UKC

Hi All,

Well long story short, I'm 28 a bit overweight, terrified of heights and possibly mentally unhinged. Add all of this together and you get a guy wanting to get into climbing. (Obviously right?!). So I have bought shoes, a couple of high quality carabiniers and a Black Diamond harness. Herein lies my first question. In my workshop at home I have an engine hoist point mounted to the roof. Que me with a length of rope swinging from it. It's at this point I realise I must have bought an Australian harness for whenever I let go of the rope, I end up upside down. Now, this is tremendous fun 3 foot above the ground, but something tells me this isn't as it should be. It feels like I'm hanging by my feet rather than my, ahem, crotch. The harness is a good fit, but rather than 'sitting' in it, I just roll over backwards. I have to physically pull myself upright on the rope or I end up bottom up. 

Any advice would be openly welcomed. As you can probably tell, I'm a complete novice, but I like a laugh and try not to take myself too seriously. 

Thanks

Nathan 

Check that you've got your harness on right - belay loop at the front, gear loops pointing downwards, leg loop[s not twisted etc.

Now, assuming that's all correct I suspect that you're not wearing it high enough.  Like most men, especially those of us with a little extra around the middle, I suspect you wear your trousers round your hips, rather than your waist.  That's not where a harnesses wait band should be, it should be much higher, above your hips and round your waist, just underneath your ribs, and above your belly button.

Loosen up your waistband on your harness, get it above your hip to your wait, adjust the leg loops accordingly and you should find that when you let go of the rope it'll naturally put in a sitting position and the right way up!

Are you threading the rope through your harness correctly? Do a YouTube search for instructional videos.

Harness is on correctly (or at least the front is at the front and the top is at the top). Nothing twisted so far as I can see. I'll head out to the garage and try to get that waistband northwards. Give me 10 minutes, I'll report back. Thanks for the advice. 

Threaded correctly with the most beautiful figure 8 knot that Stevie Wonder has ever seen. I did verify this on Google and YouTube. 

I think he probably meant that you were threading the rope through the right bit of the harness - with some harnesses if you thread the wrong part your centre of gravity can end up too high above the tie-in point and tip you over. If you still have the manual for the harness then that's the place to look to make sure you're doing it right

Ok, so I've just been back to the workshop to have a dangle. Referring to the manual, I'm tying in correctly. I have lengthened the leg risers and moved the waist band up to just below my ribs, and hey presto! Still have to keep myself upright, but if I fully relax, I just lay flat now rather than upside down. This seems to be correct from what I've read, maybe someone can confirm? In any event, the leg straps are taking 90% of my weight now which feels a lot more comfortable. Just need to find a wall near to Peterborough now to have a go. Any suggestions? 

N.B. Thanks for the super fast replies. It's really appreciated. 

Most new harnesses have two points that you tie into, connected by the belay loop (a sewn band of webbing). You should put the rope through both of these bits to stay upright, have you done that? You should be able to 'sit' in your harness in an upright position without any effort. Probably worth finding someone who knows what they're doing to check it before you get onto anything. Most climbing walls do courses or find a local club.

Tying into both the top (waist) and bottom (leg) loops as per instructions. Go Outdoors fitted the harness to me and said it was the correct size. Perhaps it's a bit small maybe? I'm trying to find a wall near me that I can go to and get (at very least) an induction. From what I've heard (and thus far experienced) climbers are a friendly and helpful bunch. 

Not going to outright call "troll", but who buys shoes and harness having never been climbing before, or even knowing if there's a wall near them to "have a go" at; never mind whether they're actually going to enjoy it, especially being "terrified of heights"?

I would have thought that the normal way round would be to have a go, decide of you like it enough to keep going, and eventually decide it's time to invest in your own gear rather than using rental kit...

But what do I know?

 

I think you've just gotta respect the psych and do your best to make sure there's nothing going on that will cause an accident.

That sounds a bit more like it - like I said it should lift your legs up and put you into a kind of sitting position, but when you get yourself on an induction at a climbing wall they'll have a look and make sure it's all ok.

Think there's a couple of walls around Peterborough but I've not been to any so can't make any recommendations. 

Have fun!   

So a friend of mine was massively into climbing. About 5 years ago we planned to start climbing. Due to my fears, I wanted to buy my own brand new gear that I could learn to trust rather than hire gear I didn't know the history of. Unfortunately, my friend had some heart trouble that meant he couldn't climb, so there was I with all this gear that I couldn't use. Fast forward to now, he is back to full health and ready to climb again, but unfortunately the wall here in Peterborough closed down recently. It was a converted squash court and the landlord wanted to convert it back so didn't renew their lease. So that's why I bought gear despite never doing it before and why there's no wall near me. I know there's a place in Wisbech, but I believe that's bouldering only. Sorry if it came across as being a troll, I assure you it's not and I'm here to gain information to help me stay safe and enjoy climbing. Sure, I may climb and  be petrified and hate it, but if I do I do. Harness was £60, shoes were £45 and carabiners were £18 for a pack of two. My other hobby is scuba diving, I'd spend £300 on a new tank, so in comparison, I've spent pennies to put my mind at rest that my gear is safe. Hopefully this explains where I'm coming from. 

