Mountaineering Basics Every Adventurer Should Know [Tips & Techniques]

What's the struggle for all novice mountaineers? For us, it was perhaps the challenge of progressing from snow hill walking to developing skills needed for more technical terrain.
We live in a country where there aren't many easy mountains to climb. Pretty quickly, we encountered the reality of technical alpine terrain, forcing us to transition into more challenging ground. How did we progress towards climbing more technical peaks? Stick around, as we share our story.
Timecodes
0:00 - A struggle for all mountaineers
0:34 - Four essential Alpine skills
1:40 - Skill 1. Moving through grade I/II Alpine Terrain
3:40 - Skill 2. Abseiling
6:52 - Skill 3. Rope work and Belaying
8:20 - Skill 4. Placing protection and Making Anchors
10:02 - From a Hiker to a Technical Climber

[@gregoryborman1439]

When retrieving gear as the second, I prefer to clip it to the bottom of the shoulder straps on my pack (if I can’t put it on my harness). Putting it on a sling like you had gets in the way.

[@alpine_squad]

A great idea! I will try it next time as you’re right, having all that gear on a sling across the chest causes it to slide in front of me which is super annoying for my next climbing moves. Thanks for sharing, Gregory! PS. Yeah, the harness loops aren’t usually available because of the backpack blocking it. I also don’t know using loops on the hip straps of a backpack as it’s too far back…

[@energeia1877]

Love your videos. Bit odd about your abseil rope though. The setup at the sling obviously calls for you to pull on green. Which is what you eventually did with success. So the problem wasn't a stuck rope, apparently, but you were pulling on the wrong rope.

[@alpine_squad]

Thank you. We checked like 4 times before going down, lol, and for some reason truly believed we needed to pull the blue one. Funny enough, if looking at 4:56 - seems to be the blue one, but earlier at 4:48 - it actually looks like the green one. Now totally confused 😂

[@tanmaybhati6963]

do you just leave the sling behind ?

[@alpine_squad]

Yep, you could do with a sling left behind or a cheaper version would be to place a piece of 6mm paracord tied with a fisherman’s knot. That’s what we usually do, saves heaps of $.