Ever heard the old adage “never bring a knife to a gunfight?” But, what about an ice tool to a crag?
I picked up rock climbing in Ohio. Seems weird, right, but the winters were grey, wet and cold and the climbing gym offered a welcome break from the gloom. I quickly fell in love with pulling on plastic. I loved the way my body could propel me up the wall, the smell of sweat, chalk and stoke lingering thickly in the air. After taking a few years off from climbing to pursue competitive ultrarunning, I fell back in love with it all over again, but this time in a state you’d expect; Colorado.
One thing I hadn’t fully understood before was the breadth of climbing styles. Up to that point, my experience with climbing had been mainly indoor sport climbing and bouldering. Colorado opened my eyes to not only the incredible diversity of climbing styles, but the fact that you can climb rock with knives, or rather ice tools and crampons. Enter my love affair with drytooling.
Drytooling is so much fun, and terrifying at the same time. Who would have thought that scratching around on rocks with a metal tool would be so intoxicating? Is it the fact that you’re on endless jugs, or the fact that if your tool pops and you whip you could stab yourself like a kebob? The fact that someone decided to take rock climbing where you can feel the rock and at least you have some warning before you pop off a hold, and thought “hey, you know what’s a good idea? Let’s add a piece of metal between us and the rock, as well as a long handle and see what happens.
In the US most of the drytooling routes I’ve been on are just rock routes that have been scratched to hell, or not, who knows, but the point is you are reading the rock in a similar way that you would when rock climbing. Recently though, my partner and I spent some time in France, and we spent a lot of time at a drytooling crag where many routes had drilled pockets ticked with paint. This is as if to say “hey, pick me! I still might just be a hole in a rock that you or may not be able to trust, but I’m your best bet, so come to momma.”
And now I understand the plight of anyone who has tried drytooling but still wishes to climb rock with bare hands like a normal person, it’s really hard to balance the two! Despite that, I highly recommend giving this silly sport a try. Depending on where you are located there might be a gym nearby dedicated to the sport, The Coop in Boulder Colorado and The Barn in Seattle come to mind. In addition, Both Vail Colorado and Wayne’s World near Seattle are developed dry tooling and mixed climbing crags that are definitely worth visiting.
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