Aid climbing is a style of climbing in which standing on or pulling oneself up via devices attached to fixed or placed protection is used to make upward progress.
The term contrasts with free climbing in which progress is made without weighting artificial aids: a free climber ascends by only holding onto and stepping on natural features of the rock, using rope and equipment merely to catch them in case of fall and provide belay.
In general, aid techniques are reserved for pitches where free climbing is difficult to impossible, and extremely steep and long routes demanding great endurance and both physical and mental stamina. While aid climbing places less emphasis on athletic fitness and raw strength than free climbing, the physical demands of hard aid climbing should not be underestimated.
Aid climbing is sometimes errantly referred to as "Class 6" climbing, since its reliance on ascent via one's equipment rather than merely being protected by it is regarded by purists as falling outside the traditional Classes 1-5 Yosemite Decimal System rankings that rely on making progress with one's hands and feet in direct contact with the rock alone. Aid climbing has its own ranking system, using a separate scale from A0 through A5.
Read more about Aid Climbing: Technique, History, Grading, Literature
Famous quotes containing the words aid and/or climbing:
“Manners aim to facilitate life, to get rid of impediments, and bring the man pure to energize. They aid our dealing and conversation, as a railway aids travelling, by getting rid of all avoidable obstructions of the road, and leaving nothing to be conquered but pure space.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“There is, however, this consolation to the most way-worn traveler, upon the dustiest road, that the path his feet describe is so perfectly symbolical of human life,—now climbing the hills, now descending into the vales. From the summits he beholds the heavens and the horizon, from the vales he looks up to the heights again. He is treading his old lessons still, and though he may be very weary and travel-worn, it is yet sincere experience.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)