It finally happened, the weather changed and my thin blood says Flagstaff is much too cold so Priest Draw is out. Time to start sport climbing in the many wonderful valley locations. Today I took work off and decided to hit Queen Creek with Mike and Jeremy. With a little nudge Jason decided to attend on his first outdoor endeavor.
As I’ve been climbing around a year now and experienced many of my friends learning how to climb and facing the seemingly daunting task of discovering what gear they do and don’t need, I figured I should relay my discoveries.
The most used thing you will purchase when rock climbing is your shoes. You should spend some time figuring out what kind of shoes you want. If you go to a place that has rentals and you are using the rentals day in day out for more then a month, you are hurting your progress as a climber. Rental shoes are generally cheap rubber with horrible heels and even worse toes. Anything over a V3 you are really going to have some trouble with as you won’t be able to toe-in on an small foot hold or smear nearly as well as a person with their own climbing shoes.