Watches for climbing?

Not Hobo Greg wrote:

I’m trying really hard to think live and let live, but seems like tracking and all this data takes the fun out of being in the mountains. Don’t we generally go there to get away from our technological complexities and enjoy being in the wilderness?

Totally agree. What is there to track anyway?
i m too slow and too weak and I ll never be Kilian jornet. 

I don’t need an expensive watch to remind me of that ;)

Yes a watch and HR monitor are worth it if you want to improve your aerobic fitness and like to nerd out about numbers and maps a bit. For the lazy (like me) Suunto has a progress graph that estimates your fitness, fatigue, and form over time. If nothing else, it's a helpful reminder to either rest or exercise, even if it's not completely accurate. If you want to get serious, go to UphillAthlete.com and learn everything you ever wanted to know about getting in shape for mountain endeavors - they will certainly direct you toward using gps data and a heart rate monitor for understanding your thresholds and fitness levels.

For climbing, I wear mine for multipitch with an approach, but my watch honestly doesn't do a very good job of handling cliffs (Suunto Ambit 3). Still fun to see your routes. I wrap it around the front side of my waist loop. It rarely gets in the way there and is really easy to look down to see the time.

I had a Suunto 9 peak. It did a lot of the things the others do, including heart rate, tracking all sorts of things, loading routes to follow or setting gps coordinates, which was really nice when I want to buswhack to a chunk of rock that I can’t see once I start off into the woods. Long battery life, too.  The strap came off seemingly on its own at the top of a winter hike one day and I found it on the ground next to me. The next day I was paddling a dinghy and heard a splash… It took a minute to realize what fell off. My watch. Again. It’s out in Bulldog Cove outside of Seward, AK now. I went back to the old Suunto Core watch… and ripped the strap on that a week later. If I wasn’t having some issues with Suunto straps, I would highly recommend them. 

Not Hobo Greg wrote:

I’m trying really hard to think live and let live, but seems like tracking and all this data takes the fun out of being in the mountains. Don’t we generally go there to get away from our technological complexities and enjoy being in the wilderness?

I think it can be kind of like photos. It’s nice to have something to look back on, but don’t let it take you out of the moment too much.

I usually just start it at the parking lot, stop it when I get back to the car, and rarely think about it in between. It doesn’t feel like it takes away from my experience.

On a related note, anyone have a Suunto heart rate monitor they’re willing to sell? Mine crapped out a couple months ago. 

Martin le Roux wrote:

Apart from battery life, the trouble with phones is that they don't usually have barometric altimeters, only GPS altimeters. If you try to record a GPS track on a near-vertical rock face you'll inevitably get something wildly inaccurate like this (this is the Yellow Spur in Eldo). According to this track the vertical gain was several thousand feet, not bad for a crag that's maybe 500' high. In this kind of terrain, if you want half-way decent elevation readings you'll need a barometric altimeter, which in practice means a watch, not a phone.

That's rather tame.  You should see some of my Garmin Explorer+ tracks.

Jason EL wrote:

That's rather tame.  You should see some of my Garmin Explorer+ tracks.

lolz/amen.

my general takeaway from spending a few years training with a smartwatch, heart monitor, gps, etc is this: garbage in equals garbage out.  and a lot of it is garbage....  i had a certain training hike that i did basically every week for almost 4 years.  the route length (mileage) using my phone gps somehow varied +/- 20 percent, the vertical was much worse.  my smartwatch gps was even more inconsistent than the phone gps (and they never remotely matched each other). then, when you pull the data into google earth, the algorithms it uses comes up with completely (and sometimes vastly) different numbers.  

the heartrate monitor in the watch was a complete random number generator.  even when i paired the watch with a chest strap it was still really inconsistent (although much better than the wrist sensor).  add to that the lack of consensus about what exactly defines the various training zone heartrates, etc.

by the end of it all i was like, why the fuck should i bother with this?  it's like every other bullshit big-data thing out there.  you end of spending all of your time poking a big pile of shit with a stick and saying "oooh, tell me i am somehow improving."  

