Rock Climbing Gear Guide 2024 | Everything you need to go climbing (sport & trad)

So, rock climbing. Of all the outdoor activities that we've tried over the years, climbing has definitely been a favorite for us and it's taken us to some of the wilder places. From the granite walls of Yosemite Valley to the sketchiest towers in the Utah desert and so many other epic places in between. It's been a long journey for us to learn the ropes and get comfortable with our gear but I think we're finally at a place where we have all of our systems dialed. So today we're walking through all the gear that we use for rock climbing in 2024. Hey everybody, welcome back to the channel. If you're new here, my name is Cody and I'm Victoria and right now we are in Moab actually doing a little climbing trip, hanging out with some friends and hoping to get on some sandstone. But today we figured since we have all of our climbing gear with us and we've never done a climbing gear video that we would just walk you guys through every single piece of gear that we use for rock climbing. Yeah, we've been climbing for about four years now and you can see our progress on the channel from top roping all the way to like big alpine climbs and everything in between. So yeah, we feel like we have our systems pre-dialed, our gears pretty much set and we're just going to walk you through everything that we have. Yeah, I know this video would have been super helpful for me when I was first starting out or, you know, progressing into trad climbing or anything like that, but keep in mind that this is just the gear that we use. It's not going to be for everybody. You know, people have all kinds of gear in their racks, so this is what works for us. I mean, we've climbed all over the country and in some different countries and yeah, never felt like we're missing anything. So yeah, this is what works for us. Might not be what works for you, but I just figured it might be helpful to show you guys what we're using. So with that, let's get into some gear. Okay, so I think we're just going to start with the things that we wear. This is what we're wearing every time we go rock climbing, no matter what type of climbing we're doing. Pretty much the essentials. Aside from bouldering, of course. You have to wear this stuff every single time, so. Yeah. And we don't boulder, so we're always wearing it. So let's start with our helmets. This is pretty important to have. So I have the Petzl Borea helmet. And I have the Petzl Boreo helmet. So you'll notice Victoria and I are married, so our gear is like pretty much all the same, you know. We buy the same harnesses and the same helmets and all that. So yeah, basically the same helmet. She's got the women's version, obviously I have the men's version. But these are brand new this year and so far we really like them. We've got a handful of days on them and they're super comfortable, much lighter than our old helmets and a lot more ventilation too. Yes, so much ventilation and the back has these like two clicks for adjustments and I really like that. I feel like it's just like a more accurate sizing for your head. Another new piece of gear that we have this year is these harnesses. So I have the Petzl Luna. And I have the Petzl Adjama. I think that's how you pronounce it. But they're pretty much the same harness again, women's version, men's version. We have been loving these harnesses. Yeah. Mostly, I think our favorite feature is probably like the really big gear loops. So we're mostly doing trad climbing, which means we're carrying a ton of gear all the time. So having the bigger gear loops has been really nice for carrying all of our gear. It also has a gear loop in the very back, which has been ultra nice because you can keep your anchor and your repel device and all of that stuff out of the way so that when you're climbing it's not, you know, getting in the way of grabbing your gear and stuff like that. So yeah, I really like the padding on the leg loops too and the hip part too. Yeah. It's just super comfortable when we're doing long days on the rock. It's just nice to have a comfortable harness to just hang out in all day. Yeah. And shoes. Speaking of comfort. We both have Mythos. So these are like the trad shoes to get. They're very comfortable. There's no downturn at all. You can hang out in these all day long with no foot pain. And yeah, I mean, they're not, you know, they're a trad shoe. They're super flat. They're not that stiff. You're probably not going to send your hardest sport climb in these, even though I have, but wouldn't recommend it for sending your project, but we like them. I mean, this is our only pair of shoes, which for a reason they're affordable and shoes are not cheap. Yeah. And we just like trad climbing mostly. So like, yeah, this is the we want. And then lastly is just chalk bag, chalk bags, nothing special. My chalk bag is from the nineties and I don't know what the brand is because the label is worn out, but they're pretty much exactly the same. Hers is just really old. Uh, mine's made by Metolius and again, nothing real special about it has a