Rock Climbing: The Art of Safe Ascent

This book presents the most current techniques and equipment
concerning the roped safety system as it applies to outdoor climbing. Basic
methods have changed little in forty years, but the gear has so steadily
evolved that belay and protection devices, harnesses, and shoes from as
recent as 2000 look downright archaic today. Climbing’s surging popularity
is matched by a tsunami of lab testing data and field-based testimony about
gear and rigging systems, and how to best use them. This information has
shaped our methods and attitudes, sometimes incorrectly.
The following chapters derive from the ocean of physical data and
technical analyses available, combined with our decades of teaching and
writing about climbing, and shape it all into one coherent system. Most
methods described here are known, exhaustively tested and widely used,
but a collective review of proven techniques, clearly and simply presented
in one sourcebook, is long overdue.