I mostly want it for alpine climbing, aerobic training and tracking my aerobic fitness, sleep, gps and maps. All the approaches for sport climbing (and pretty much everything) are around 45 to 90 minutes uphill in my area (Canadian rockies) and I'd like to know if I'm getting fitter by the numbers instead of relying on how I feel each day since that is way more subjective (diet, sleep, recovery etc).

Main problem is not breaking the bank, so open to suggestions!

Like our esteemed colleague Slim, I always used to scoff at watches. Now, however, I'm smartwatch-curious because I'm training for an all-day+ techy mtb race that requires gps (the Marji Gesick, for those who enjoy two-wheeled offwidth). 

How does wearing a watch assist with recovery?

Are there any watches that provide reliable turn-by-turn navigation with audio cues? I'm having a terrible time with Gaia, Strava, Trailforks and RWGPS. Plus, with running a phone tracking GPS while paired with bone conduction headphones blasting Beethoven 6th, I have to run a battery bank. Just a watch would be rad. And no way am I buying a big-ass dedicated clunky bike gps computer, ugh.

Colonel Mustard wrote:

As a traditional climber, I use only one type of watch. Good day, sir!

Post of the day, right tha muthafugg here. I award you two snuggly gotez, and may baby buddha giggle with glee and bestow cakeself favor upon your next redpoint attempt.

I don't have one, but Whoop straps seem interesting for strictly fitness tracking. They have a bicep option which seems more amenable to crack climbing. They don't really replace a GPS watch as they don't track that, just HR and other body metrics to compute a "strain" score to tell you how much you're working. But from a roommate's experience, it doesn't do great at actually figuring out climbing exertion as it's less cardio, more strength. He'll go do some max bouldering and it says he barely did anything. Wish that they worked better, but between lackluster performance and their subscription model it's not something I'll shell out for.

I have and sometimes use a Garmin, it's fine but I don't know that it captures much actionable fitness data. I take it off if I think I'll have to jam at all.

Fenix 7x sapphire / sapphire solar is an awesome watch... altitude & heat acclimation, HRV, sleep tracking, aerobic vs anaerobic training estimates, recovery time estimates, training readiness estimates, color topo maps with existing trails and points of interest, can calculate routing on the watch, onboard music/podcast/audiobook storage, altitude/barometer/compass, pulse ox, optical HR, VO2max estimates, steps, calories estimates, power estimates (with suitable chest HR strap or foot pod), widgets to add other cool things, good software updates (HRV, training readiness, and more were just added), etc... Pair it with a good chest HR strap for better data. Pair it with bike sensors. Pair it with bluetooth headphones.

... but I'm quite content to not risk it while climbing outside. Hike to/from the base, sure. All the trail running and hiking, absolutely. If your absolutely sure you wont do ANY jamming, ever, while climbing with it, OK, sure... but I'd still try to add a screen protector to whatever watch you decide to try.

Desert Rock Sports wrote:

Fenix 7x sapphire / sapphire solar is an awesome watch... altitude & heat acclimation, HRV, sleep tracking, aerobic vs anaerobic training estimates, recovery time estimates, training readiness estimates, color topo maps with existing trails and points of interest, can calculate routing on the watch, onboard music/podcast/audiobook storage, altitude/barometer/compass, pulse ox, optical HR, VO2max estimates, steps, calories estimates, power estimates (with suitable chest HR strap or foot pod), widgets to add other cool things, good software updates (HRV, training readiness, and more were just added), etc... Pair it with a good chest HR strap for better data. Pair it with bike sensors. Pair it with bluetooth headphones.

... but I'm quite content to not risk it while climbing outside. Hike to/from the base, sure. All the trail running and hiking, absolutely. If your absolutely sure you wont do ANY jamming, ever, while climbing with it, OK, sure... but I'd still try to add a screen protector to whatever watch you decide to try.

