What next on the gear wish list?

Hey everyone, first post, but have been using mountain project for a while now. I've been gathering the gear necessary to start climbing outside of gyms, but I feel like I'm at a loss at what to get next. What I have now:
3 harnesses (mine, girlfriend's, and an abc adjustable harness for a #3 person)
2 helmets
2 pairs of shoes (mine and girlfriends)
2 60m ropes (one tore a little bit in the middle after the rope snapped into a crack on a rappel so I plan on cutting it out and having two 30m ropes, along with a new 60m I just bought)
2 figure 8s
1 atc
2 pear shaped locking biners
2 oval shaped locking biners
6 nonlocking biners
2 quickdraws
2 2' slings
1 4' sling
2 15' lengths of webbing
Chalk bag

I'm not at the point where I can start sport and trad climbing and therefore don't really need cams or nuts at this time. I know I need a crash pad so the girlfriend and I can go bouldering safely but I'm at a loss and what else to get for top roping. I've set anchors before with what I have but I feel like I'm missing something and what to expand on the gear list before I get into sport and trad. Maybe longer lengths of webbing for longer anchors? I'm not sure, that's where you guys come in. Thanks!

Time on rock and experienced partners. That's all you need now bud the rest will figure itself out as you go. If you can hire a guide for a day and have them help you with building and managing a top rope site safely. It may seem trivial but a guide should be able to help you gain knowledge way better, quicker, and safer. Good luck!

If TR-ing is the focus for now, you don't need anything else, in my book, your good to go. Next on the list however, I would put some draws, so you can start leading sport climbs in the future. Assuming you just feel the burn to get your hands on some more toys (i know I've been guilty of that before). Also a gri-gri might be worth considering.

Depending on where you live, I would get at least 100' of static rope. A lot of places you may use trees to set top ropes and the trees may be situated far from the cliff edge.

Andrew O'Brien wrote:Time on rock and experienced partners. That's all you need now bud the rest will figure itself out as you go. If you can hire a guide for a day and have them help you with building and managing a top rope site safely. It may seem trivial but a guide should be able to help you gain knowledge way better, quicker, and safer. Good luck!

Way more QDs and shoulder length runners!

Thanks for the replies guys. I agree that time and experience is the main thing I need now. Unfortunately Ohio sucks for climbing, particularly the Cleveland area. Everywhere that's decent is at least three hours away.

As for the static rope, I was planning on getting 2 30' pieces of webbing to expand on my arsenal of anchoring materials, but I'll look into static rope as well.

I'm confused. You say you are building anchors but you just have webbing and carabiners. Are you only using natural features? You may want to look into a set of stoppers or hexes to expand your anchor building options. Static line is also very helpful for setting anchors. If you do get stoppers, get a nut tool as well to help remove them. Two 15' pieces of webbing is hardly anything at all if you are needing them to sling natural features and unite your anchor into a masterpoint. Get either a 70' piece of webbing or a 20-30m static line. Depending on where you're setting anchors obviously. Your area might need less. Is the area where you're setting anchors top-access?

Assuming you're planning on top roping at the beginning (which I would highly recommend, and flatland crags usually have top-access) then the main thing to determine is whether the areas/routes you want to climb have bolted anchors or if you have to build your own.

If bolted, you pretty much have the gear you need and the processes are simple enough to learn. Guides can be expensive, so see if an experienced climber from your local climbing gym might make a day trip with you to walk you through the set-up/cleaning procedures a couple times - you can learn all of what you need on youtube but there's nothing like actually touching/doing with a more experienced person supervising to cement that knowledge.

If building your own anchors it's a different animal. There are enough knots, configurations, and gear placement considerations that I would definitely recommend a structured learning process, either a with a professional guide or, if available, an anchor-specific clinic at the nearest crag. As far as gear you can do a lot with webbing (or static line, these forums will debate this endlessly but they can be used mostly interchangeably), but you might also want some nuts/hexes, maybe tricams or other passive (read: inexpensive) protection pieces for climbs not conveniently underneath trees. A guide from my area (Wisconsin) posted something like "recommended gear for top rope anchors at Devil's lake" - which is a popular non-bolted spot, that's a pretty good list to start with though you don't necessarily need everything on the list

Eplumer400...do you have one of these? This "stiffy" with a Trigger Wire carabiner on the business end should be on every climbers Xmas gear list. Very helpful in tight spots.

