitches.

• Snow and Ice Anchors

  • Proficiency placing ice screws with left and right hands.

  • Ice and snow bollards.

  • Pickets and deadmans, including techniques for improvising a deadman anchor.

  • THINX anchors if travelling on skis.

• Crevasse Rescue Sequence

• Ascending

  • Familiarity and proficiency ascending a rope by a variety of means Progress Capture Device (PCD), prusiking and prusiking with an extended belay device.

• Raising

  • 3:1 and 5:1 raising systems.

  • Drop loop raising systems.

Classic Alpine Routes

Classic alpine routes are those on major peaks in the PD+ to AD range, incorporating glacial travel, snow climbing, and short passages on rock no harder than 4a/5.7/HS. In addition to snow and glacial travel skills, climbers looking to operate safely on such routes should look to meet with the following.

• Movement Skills

  • Moving on firm snow/neve.

  • Transitioning from snow to rock.

  • Climbing easy rock in crampons.

  • Climbing rock in ‘big boots’.

• Leading & Seconding

  • Comfortably climbing 4a/5.7/HS on rock at home.

  • Placing and retrieving leader placed rock and ice protection.

  • Natural protection, -threads and spikes.

  • Bolt inspection and identification (more here).

  • Piton inspection and identification, and tying off pitons.

  • French free and guerilla aid tactics.

  • Moving together/Simul-climbing.

  • Building belays and belaying direct off the anchor with munter and ATC guide

  • Multi-pitch stance management and rope management.

• Rappelling

  • Building and inspecting rappel stations.

  • Making ‘naked’ abalakovs.

  • Standard extended rappel.

  • Rappelling with an extended munter hitch.

  • ‘Biner block’ rappel.

  • Isolating rope damage for rappel.

• Improvised self-rescue techniques (see below)

Improvised Self-Rescue Techniques

The following should provide the basis for an improvised self-rescue sequence. However, replication is not the same as understanding, so ensure you truly recognise and understand how a system works and why it works.

• Rescue Knots

  • Overhand and overhand on a bight.

  • Figure eight and figure eight on a bight.

  • Figure nine and figure nine on a bight.

  • Flemish bend

  • Double fisherman’s bend

  • Water knot

• Rescue Hitches

  • Munter hitch

  • Mule hitch

  • Munter-mule-overhand combination (MMO)

  • Clove hitch

  • Friction hitches - Prusik, classic prusik, autoblock, bachman, kleimheist.

  • Garda hitch

• Escaping the Belay

  • Belaying off the harness with anchor in and out of reach.

  • Belaying of the anchor.

• Descending

  • Lowering with one and two seconds.

  • Lower a leader out on more than half the rope.

  • Rappelling with ATC, GriGri, biner block, extended munter hitch.

  • Rappelling with an unconscious partner.

  • Simul rappelling

  • Tandem rappelling

• Ascending

  • Prusiking - Simple, slingshot and with an extended belay device.

  • Top Rope Soloing techniques

  • Improvised lead rope solo techniques.

• Passing Knots

  • Isolating rope damage.

  • Pretied clip in loops.

  • Passing knots on lower, rappel, ascending and raising.

• Raising

  • Drop line when belaying off harness and anchor in and out of reach.

  • 3:1 and 5:1 raising systems off the anchor and harness.

All of these techniques and more are described in Self-Rescue for Climbers: The Essential Skills, which serves as an excellent starting point.

Alpine Rock Routes

As a label it can be hard to pin down exactly what ‘alpine rock’ is. Some consider a multi-pitch sport climb in a setting above the treeline an ‘alpine rock’ route, others would disagree, and would expect to be crossing glaciers and finding little in the way of fixed gear before the experience could be considered suitably ‘alpine’.

Either way, for those looking to climbing long remote route with sustained sections of technical rock climbing a base level of technical rock ability is essential. Of course this varies depending on the rock, but to make an alpine trip worthwhile, climbers should be climbing 6a/E1/5.10- on gear.

You do not want to be climbing at, or anywhere near, your limit in an alpine setting, in the interests of expediency and safety. Routes are long and climbers need to move quickly whether simul-climbing or pitching it out. Nobody moves fast if they’re climbing close to their limit. Secondly, in order to make long routes feasible, most climbers will be climbing with slimmer racks than they are used to. As such, you should be more than comfortable on ground of that grade above gear.

Although there are low graded alpine rock route with no climbing above 4b/HS/5.7 which would be suitable propositions for less capable rock leaders, the truth is that climbers operating at a lower level would be better off doing one of two things. Either, staying home and focusing on their technical rock climbing ability so they can return to the alps stronger and better physically prepared. Alternatively, targeting classic alpine routes in the PD+ to AD range to further hone their mountain sense and make them more competent alpine operators.

There are more advanced tactics which climbers may begin to use as their alpine career develops. For example, the leader fixing a line for the second to ascend whilst the bag is hauled on hard free pushes. But these exceed the scope of an article series targeted at a first alpine trip.

Soft Skills

Soft skills essentially amount to self-care and whilst there is no blueprint for acquisition, time spent in the hills with similarly keen and driven people should hone them adequately.

Soft skills suffer from the ‘horizon trap’, in which the more you know, the more you come to realise how little you in fact know. However, the following 7 points should serve to guide aspirant alpinists in the right direction.

• Mountain Weather

  • Read weather forcasts and develop an appreciation of how these feel on the ground, as well as how they may be affected by an individual peak or range as a whole. Learn what factors might affect a forecast and its accuracy. For an academic grounding, start here.

• Navigation

  • Build solid navigation skills, and become comfortable using maps and GPS in conjunction with the ground in front of you and your own familiarity with an area. Build a directional intuition and a ‘mental map’ of the areas you operate in.

• Hydration

  • Design you own preloading and hydration strategies for a day. Remember, hydration isn’t just about water.

• Food

  • Food on the fly isn’t the same as food on the couch.

    Develop a continuous snacking system which works for you. Discern which foods you can bring on route and which you’d be better off leaving at home from a weight and performance sensitive outlook. Some people may be able to run well on a diet of snickers and water at 4000m, most people can’t.

• Packing

  • Light is right.

    Learn what to throw out and what to keep depending on the ascent. Taking everything you may need often slows you down so much that you do need it.

• Efficiency

  • Familiar operators are smooth operators, and smooth operators are fast operators.

    From stepping into your crampons at the beginning of the day to stance management, to the last frosty rappels down efficiency is king. The least it will do is give you an easier ride in the hills and get you home earlier, the most, well it might just save your life.

In addition to these starting points all climbers should seek out wilderness medical training, with an accredited wilderness first aid course as an absolute minimum. The time and monetary investment will pay dividends if you ever have misfortune great enough to use it. Consider it a moral insurance policy.

Learnt something? You may enjoy our book ‘Self-Rescue for Climbers: The Essential Skills’.

Enjoyed it? Buy the No Thrills team a coffee to say thanks!