Don't worry, you didn't.  We're often a bit too quick to assume people are trolling on here, that wasn't you.

It's actually not that unusual that you'll tend to invert while hanging in a sit harness in free space without your feet being against a wall.  It varies a bit with body shape, but for most of us standing up straight and wearing a sit harness our centre of gravity will be at least level with the belay loop and possibly a wee bit higher.  That's partly why chest harnesses are a thing.  (Don't rush out and buy a chest harness!)

Staying upright(ish) actually takes a wee bit of practice and involves engaging your core muscles, some of the posters here might do it so naturally and automatically that they don't even realise they're doing anything.  There is a little bit of skill involved in falling off and landing on the rope relatively gracefully, especially when lead climbing.  It's not that unusual when a hand pops or something and a fall takes you very much by surprise that you'll end up inverted.  Indoors that tends to happen only on relatively steep overhanging routes.  Outdoors the risk banging your head on a ledge or something while inverted and/or swinging about during a fall is one of the reasons you might choose to wear a helmet.  (Or even indoors, though we mostly don't.)

It's quite important that the waist belt is above your hips and tight enough that you can't slip out of your harness while you're upside down, which is almost certainly the case if the harness fits you at all well.

Hire harnesses at climbing walls are fine, totally trustworthy.  Their history is known and recorded and while they see a lot of wear and tear quite honestly they're usually retired in better condition than most us retire our own personal kit.  As you may have discovered, buying your own kit does not necessarily solve the problem of struggling to trust it!  That said hire shoes are often a bit minging and it's nice to have your own kit if you're going to get any use out of it at all anyway.

Thanks for this. The logical part of my brain knows hire gear HAS to be well maintained, the same as it knows that I'm just as likely to fall to my death because gear has failed from 1 meter as I am 40 meters. The illogical part of my brain says that hire gear is falling apart and 40 meters is FAR more dangerous than 1 meter. This is definitely going to be a journey for me, but I'm super excited to get started. I just need to trust my logical brain and ignore my silly brain. I can guarantee that I will be on with loads of questions once I start climbing. Very much intending on top roping to start with, but part of me loves the idea of draws. Hoping to get to a small 10M top rope route in Derbyshire in September to see how we get on. Booked in at the Wisbech bouldering place later this month to see if I can haul my 110kg mass 4.5 meters into the air wthout ripping the holds off the wall or having a coronary! 

Thanks again for the advice and encouragement. I'm hoping to update my progress on here. 

Came here to say @deepsoup’s comments are perfect - it’s different with a wall in front of you for your feet to press against, and you use core muscles to sit up when hanging free from the wall.

I gather there are plans afoot for building a tall climbing structure at Ferry Meadows, so you’ve that to look forward to. I’d say it’d be worth having an afternoon in one of Leicester’s indoor walls, slightly further than Wisbech but with perhaps a bigger range of climbers there (beginners, regulars, young and old, men and women, different body types) so you get the opportunity to see/ watch/chat with more people and get a broader sense of how various people do things - what they all do in common, what turns out to be idiosyncratic.

 But yeah, most of all: keep asking on here, keep investigating and being inquisitive (Andy Kirkpatrick said something on one of his blogs about how good it is for people to want to try to figure out esoteric arts like self-lining because it makes climbers better problem solvers and more intimately involved with their own safety), and make sure you’re having fun. 

Glad you got the harness sorted. If it's still hard to stay upright, it may need to sit a little higher still.

The bouldering place in Wisbech is good. It's small, but very friendly and relaxed with very good problem setting. Peterborough is where I grew up and I nipped over to that little bouldering gym... maybe Christmas 2019? I spoke to the owner and there are plans to open a bigger place closer to the centre of Wisbech at some point. Unfortunately, the council was being useless and that had caused delays. Hopefully Covid hasn't disrupted their plans further.

The Ferry Meadows wall was meant to be vomited up at some point in the future. Completely the wrong location in my view. But, sounds like it will house decent facilities if it's ever completed before achieving white elephant status.

The old squash court climbing wall! I used to boulder there a bit with school friends when I was about 16. Bouldering meant doing the starts of the routes until you got to a place where you felt scared, then jumping off. Though I seem to remember soloing easier routes to gain the second floor cave. We weren't very good, but we'd try so hard that when we went to the pub afterward (which was our idea of athleticism), we could barely pick up our pints!

If your friend is a lot more experienced and can plan a trip and keep you both safe, the real joy and hunger develops when you go for a climbing trip somewhere "proper" - North Wales, the Lakes, Scotland. Do it sooner, rather than later!

I assure you that falling from 40m absolutely *is* far more dangerous than falling from 1m!  And please don't make your own gear such as harnesses - your partner won't be especially pleased to find out that you're trusting *his* or *her* life to your homemade untested contraption.  Always assuming he survives, which is probably optimistic.

Must admit, I think you've gone up a bit in the trollometer.

Respectfully, I haven't got a clue what you're on about. Who mentioned homemade gear? And by more dangerous, if you read back carefully you will see that I'm referring to gear failure. Perhaps I should have worded it as "at 40M gear is far more likely to fail as it is at 1M". If anything, your reply was troll worthy my friend. I appreciate all advice, but I've made quite clear above where I'm coming from. There really was absolutely no need for that reply.