little cinch on there. So it keeps your chalk from spilling out. You know, it gets the job done, keeps your hands from getting all sweaty and sticky. So yeah, they're all kind of the same, but you got to have a chalk bag if you're going to go climbing. Yep. So this is everything that we wear when we go climbing. And now let's talk about more fun gear. Okay. So I would consider this the bare minimum of gear that you need to go climbing outside. So essentially just like top roping. So with that, let's talk about our rope first. This is the Beal booster rope. It is 70 meters long. Um, we chose a 70 meter because it seems like every climb that we want to do requires a 70 meter. We had a 60 when we first started climbing and found out pretty quickly that, uh, you need a 70. So, and it's also two tone. So half of the rope is one pattern and the other half is another pattern just to help you indicate halfway. So like when you're repelling off of like a multi pitch climb, or even sometimes when you have to clean an anchor and repel off, you need to find halfway on the rope. It's pretty important. So yeah, we really liked the two tone it's dry treated. It essentially makes it kind of waterproof and keeps your rope protected longer. It keeps it away from the elements a little bit. So, um, yeah, we really love this rope. We probably won't get a different one for a long time. It works for us and we like it. So the next thing is our anchor. Now this is not a tutorial. We're not here to teach you anything about how to go rock climbing. We're just talking about the gear that we use. So if you want to learn anything about how to go rock climbing, watch a video with a certified guide or hire a guide and they'll teach you all about climbing. So with that, this is our anchor. This is actually our main anchor that we use for sport climbing, top roping. So this is basically a piece of accessory cord. It's 20 feet long, wrapped in a loop. It's pretty long. We wanted it to be long because it gives us just more variety of different anchors that we can build. We'll carry four lockers. Typically we're carrying four lockers if we know that there's a bolted anchor. You'll see two bolts or chains and we're setting up a top rope. We'll carry four and we like the locking carabiners. Just make sure that they don't open mid-climb. It's pretty important. You can just get a good brand. This is black diamond. So pretty strong. Okay, and then the last thing is your belay device. So we're using a Grigri made by Petzl and this is pretty much the standard for belaying. Your belay device is really important. It keeps your partner safe and if your partner falls, it helps to catch them. And the Grigri is just the best. It's easy to use. It's pretty much foolproof, redundant, and yeah, I mean you should just get a Grigri. So yeah, that's pretty much all the gear that you need to start with to start climbing outside and now we're going to get into some more fun climbing stuff. All right, so now that we've got the basic bare minimum stuff out of the way, let's talk about actually going lead climbing and we'll start with sport climbing. So I've got my harness racked up exactly how I would wear it if I was going to go sport climbing and we'll just take you through every piece of gear that's on my harness. So first of all, probably most important for sport climbing are sport draws, also known as quick draws, which is basically just two carabiners and they're attached together with a really strong piece of webbing. So the way these things work is you clip them to a bolt on the climb and then you clip your rope into the other side and that's what's going to catch you if you fall. Again, probably the most important thing is like make sure you get some from a reputable climbing brand. You know, don't just buy some generic ones off of Amazon. But yeah, they all pretty much do the same thing. We have 13 quick draws total, which has been plenty for pretty much anything we want to do. There are some climbs where you're going to need more, in which case hopefully you have some friends. But yeah, you can't go sport climbing without sport draws. Next, again, we carry an anchor. It's the same anchor that Victoria told you about. You can make a top rope anchor with your quick draws as well, but obviously they don't lock so it's not as safe, but still super bomber. We do it all the time. Not a tutorial though, so you'll have to learn that somewhere else. And then I always carry a belay device, also can be used as a repel device. Even when I'm lead climbing, because sometimes you can't see the anchors, you don't know what it's going to look like up there, and there's a small chance that you'll need to lower yourself down, which you can do with a Grigri. So yeah, I'll always carry a Grigri up on a sport climb with me as well. And lastly, you want to bring some sort of personal tether, preferably with a locking carabiner. So again, we're just using accessory cord because it's cheap, you can find it pretty much anywhere, and you can replace it pretty easily. So almost like every year we'll replace these and get a new one. And this also