so in this video i'm going to be talking about something called scrambling
which is that funny border between hiking and rock climbing where a lot of people tend to get stuck
so in this video i'm sharing a couple of techniques some exercises and some tips things to
keep in mind as you begin to build more confidence and move into vertical terrain let's get into it
i love scrambling it's one of my favorite things to do in the mountains a little bit more of an
adrenaline rush than just regular hiking but not as committing as rock climbing having said that
scrambling is probably more dangerous than rock climbing because you're generally not using a rope
or at least i'm not so there's a couple of safety things to keep in mind that i want to go through
first so the most important thing with scrambling is the safety of you and everyone else around you
so a couple things you want to keep in mind firstly at some stage you're probably going
to dislodge a rock whether it's by accident or maybe on purpose if you're testing a hold
which i recommend you do if you've lost control of the rock and it's rolling down
then you need to be yelling out either rock or below or whatever the local custom is in your area
you need to be letting the people know below you that there's a rock coming down if you do dislodge
a rock while you're testing a hold just leave it where it is don't frisbee it off the cliff
because you never know who's going to be down there it could be a climber it could be a hiker
someone just enjoying their day is going to cop a rock on the head so don't purposely frisbee rocks
off mountains i know some of these things together seem like common sense but we just
have to say that as you're moving up and down the slope keep in mind that you want to be going slow
controlled and silent so with every placement that you make whether it's a foothold or a handhold try
and do it very purposefully try and make as little noise as possible and that will naturally make you
kind of pay attention and maintain control if you get a little bit overconfident if you go too
fast then you might commit to a very weak hold or lose your balance and also i find it's best
to take small steps this means you're not going to get as tired as you would you can imagine taking
huge steps requires a lot of effort and it does throw you off balance as well so take small steps
make small movements and stay in control so when i approach a steeper kind of area there's a couple
of things that i do just to make me feel a little more safe firstly make sure your shoes are tied up
for obvious reasons if your shoes are loose and it's going to make things more difficult
i will also cinch my backpack down and bring it in really close to my body that will bring your
center of gravity in a lot closer and just kind of make you feel more comfortable you don't want your
pack swinging around left to right throwing you off balance when you're going up to sleep sections
and the third thing i do if i'm approaching a steep section that looks like it's going to go
on for a while i'll actually put my trekking poles away just because a lot of the time it's
easier to just use my hands and get into more of a crawl than it is to try and walk upright
with trekking poles on steep terrain so what i'll do now is i'll demonstrate a couple of different
scrambling styles now it's not up to me to tell you which one's the safest or the best
i'm just offering these to you if you want to try them out and see which one works best for
you then you can start to build from there each one of these can be used in different situations
on different types of rock and different types of conditions it's best to learn
as many and master as many as you can so you've got kind of a repertoire of skills to work with
so a common misconception about scrambling and climbing is that you need a great deal of upper
body strength which really isn't true it's kind of the opposite most of the time you're going to
be relying on your legs and you want your legs to do most of the work the upper body will tire
very quickly doing a lot of pulling so mainly when you're looking for holds you want to spend
most of your time looking for good foot holds i mean a good hand hold is nice it's nothing
better than grabbing a really solid jug and pulling up on it but for the most part you
want to be worrying about what your feet are doing when you eventually get to a spot where
you think it might be useful to start using your hands and just remember that as soon as you come
down things are immediately going to feel a lot steeper you'll be looking down through your feet
you might see a big drop below you and start panicking but just remember most of the time it's
steeper than you think so you probably just kind of stand up but always keep a hand on the rock
or maybe even drop a knee down so you feel more comfortable when you do find some good foot holds
and some hand holds you can start moving over the rock in whichever way feels naturally best
for you there's a lot of different patterns that we can use moving quadrupedally with four limbs
but i would say just use the one that fits best with the situation move based on where your
footholds and handholds are not trying to move in a certain pattern they're the kind
of patterns that we use in training to build the skills but make the decision based on the
hulls so as you begin to crawl up looking for good foot holds first and then looking for hand holds
that will complement the foot holes that you're using i've got a mantle here we're good at a good
solid handhold and i can press up one line at a time now i can start looking for my next move
footwork and foot technique is something that's really important as well so when you're moving
up there's two main ways that you can use your feet and that is smearing and edging so smearing
is essentially aiming to get as much contact between your foot and the rock as possible
it really helps to kind of drive your heel down that's when dorsiflexion of the
ankle comes in handy but smearing is you know naturally what most people are going to go for
trying to get as much contact with the foot as possible edging is the other main footwork
technique that we can use and that's a matter of placing the edge of your boot or shoe on a
rock and placing the weight of your body through into that corner to really leverage that spot
when it comes to grabbing trees i would tend to avoid it i think of it kind of as an act of
desperation i very rarely grab on trees firstly because we don't want to harm the environment
but secondly because rocks usually a lot stronger okay now we're going to have a look at something
slightly more committing so things to keep in mind you want to be moving slowly thinking about
every single placement that you make both for your hands and for your feet and don't go up
anything that you're not confident in coming down now when you get to something like this
when you have to obviously you could go around here that would be the safer option
sometimes you'll have to take quite a big step up now only do this if it's your only
option and make sure if you're doing it then you're that you're able to reverse it so
that's a big step up what i'm going to do is rock my weight over this way
so then all my weight a lot of my weight is committed to that leg looks like a solid hold
so i push my weight over try and find something i could press away here i don't know if you can see
that but i've got a a good hand hold there that i can mantel and press and that's going to create an
opposing force which is going to keep body tension and just remember when you do make these moves
three points of contact is the safest way to do it and just moving one limb at a time so when
you're ready to commit roll over it's taking my weight that's fine now we can roll and press up
so just make one decision at a time
i've got another mantle there and i can finish up there we go
when it comes to descending a lot of people when they're first starting
will be more comfortable going face down first and kind of butt sliding down like this
and that's totally fine but it does put you in a position where things feel a lot more steep
and potentially a lot more dangerous if you were to fall forward so i generally recommend
for beginners to switch around and down climb face into the rock so switching around
and down climbing it does limit your vision a little bit in terms of your foot placements
but for beginners i've found that once i recommend that they switch over they generally are a lot
more comfortable just because they can get their weight on their feet they're closer to the rock
and they have a better relationship with a vertical environment facing in but again
it's going to depend on each situation and what kind of terrain you're moving over
one thing you can try out when you have a little bit more confidence when you're coming down is
to try and stay off your hands completely and this really forces you to make good decisions
about where you put your feet this is a little drill i like to do if i've got a bit of extra
time if i'm waiting for people behind me i'll play this game where i can't touch the rock and
i just have to make really smart decisions about where i put my feet and it's a great little drill
to work on balance and confidence on steep terrain at first you can have your hands out
to protect you and to aid for a bit of balance eventually if you're a boss you can put your hands
in your pockets but that's a little bit of a flex don't do that so what i've shared with you here
is just variations of movement these are skills that you can build tools to have in your toolbox
to get you outside of tricky situations when you're in the mountains but there are also just
basic movements that you can train if you like these kind of movements and you want to practice
them at home in a type of workout then check out this video this is a follow-along routine that is
designed specifically to improve scrambling skills and confidence so if you want to check that out
follow along to it it'll be right here thanks for watching guys i'll see you on the summit