To “sandbag” someone is to tell them a climb is easier than it really is. When they go up, they flail all over the place. This provides amusement for those on the ground. Sounds kind of sick, doesn’t it?
Perhaps every male-dominated sport has a similar degree of machismo. No one ever wants to admit a climb is hard. When someone asks about a route the reply is invariably, “Oh, it’s not too bad.”
I have some advice for people interested in climbing who would like to avoid some of the nastier sandbags:
1: Never ask anyone who is a stronger climber than you how hard a route is.
Rock routes are graded on a scale from 0 to 15. Long climbs, where you need ropes in case you fall, are designated by putting a “5” before the difficulty. Therefore, an easy route is a 5.4, a moderate route is a 5.8, and a 5.11 is challenging. To complicate matters, once you reach 5.10, the numbers can be divided by adding a, b, c and d. A 5.10c is harder than a 5.10a.
Someone who routinely climbs 5.12c will not be any help to a 5.9 climber. The 5.9 climber will ask how a certain climb is. “Oh, no problem. You probably won’t even need a rope,” will be the 5.12c climber’s reply. Vision gets distorted with age; judgment gets distorted with strength. The 5.9 climber hops on route with high hopes, only to be shut down in the first 20 feet. Hopefully he or she didn’t forgo the rope.
2: Never take anyone else’s gear recommendations.
I’ve been a victim of this myself. My friend Ray told me that for Crack in the Woods, a little-known 5.10d off the Kangamangus highway in New Hampshire, I would need only one number three Camalot, a rather large piece of gear. Camalots (see photo) are hinged metal wedges that retract when you pull on a string. They automatically bite into a crack and make an instant anchor point. I was psyched, because Crack in the Woods is just what it sounds like: a crack, way off in the woods. The less gear I had to carry, the better. Two miles from the road and forty feet up, I found the spot that took the number three. I few feet further, I noticed I could use a three and a half, an even larger piece. Soon I was wishing for a four. With nothing near that size on my rack, I pushed on. My breathing got rapid. I struggled to stay in the crack. My hands began to bleed from the coarse rock. About eight feet above my last piece of gear, my determination began to waver. After several minutes of futile whining and wriggling, I down-climbed to the Camalot and hung on the rope. Never again will I trust Ray’s recommendations.
3: If you don’t know the route, take two ropes.
This is another rule I learned the hard way. Rappelling is the act of lowering oneself down a rope. It can be used as a descent after finishing a climb or to get off the cliff quickly in an emergency. Say you are at the top of a cliff and you want to get to the bottom. Wrap your rope around a tree, pull until the middle of the rope is behind the tree, and toss the ends down the cliff. Then, lower yourself down the rope. Easy, right?
Many people climb with two ropes because it can be safer and more efficient. Most rappels on big cliffs are set up for two ropes because it is much faster. Here is where the lesson comes in.
Rock climbers are vulnerable to lightning. Thunderstorms can blow in with little warning, catching climbers unprepared. Almost every climbing implement is made of metal, and electricity travels through the ropes and cracks in the rock most climbing routes follow.
My friend Andrew had climbed several times before, but mostly indoors. Being a good friend, I thought I would take him outside. It looked as if it might rain, but I figured we could squeeze out a route before it started.
The storm blew in when we were two rope lengths, or two pitches, up. Andrew reached me at the anchor as the second blast of thunder rolled through. The choices were to go up one pitch or go down two. We could walk off the back of the hill if we got there, but it would leave us standing on top of a huge cliff that often gets struck by lightning. We opted to go down.
Silly me: I had us climbing with just one rope. A pitch is a rope length, not half a rope length. With two ropes, we could have rappelled a full pitch. Instead, we had to rappel from the anchor to a tree in the middle of the second pitch. I was forced to leave gear at the anchor to give us something to tie the ropes to. We anchored to the tree and lowered ourselves to the ledge at the top of the first pitch. The ground was still 200 feet down, and rain started to accompany the thunder. The time between flashes of lightning and the explosions of thunder was getting absurdly short. We had to get down right away.
I tied one end of the rope to the anchor. I tossed the other end to the ground. There would be no pulling one end of the rope to retrieve it; we were going to have to leave it behind. Life is worth more than a $150 climbing rope. Andrew went first. As soon as his feet touched the ground I was sliding down towards him. Water ran down the rope and pooled in my lap as I retreated off the face.
I got down and we jogged to the car. Once inside, we laughed at our stupidity. This was my fault. I had decided to ignore the threat of rain. I had decided to only take one rope when I knew it took two to retreat.
I had sandbagged myself.