introducing ClimbingTechTips.com

Hey All,

John D. here, Founder of ClimbingTechTips.com

ClimbingTechTips.com focuses on climbing safety, education, and community.

We provide professional grade, what-you-need-to-know climbing videos featuring certified rock & ice guides. We have 50+ CTT videos on the site, with more forthcoming across all categories. Videos range from beginner to advanced.

Examples:

Advanced trad lead demo

climbingtechtips.com/index.…

Placing gear on lead

climbingtechtips.com/index.…

Navigating the crux

climbingtechtips.com/index.…

Escaping the belay with a redirect

climbingtechtips.com/index.…

Ice climbing anchors

climbingtechtips.com/index.…

Bouldering

climbingtechtips.com/index.…

CTT is also a personal, multi-media archive. CTT Members can keep all their personal climbing photos & videos in one easy-to-use place. The more a climber posts on CTT, the more points they earn for free gear.

We have solid things happening -- 5,000 registered members and growing; partnership tie-ins with American Alpine Club (AAC), Fixe, Aliens; we are producing posters & decals for every climbing gym and gear shop in North America; we are working on a full-length CTT film; we have a team of Denali guides filming in Alaska; we have two teams heading to Patagonia; we are also improving the website look and functionality.

For those of you past the skill acquisition phase, feel free to use our site as your personal climbing photo & video archive. Great Aunt Ruthie is sick of seeing your facebook climbing photos!

Otherwise...feel free to post up your own mentorship via our site. Or knott.

Deep respect for MountainProject!

ClimbingTechTips.com

Cool, free education is always good, especially in a video format. Thanks for all the hard work. Although, I am not sure that you have 5,000 members. Your own website says you have 24. :P

climbingtechtips.com/index.…

My only suggestion would be to add content relating to analyzing the technical and engineering aspects of climbing. Sort of like a climbing Mythbusters per se. I think many if not most experienced users like to view that type of content.

We actually have more than those grandiose numbers, but they are BS spammers (Ugh!) we are kicking off the site. The 24 members you see are some of our featured members.

I also agree with your statement about analyzing technical and engineering aspects of climbing. That type of info is forthcoming. One example: we are working with Kevin Daniels @ Fixe to promote correct usage / technical info of bolting & anchor hardware...Very important to the guys at Fixe and the future of establishing routes.

Love it!

One change that might be nice: the 20 second intro gets annoying after watching a few videos. It's not much of an issue for the longer videos, which probably deserve a nice professional looking intro, but it gets annoying when you watch several short ones in a row.

Agreed. We are probably changing that in the next round of editing.

this is an awesome tool that will definitely help people transition from plastic to rock safely! i really like it and will definitely be using to teach groups! this is sweet!

John Dubrawski wrote:I also agree with your statement about analyzing technical and engineering aspects of climbing. That type of info is forthcoming. One example: we are working with Kevin Daniels @ Fixe to promote correct usage / technical info of bolting & anchor hardware...

I was thinking more advanced than that. Bolting info is good no doubt, but I was referring to subjects that are more academic. I dont know if you have attended the International Technical Rescue Symposium or not, but the subjects presented in the ITRS conference are good examples of what I was referring to. While this is more geared toward rescue, it is a good list of academic technical subjects:

itrsonline.org/presenterinf…

Some crevasse rescue videos would be really cool, perhaps those are still in the works. Great site!

Keenan -- mountaineering, alpine, & crevasse videos are forthcoming. Right now we have a pair of Denali guides filming in Alaska. Pretty cool!

20kN -- we've recently had rescue and rigging companies proactively contact us, complementing us on our site and wanting to feature rescue/rigging partnerships.

Are you familiar with Rescue Response Gear & The Rigging Lab?

For (experienced & beginner) climbers who like our site and/or videos, feel free to become a CTT site member. Then post up some climbing pics! The CTT web platform is pretty advanced as a personal, climbing photo & video archive.

We are working hard for the climbing community, and hope climbers such as you continue contributing to our group effort.

Thanks!

i really like the escape belay vid showing the use of the sidetail

in reality many of us wont have long cordelettes that most rescue literature shows when were at belays, we might not even have prussic cord

the use of kleimheists and the side tail might save you one day .... especially after a long pitch where you may have nothing left at the belay ...

;)

VERY SWEET! Maybe some good Gym to Crag etiquette vids too if u don't already have em.

"VERY SWEET! Maybe some good Gym to Crag etiquette vids too if u don't already have em."


Morgan -- Totally agree. We've been asked by groups like American Alpine Club (AAC), and Bishop Area Climbers Coalition (BACC), to focus our gym messaging on the transition to outdoors.

Example:

We are creating posters for every gym in North America; some might focus on humorous-yet-important images such as "Poop Smart!"...areas such as the Buttermilks in Bishop are abused by weekend climbers.

Photo contest*******

Anyone have the right image for a "Poop Smart" poster campaign?

Winner receives a free cam of their choice!

John Dubrawski wrote:Are you familiar with Rescue Response Gear & The Rigging Lab?

I know of them. I have some experience in commercial rope access, so we use similar gear. But no, I have never met those guys or attended one of their classes.

Why do we have to have a pic to upload? This is pretty ridiculous.

John Dubrawski wrote:Morgan -- Totally agree.

Awesome... this is really great. The Access Fund has also been working pretty hard on this aspect of climber education and it's really great to see.

Nic Lazzareschi wrote:Why do we have to have a pic to upload? This is pretty ridiculous.

Nic, in an effort to make a richer user experience, we changed new member settings so people upload at least a single image.

Otherwise we have a ton of grey faceless icons across the site. It also helps mitigate BS spammers and trollers; we can see if people are actually climbers / outdoor types by their image.

Is this "pretty ridiculous"? I see you have an icon on MountainProject...Nice to put a face with a name.

Question to the MountainProject community****

Should we switch it back to allow faceless grey icons for new members on ClimbingTechTips.com?

One could also simply cruise the site without becoming a CTT Member. But ideally, climbers continue joining the site and adding to the experience!

John, point taken I see why you are doing what you are doing with the pictures to weed out spammers and bots. And I did upload an image. My frustration is not that I did not want to eventually upload an image, I just dont have images of myself for your requirements ready made. I would have to go into an editing program, reduce the image, create one, take a selfie etc. I did not have time for this when I was signing up and wanted to come back later to do it as I did with my MP account.

Let me say this, great vids, looking forward to watching all of them. I am an AMGA SPI and having these vids helps me stay sharp and gives me a place to point other people to go when they have questions and want to work on climbing things on their own and from home. I was so looking forward to your site that I became frustrated when I could not get immediate access! So its really all about me and my needs right now (kidding and fully of irony and trying to be self deprecating). I just wanted to upload a pic at my connivence. Also, you already have measures in place to take care of spammers and bots which makes it redundant to MUST have a picture. That's all.

I like the site. Keep up the good work. I think you have some big balls to put it up on MP for everyones appropriate and inappropriate (me) scrutiny.

Good points Nic. Spam bots have been a b!tch, but we seem to have minimized & quarantined them.

Also we configured max file size as 5 MB, to make it easier for members to upload pics.

Are you taking 10MB selfies?

:P

Cool site. Love to see the video how-to(s)!

Heads up, you're having some overflow issues in your forum last post.

Ryan Palo wrote:Cool site. Love to see the video how-to(s)! Heads up, you're having some overflow issues in your forum last post.

Ryan, are you referring to this recent post by AMGA rock guide Dave Lane? Is the formatting off for your browser?

climbingtechtips.com/index.…

Thanks.