That's an impressive feature list.  How well does each of those features work.  The coros vertix had a similar feature list but as I indicated in a previous post some of those features do not work very well.  Especially the o2 sensor. 

Pulse Ox seems to be off for some. Optical HR for training is a known issue with ALL wrist based optical HR options. Everyone suggests a chest strap if your serious about using HR for training. If you just want optical HR for like resting HR trends, or rough estimates, etc... its totally fine. If you try to use it in strenuous training it will give you bad data, like a peak HR you know to be 20 bpm higher than you have ever done, etc... Map zoom, pan is not as nice as it could be, but much better now with touch screen for panning on the 7, still not touch for zooming. 6 didn't have touch screen at all, so panning x, y, and zooming took a whole lot of button presses and time.

Everything else is pretty great.

Main thing for me with Fenix 6 or 7 over Coros or Suunto is the topo base maps with trails and points of interest. I don't want to have to pre-load maps to my phone and keep it accessible. I can just scroll to the map on my watch and see which way to go at a fork.

Edit: pat, reading your previous post: For training Garmin also bases it on running or probably cycling. Acclimation seems to be based on time spent at elevation and how your resting heart rate changes because of it. You can turn on all day or night only pulse Ox to see for yourself how it changes with time at altitude, but I don't know if it factors that in, since it seems to do acclimation estimates fine without it. For training effect / status you need to run (or probably cycle) occasionally. I don't know how many over what period of time, probably something like 3 or 4 over 2wks would be sufficient. Hiking and climbing activities will have aerobic/anaerobic loads calculated and factored it, but something about FirstBeat's algorithm that Garmin uses behind the scenes needs occasional runs. Even if they are really easy run/walk at low HR. VO2max will be calculated and look low for very easy runs like that, and only tend to look good for faster continuous runs. If you are doing a lot of aerobic base building it will tend to estimate your VO2max to be decreasing, which it incorrectly correlates to fitness, just keep in mind it doesn't understand the why. Fenix series have many activity profiles you can use, and they can be customized to a great deal. Too many to list. For ones that use GPS you can select the GPS accuracy, you can track 3D speed if you want, etc... Many watch faces, both pre-packaged and available for download.

Michael Abend wrote:

How are you supposed to climb a crack with a big fancy watch on? 

pick a bigger crack?

Desert Rock Sports wrote:

[very useful, detailed information]

@DRS owner, this dude deserves a promotion!

Lol, he doesn't read this stuff, and we don't even carry Garmin. A rep came in earlier though. I wish we would.

Colonel Mustard wrote:

As a traditional climber, I use only one type of watch. Good day, sir!

Don't forget the sextant, what good is longitude without latitude afterall.

For the Apple Watch you can buy a clear plastic cover that protects the screen.

For the Garmin you can use a chest strap and keep the Watch on you’re harness or chalkbag. 

Jaime Navarro Gutierrez wrote:

Hello,

Just wondering about everyone's opinion on watches to track your fitness. Since all my training in the last few years was for Sport climbing, I never felt the need of getting a watch. Now I'm more focused on climbing longer and harder multi pitches and alpine routes and I'm training to become a Mountain Guide so  I would like to track how I'm doing aerobically, recovery etc.

Questions are:

 What's your opinion on watches? 

Which one is your favorite and why:

Do I need a fancy one with climbing features? 

Is buying a used one worth it? HR monitor worth it?

I recently purchased an InReach mini 2 and I'm wondering if there's any benefit on sticking to Garmin to connect the two.

Thanks in advance guys!

Cheers,

I remember when the HR watch craze hit cycling, it was interesting info to have but people tended to use it to brag or obsess about “the numbers”.

Forget the watch and pay close attention to your performance, write your thoughts in a log and refer back to it often, cause “the numbers”, especially in climbing, don’t mean shit.