Outdoor Climbing Disciplines & Climbing Skills Progression Guide

A client enjoying a day of private guiding focused on developing trad climbing skills.

Rock climbing is a broad endeavor that has many disciplines, all of which require unique approaches and technical skills. It can be intimidating to wrap your head around where to focus your skill development and understand how skills translate between different climbing disciplines. First, it helps to define some of the common outdoor climbing disciplines:

Outdoor Climbing Discipline Guide

• Bouldering

  Bouldering is a type of rock climbing that involves climbing on shorter routes that often end on the top of large boulders. When bouldering you are protected from falls by bouldering mats that are placed below the climber and spotters.

• Top-roping

  Top-roping is a type of climbing in which the climber is attached to a rope via a harness and is protected by an anchor at the top of the climb that the rope passes through as the climber moves up the rock. In a top-rope system, there is a belayer who takes in rope slack as the climber moves up the rock.

• Sport Lead Climbing

  When lead climbing, a climber attached to a rope clips quickdraws to fixed points (bolts) in the rock and then clips their rope through the quickdraws. The fixed points follow the climbing route and the climber will clip through quickdraws at each fixed point while a belayer makes sure there isn’t too much slack in the climbing rope in case of a fall.

• Trad Climbing

  Trad climbing is similar to sport climbing in that the climber is still lead climbing, however instead of fixed points (bolts) on a climbing route, the climber must place their own gear into the rock. The protection that is placed into the rock varies depending on the rock features and is removed by the same climbing party.

• Multi-pitch Climbing

  Multi-pitch climbing involves long climbing routes that have to be broken down into multiple pitches, or sections, in order to get from the bottom of the route to the top. Multi-pitch climbing can be either sport or trad and relies on anchor points (fixed or trad) dispersed throughout the route.

Generally, as you move down this list of climbing disciplines, the amount of gear and technical skills required increases. Multi-pitch trad climbing takes advanced knowledge of equipment, technical systems, and climbing techniques. The skills required for each discipline often builds off of the skills and systems in the discipline above it in this list which provides a basic progression for building your skills and proficiency.

The Petra Cliffs Mountaineering School offers courses and guiding based on developing strong foundational skills and then building off of these skills to further climbing proficiency.

An overview of some of our offerings and their relationship with the different climbing disciplines and each other is outlined below:

Outdoor Climbing Progression Guide

See you at the crag!