By building anchors I mean making the two 15' pieces of webbing into slings with water knots, girth hitched onto two trees (these routes are top accessed by the way sorry), then the two ends are tied together with a figure 8 on a bight to create two small loops which each have a locking carabiner on it that the rope is fed through. I'm sorry I didn't clarify earlier.

I do want to do mainly top roping right now as I don't have the experience for sport or trad and the place that I'll be spending most of my time climbing (Hocking Hills State Park) only allows top roping or bouldering. In the near future when I get a better job I'll be getting a climbing gym membership and start hitting the gym hard and find new people to go out with on climbs and really get my feet wet with the other types of climbing.

I'm really confused...so, you've been climbing outdoors and setting anchors with the gear you have...and are wondering what additional gear you need? You should already know the answer to this! Have you come across a situation where you were unable to set an anchor or climb? What were you missing? I could throw out guesses and suggest that you buy static line or longer lengths of webbing if you're having trouble setting anchors because the trees/boulders are too far from the cliff...but you didn't mention that. I could suggest you get nuts, hexes, or other removable protection to build anchors where natural anchors aren't available...or I could suggest you pick up a set of quickdraws to go sport climbing. All would be potentially valid suggestions and good investments if that is what you want to do, but really the only important question is: what do you want to do?

I want to continue top roping for now, and eventually ease myself into sport in the next couple years. I mentioned in the first post that I want longer pieces of webbing, specifically to build better anchors at places where anchoring points are father away from the cliff edge.

Perhaps by already going out and climbing with all of my own gear I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me know if this is true, I can take it.

I was mostly asking this question because I knew I had the stuff to start, but had a gut feeling I was missing something important. I also wanted opinions on what kind of gear would be handy, but don't actually need to top rope right now.

I used to live in the cleveland area, and actually learned to climb here: mountainproject.com/v/whipp…

I would say that you should get maybe 100 ft of static line and you will be good to go.

Maybe go out with some friends? I'm assuming you climb at the cleveland rock gym. That way they can confirm that you are setting up your tr's properly, it's not rocket science though, maybe pick up a copy of freedom of the hills to study up on...

Also for that cliff a 30m rope might be nice. Obviously check, it has been a bit since i've been there but i bet a 30m would get the job done.

Have fun man, get down to the red or the new asap :)

Way more webbing. I'd say 2 50 ft lengths

djh860 wrote:Way more webbing. I'd say 2 50 ft lengths

I want a Valley Giant or a Pamalot.

Adam, I've been there a few times to hike and just look around, but haven't actually climbed due to the permits you have to get to climb which includes $250,000 in health insurance coverage. I definitely want to however. I've gone to the cleveland rock gym a couple times, not recently though. I've been to Kendall cliffs in peninsula more often. However I'm planning on going with a membership to CRG since they change their routes up more often than Kendall. I have a couple of buddies who want to get into it more but my girlfriends only really interested in gym climbing right now.

I always climbed there, never with a permit...

I wouldn't necessarily advise you to do anything illegal, but I always got the vibe if you are respectful and have your shit together nobody will say anything. There are plenty of other idiots in that area drinking beers or "climbing" around on the rocks. I wouldn't worry about it.

Super easy TR setups off of the trees and the island in the center is accessible via a 5.0 -5.1 scramble (1 bolt near the top of the route if you feel like you want to clip it). I believe there is a three bolt anchor on top to TR off of, but I always backed them up with a tree because I didn't know anything about them.

The crack in the main wall is about the easiest TR ever, there is a tree literally growing right on top of it.

Chris at CRG is a super nice guy with a ton of experience, definitely a good crew over there.

Maybe you should buy some books on technique, anchor building, etc. There are some very good sources of information out there. Freedom of the Hills, Climbing Anchors, Better Bouldering, The Crack Climber's Technique Manual, and many more.

Another tube style belay device (or a gri gri) might be nice. And making yourself some prusik cord loops for rappel back ups would be a good idea. Nuts, hexes, tricams for building TR anchors would be nice, but you need to know how to do that before you start trying it.

No need to buy any more webbing or static line. Just use those two sections of 30M ropes you have from your damaged 60M rope. Problem solved. Just be aware that using dynamic line will increase the amount of total stretch in your system. The real-world implication is that if the climber falls on the opening moves of a climb, rope stretch alone could drop them all the way to the ground, even though you were giving a "tight" belay.