doubles as our repel extension, but for a single pitch sport climb, I'll just girth hitch it to my harness, clip it into the bolt at the top of the climb, and then I can go hands free to clean the climb. So yeah, you definitely want some sort of personal tether. This is the one that works best for us. There's a ton of different ones out there. Companies make like specialized personal tethers as well. But I like the accessory cord again, because it's cheap and you can replace it all the time. So yeah, that's pretty much everything I would bring up on a single pitch sport climb. So now let's talk about our favorite, which is trad climbing. So before we get into talking about our trad gear, I wanted to take a quick break to talk about today's sponsor, which is Onyx Back Country. Now, before you skip over this, let me just say an essential piece of gear that you're going to bring when you go rock climbing is obviously your cell phone. And having the Onyx Back Country app is going to make your climbing life a whole lot easier, because I don't know if you know, but they recently integrated with the entire Mountain Project platform. So now you get all of the Mountain Project information on the Onyx Back Country app. Plus, you're getting the 3D maps and all of their amazing mapping features as well. So you're getting your route descriptions, your crag descriptions, you're getting all of your photos, you're getting the approach trails. And probably my favorite is you're getting pinpoint locations for every single crag on Mountain Project. So I don't know about you guys, but there's been a handful of times now where Victoria and I have gone out to try and go rock climbing and we literally just couldn't find the crag or we couldn't find the approach trail. But now with Onyx, especially with the 3D maps, you can see your exact location and you can see the exact location of the crag that you're trying to get to. We've been loving it. It's just making our climbing life a whole lot easier. And it's just nice to have everything, your maps and your climbing and everything else all in one app. So we would highly recommend you check it out. Obviously, there's going to be a link down the description below if you want to try it and we'll have a code down there for you guys too. But yeah, we're super stoked to be partnering with Onyx. They've been a longtime supporter of this channel and now the fact that they have Mountain Project on there is pretty much the best thing ever. So we love it and we're super stoked to be working with them this climbing season. So thank you Onyx for sponsoring this video and now let's go talk about our trad gear. Okay, so trad climbing is probably Cody and favorite type of climbing. It's just way more fun, a lot more involved and it's the type of climbing that we want to get better at. So yeah, right now we have the maximum amount of gear that I would wear on my harness for a single pitch trad climb. It's pretty heavy, not ideal for climbing a climb, but this is just all the gear that we have for trad. So for trad climbing, essentially, if you don't know, you're placing your own piece of gear into a crack to prevent you from hitting the ground when you fall. So we have two types of protection. There's plenty of other protection out there for gear, but we just carry two. So our first one is cams, which is an active piece of protection and then we have a set of nuts, which is our passive piece of protection. So let's start with cams. So these are our cams. Essentially, this just retracts and you stick it into a crack and it just gets stuck the more you pull down on it. As long as you place this piece of gear right, then it should save your life. So far it has, so we would trust our lives with these things. We have the Wild Country Friends. There's other brands out there that you can get. We like the Wild Country ones mainly for this reason. It has an extendable sling at the end that you can just pull here. This helps for preventing your piece of gear walking back into a crack, making this weaker and also prevents rope drag. We also have different sizes of them. So depending on the size of the crack, you would place the size appropriate for the size of crack that you have. So we have two of each starting from 0.3 to a number four and then one number five. Seems like those sizes works for the style of climbing that we like. We haven't really felt like we needed any more to add to our kit. So yeah, those are our cams. Moving on to the nuts. So we have a set of nuts, also known as stoppers. These are the Wild Country Rock Set. Also, you can see this comes in different sizes. So depending on the size of the crack, you would slot this into the crack. So essentially how this works is you would find a constriction, kind of like tapers into a V in the crack. You would slot it in that constriction and essentially just get stuck. It doesn't do anything for you. It just gets stuck into the crack. You'll see there is this wire loop here. So you'll place your nut into the crack and you'll grab an alpine draw, clip that wire loop, and then clip your rope to that. And that's how