Top 3 Resources for Climbing information

1. Your local gym
Your local gym will have loads of people who know what they are doing and are willing to help you if you have questions. In my opinion your number one resource should be people who do rock climbing for a living. These people will always have a better understanding of what you need to do in order to stay safe out on the mountain. If you know any certified rock guides this is even better, but chances are you don’t. I don’t know any rock climbing now let alone when I was first starting out. Your local gym employees are then next best thing in my opinion. They may not be certified guides, but chances are they are climbing every waking second, I mean why else would they work at the gym? It’s not for the money that’s for sure. This means they will almost always have the answer to one of your questions or if they don’t they might know someone who can help you out. It’s always good to remember that no matter who you get your information from it’s up to you to make sure you’re safe. If you get hurt or worse killed you can’t blame Jim at the gym for your screw up.

2. YouTube
I hesitate to put YouTube on this list because like anything on YouTube there is great information, and there is really crappy information. When I first started climbing YouTube is where I got a ton of my information. I think that YouTube can be a really great source, but I would say it is a secondary source. What I mean by this is that you should use YouTube to learn what you need to learn. Sometimes when you’re starting out climbing you don’t even know what you need to learn because at the end of the day you don’t know what you don’t know. I like to use YouTube to start my research on certain topics and then use more reliable sources to hone down the info.

3. Mountain Project
Mountain Project is a really great forum that is put out by REI and it has loads of information on it. It’s public, so like YouTube you need to be a little careful about the information you find, but I’ve found that if someone puts bad information on it someone else is quick to correct it. Mountain Project’s main purpose is to help climber locate climbs in different regions of the world. Just about every climb in the world is logged on Mountain Project with directions on how to get there and how climb the route safely. Some directions are better than others, but Mountain Project is the exclusive source I use when I’m looking for new climbs to do.

These are 3 great sources for information on climbing, I must reiterate though that at the end of the day you are responsible for your own life, and in many cases the life of your climbing partner. Always air on the side of caution and if you feel uncomfortable doing something DON’T!!!!!