How did you start Trad climbing?

Spin off from a previous thread on manufacturing climbs (link below) -  What was your progression to becoming a trad climber? This is eventually one of my milestone goals as a climber myself. Just curious, did you start in the gym, did you start on bolted routes, did you start with Trad right away? Im just looking to see what the general route was for the community - if that can even be determined.

Edit: didnt asd the link will tonight!

Thanks guys,
North Col

I just took cams into the gym and started trad climbing there. The rest came naturally. 

Sport climbed for a year or so. Bought a rack, practiced building anchors on the ground, built top rope anchors using cams/nuts, top roped on the routes. Started climbing routes well below my grade and plugging gear.

I knew I wanted to go alpine climbing (coming from a mountaineering background) and didn't care a ton about sending hard/sport climbing so I expedited the process as much as possible. Less than a year from stepping foot in a climbing gym I had lead my first trad climb. I was lucky to have some great guides and mentors teach me the ropes! Certainly sport climbing is good to start out - jumping straight into leading on gear would be information overload. But there's no reason why you can't start following trad routes and learning what good gear placement looks like right off the bat.

I read John Krakauer's into thin air

I was a member of an outing group called MN Rovers. I started out just hiking and canoeing, but a really got along well with the climbers there, and never turned back. My first outdoor climb was called Danger High Voltage, a 5.7+ on Lake Superior. No gyms existed in MN at the time that I knew of. Sport climbing was in, but not in the Midwest. We were still using swami's and sticht plates.

Seneca was the only "real" crag near me that got me psyched to climb, I was doing indoor 10s and took a sport class, so I was like "heck it, may as well go learn trad outside!"

Got guided by the great guys at SRMG, then guided again for the lead class, then spent a bunch of weekends looking for places to jam pro in rocks.

So yes - sport to trad lead in my first real season outside. Best climbing decision I ever made.

Gym
Sport
Trad
Ice
Aid

I bought trad gear soon after my first outdoor sport climbing trip. I went to red rocks and realized that all the cool climbs required trad gear, so I went to my local crag (RRG) and started leading easy cracks. I think I read a couple books before I went out the first time with the gear.

mine was probably something like this:

TR outside with friends
Hired a guide to learn to properly lead sport
Started leading sport
Followed competent trad leaders to see how they place gear etc
Took a class on intro to trad
Mock led easy trad routes
Started leading trad
Took Steph Davis's crack climbing clinic in Indian Creek
Never looked back

Was sport climbing. Started following trad climbers to the crag. They put me on a 5.5 and told me to place tons of gear. They gave me feedback. I started buying gear and reading books / watching videos. I climbed every 5.6 and 5.7 I could and gained mileage. 

If you're really interested in trad... the first step is building top rope anchors. Commit, buy a set of stoppers (used or new), 40 feet of cord, a good manual (Royal Robin's Basic Rock Craft is what I learned from), and go start building anchors wherever you can.

With great fear

I decided I wanted to lead trad so I read as much as I could on here, books, and watched YouTube videos of professionals and amateurs and went out and did it. People tend to be real uppity on here about what you can and should do. If you understand it’s dangerous and trust yourself with what you’ve learned do what you want. 

Trad
Bouldering
Gym
Sport

There weren't any gyms

>Was a gym climber
>Learned sport climbing/leading
>Moved to SoCal where all the good climbing is trad
>Watched gajillions of videos on youtube to learn theory and knots
>Scoured MP partner finder
>Found people who needed partners at tahquitz/Josh and just needed a competent belayer
>Followed routes
>Made them teach me how to place gear and build anchors
>led easy routes on their gear
>Slowly accumulated trad rack
>now i'm a trad climber

I had spent my middle school years convincing my mom to drive me out to the boulders and I'd go run around and climb V0s in aqua socks with no pads. Was able to talk some people into taking me sport climbing a few times early in high school, then I'd get out a lot more once I could drive. Had a guy take me out for my first multipitch one day, on the last pitch he handed me the rack and said "your lead".

Never climbed in a gym until a few months after that.

When i started climbing there was no such thing as sport climbing so essentially you just started trad climbing from the get go.  My dad introduced me to climbing and I never looked back.  I would buy gear and go to the local crag and practice placing gear in every conceivable way I could imagine at the base of the crag.  Once i felt comfortable I started leading and went from there.  I also started leading in an area that didn't have a lot of cracks so I was forced to get creative with pockets.  Once the sport climbing thing took off all those climbs I protected using nuts in pockets became popular sport routes.  Start slow and practice placing gear on the ground.

I started at the bottom.

The older boys took me out in the woods and showed me a great time. We played with nuts at first, but eventually they showed me how to use fists to make it more fun. They even let me play with their mushroom looking things but they were too hard, I prefer a more floppy cam.  Eventually we were looking for any crack to slip our fingers in.
Those were the days. Just a couple guys eager to get to a secret area and take their shirts off and play around.

Mountaineering
alpine
trad
sport
gym

too old to boulder

I think I've hit the bottom.

Bouldering in the gym for about a year , bouldering outdoors one season, followed trad 3 years, then started to lead trad climbs.Learned a whole lot following.