you would set your nut. So speaking of alpine draws, we have nine of these. These are also known as like shoulder length slings, but essentially just works like a sport draw or a quick draw. The only difference between a quick draw and this is that it can extend. So you could take one carabiner off, grab one sling, and it pulls this way and extends. This is nice. Again, it helps to prevent your gear from walking and getting stuck into a crack or for it getting weaker and prevents rope drag. So these are pretty much essential if you're going to be trad climbing. So alpine draws, you definitely need these. Okay, next on my harness, nut tool. If you're placing nuts, bring a nut tool. It essentially works like a hammer to get the nut out of the crack. Bring a nut tool because we've gotten our nuts stuck more than once. And then the last couple of things on my harness, it's kind of repetitive, but anchor, bring my accessory cord, and then I have my grigri on me. All right, so we're finally starting to get down to the rest of the gear that we would keep on our harness for multi-pitch climbing. So multi-pitch is basically what you think of when you think of like really big climbs, like El Capitan would be the most prominent example. But basically you're going up for a really long time and you might be up there for like an entire day. So a lot of the gear is the same thing we've already talked about. So obviously we're going to bring our cams, we're going to bring our nuts, we're going to bring anchors. Victoria and I are both going to bring an anchor on a multi-pitch climb because... Yeah, since like, since we're both belaying and we're both going to be leading, we both need gear. So we're going to have two anchors with us, one per person, and two grigris with us. Yes, so Victoria or whoever is down below is going to be belaying the person as they climb up, and then once that person gets up, they're going to be belaying the next person from the bottom to get up as well. So we carry two grigris, which we've already talked about. These carabiners here, these lockers, use these for clove hitching in. So when we both get to the anchor, we want to tie ourselves into the anchor, we have a carabiner and we clove hitch in. Yeah, it'll probably make a little more sense when you see the footage, but I carry two of them, one for a clove hitch and one for a potential girth hitch master point. So yeah, just nice to have extra carabiners on your harness pretty much whenever you're climbing. So aside from that, something that I'll only bring on a multi-pitch climb are these really long slings. Again, it works the same exact way as your alpine draw. It's just much longer, so you can get a big extension if you're worried about rope drag or if you're traversing, but you can also use this material to build an anchor as well or add to your anchor. On a multi-pitch climb, you just really never know what the anchors are going to look like. And besides that, I think the only other thing that we haven't talked about would be repelling. Yep, yep. So we both have the same repelling system, so when we know that we have to repel, we're bringing this with us. Yeah, so the first and most important thing we're going to bring is an ATC. That is basically the device that you would use to do a repel and that is attached again to a big locking carabiner. We both carry an ATC. I carry the ATC guide, which basically just has this extra loop on the back here that is going to allow you to do some more advanced techniques like you can ascend a rope if you need to or I could belay from the top with this if I needed to, so it's just nice to have one ATC guide at least. We also carry what's known as a prusik loop or I don't know, we usually call it a third hand, which is basically just a backup for your repel device. So it's basically just another piece of accessory cord tied into a smaller loop that you wrap around the rope and it just acts as a safety device. So like if something were to happen on your repel and you got knocked unconscious or something went wrong and you let go of the brake strands, this is actually going to grab onto the rope and keep you from falling basically. So yeah, we always like to carry some sort of loop for extra safety and I would recommend if you're going to be repelling to always put on a backup because repelling is probably one of the most dangerous parts of climbing. Yes. Okay, and then the last thing is, Cody kind of already touched on this already, this is our personal tether or a repel extension. So essentially we would just girth hitch this guy into two points on our harness and then we'd grab a locking carabiner and tether ourselves indirect into the bolt there. So while we're indirect, then you'll take your ATC, clip it to this loop in the middle and you'll actually repel off of that middle loop. So it's going to be attached to your harness and basically the only thing that's really doing for you is it's just getting your repel device away from your body so that you have a better visual on it, you have better control over it and it creates a little bit of separation for that