Urban Dry Tooling

Hey MP,

Been free soloing some new dry tooling routes around DC, Balitmore, Annapolis.

Has anyone else been getting into urban drytooling? If so, post some pics, or give me some great new cities to check out!

Haven't been before, but sounds like a great idea...

urban dry tooling

what is this???

Rock climbing with ice axes has always struck me as the most contrived and ridiculous of all sub-genres of climbing. Doing it in the middle of a city is even worse.

I prefer getting my tool wet!

Pictures or it didn't happen! Do a FS of the Washington Monument

Our urban' situation is rural cuz we use a 100 yr old concrete farm silo in a south Chicago suburb. Also used to climb on trees along the residential streets with tools. Here's a silo dry tool pic from this fall.

Ryan N wrote:Haven't been before, but sounds like a great idea...

Yeah, this is just going to piss off property owners. Unlike skateboarding, dry tooling on buildings is more than likely actually destructive to the brick and mortar buildings. Be careful you don't get slapped with a ticket or two in the process. Maybe talk to your local gym about setting a few dry tool routes. It's increasingly common and way less counter-productive to the image of climbing to the general public.

Owen,

Too bad it's already been rap bolted.

This reminds me of two stories of old partners I've had, the first lived in a deep southern city and in the middle of summer received his brand new pair of FootFangs, anxious to try them he proceeded to try climbing a tree in his front yard, the axe he swung promptly over drove and he is trying to remove it when it came free and smacked him in the head, bleeding he arrived at the ER where his wife was a nurse. The second was a sport climbing friend who having never seen an ice axe in person asked to examine my friends and he too had to strike a tree and over struck resulting in the same injury as above, except not as severe.