3 Climbing Tricks Every HIKER Should Know

Three climbing techniques every hiker should know and why you should know them. The first technique is stemming and while all three of these can mistakenly be called stemming, the first one specifically is stemming and that is when you apply opposing pressure between your butt and your back and your feet and so you create an L shape in between two rocks, two cliffs, anywhere you can wedge your feet and oppose the pressure with your back and your butt to scoot along. That is stemming. The second technique, bridging. That is when you apply opposing pressure between your feet and your hands and you put your body in the shape of a bridge between two rocks and you can move either horizontally or vertically with bridging. The third technique is chimneying. That is when you are using both hands and both feet to climb a close vertical shoot like a chimney. If you've seen American Ninja Warrior, there's a usually a stage where you have the chimney towards the end. All of these techniques require practice and should be practiced in a safe setting like a climbing gym with a helmet or a padded mat in an environment with trained professional or experienced personnel. Once you have these tools in your toolkit, your hiking arsenal, they unlock three key things for you. That is the first thing. If you encounter unexpected terrain or unexpected weather which alters your course, say normally you have to cross a river crossing and the water has come up and you can't cross that river crossing where you normally would but there's another section that might require some sort of scrambling or maneuvering through boulders and you might need to apply some of these techniques. Unexpected terrain, unexpected weather changes. The second situation where this is helpful is if you need to rescue someone or provide aid to someone who perhaps has fallen off a trail or has fallen off a boulder and somehow gotten stuck or is in need of assistance in a area that's not easily accessible. You may need to use some of these techniques. The best thing about using these three techniques is that for the adventurous hiker it unlocks places like this. So I hope you get out there find your adventure and be infamous. infamous