loop that we talked about earlier. So yeah, I really like them because it's kind of an all-in-one system. You know, you get down to the next anchor, you just take it off, clip it to the bolt and then you're pretty much ready to start the next repel. So yeah, that's pretty much everything that we would bring for multi-pitch climbing. Yep. I mean that's pretty much all of our climbing gear at this point but there is one more category we wanted to get through which is just like some of the extra things that we bring that just come in handy when you're up there on the wall. Okay, extras. Accessories, different things that didn't make the cut for the other categories. Yes. So let's start with clothes. Everyone is always curious like what kind of clothes we're wearing when we're rock climbing. My pants are Mountain Hardwear pants. I think they're called Dynama and I will say I actually really really like these pants. These are my favorite pants I've ever owned for rock climbing. They actually fit me which is really rare. I'm like five foot one so it's hard to find a pant that I like but typically I would just wear like a lighter material pants that's durable for climbing. Yeah, I mean that's pretty much what I'm wearing. My whole kit right now is Outdoor Research but yeah, a nice lightweight pair of joggers. These are the Feroci joggers but I don't know, something lightweight, comfortable that's going to protect you from the sun. For the guys, these don't have a zipper but something with a zipper is usually pretty nice. You can understand why. Otherwise, pretty much always wearing a hoodie just because I don't want to get sunburned and it actually gives you a little bit of protection too when you're like jamming in cracks and stuff. Yeah, we're always wearing sun hoodies because we hate wearing sunscreen. Yeah, find one that's helmet compatible like this hood fits over my helmet which is really nice. Keeps my neck from getting roasted. Yeah, that's pretty much the clothes. Next up, this first aid kit we just like made like a makeshift first aid kit. We'll bring this with us when we're going into the backcountry or if we know we're gonna have like a super long day. This always goes in our backpack because you never really know. So, next up is our gloves. So, these are the gloves we use when we're trad climbing and we use tape gloves which we actually really like. Yeah, I mean you just make them out of a roll of sports tape. It's kind of old school but surprisingly we can actually get like a month sometimes more out of them. You just cut them off at the wrist and then put a little piece of tape on there when you decide to go climbing again but I really like them. They're comfortable and they keep my hands from getting all scratched up. Next, we would bring, again if this is like a long day or maybe we thought we might epic, we'd bring a headlamp with us. This is the Petzl Arctic Core. Throw it in our backpack just in case if we're there at night. You never know. You want some light in case you're going to be epic-ing and have to like rappel in the dark or something. Otherwise, we bring radios. Obviously, communication in the mountains is important. We use the Rocky Takis which pretty much everybody uses at this point because they're the best. They're super durable. I don't know, just reliable. Last thing, well not the last thing but one other thing is the Garmin inReach Mini 2. This is a satellite messenger. When we're in the backcountry, we always bring this with us because you just never know what can happen and it's nice to have this little safety net with us when we're doing crazy stuff in the mountains. The last little pro tip is not my chalk bag but it is this which is a knife that I keep in my chalk bag because you just want to bring a knife when you're going climbing. You never know your rope's going to get stuck or your anchor gets stuck or something is going to get stuck and you're going to need a way to cut it. Ask me how I know. So yeah, I just throw a little tiny sharp knife in my chalk bag and it's always there when I need it. But that is pretty much everything. Like every video that you've ever seen on our channel, this is the gear that we're using. It works well for us. Yeah, we like it. So I think we'll put a link to all the gear that we think is necessary in the description below so you guys can go check all this gear out if you want. Yeah but definitely leave some comments down below. Let us know what gear we should add to our kit. I know somebody out there is going to be like black totem but I don't know. We don't have a black totem yet. We will. We'll get one eventually though. Otherwise, this is going to be one of those videos where we try to answer all of the questions. So leave a question down below as well and we will definitely get to it. But otherwise, that's the gear. We're here in Moab and now we're about to go climbing. Thanks for watching and subscribe if you like climbing. Like climbing and being outside. Yeah, thanks for watching everybody. We'll see you in the next one. Bye. Peace out. Time to go climbing. I wonder if we can climb this actually.