Learning to Lead

I imagine this has been asked in the past but I didn't see any posts that covered my question. Where do I start with learning to lead? I took some classes a few years ago, but my gym was a bouldering gym and my only way to practice was on a mock lead wall. I moved to the bay recently and have some new friends who started climbing this year. I've been doing a lot of top rope with them and showed them how to go outside for bouldering. Now I really want to learn to lead since I can't climb with my old crew. (It's made me realize that I really should have had them teach me when I had the chance). For someone who knows the basics I feel like I still couldn't pass a lead belay test, or even if I could, I still feel like I am not good enough to teach my friends safely. What do most people do? Learn from more experienced friends? Just read about lead and lead belaying in books and then go to a gym? Use MP partner search? Pay for some sort of lead classes somewhere? I'll basically do anything because I just love being outdoors on a rope and I miss it a lot.

Learning to lead isn't so hard. You need to know how to clip the rope with the carabiner facing both directions with both hands (that's four different permutations), what to do with your feet and how not to take an inverted fall, and how to avoid back clipping and z clipping (hard to do outside of a gym most of the time). Most people seem able to learn and understand these skills and concepts in anywhere from twenty minutes to a couple hours. There are lots of resources online that cover all these concepts well; I don't think these are a replacement for in person mentorship, but they will help a lot.

Mock leading (top roping while clipping a second rope or the other end of the rope you're on) under the supervision of an experienced leader helps a lot, and will let you know whether or not you're ready to start leading for real. There are two particularly good areas in the bay area for new leaders-- the Hicks Road crags (roadside rock and Guadalupe rock, especially Bolted For Beginners at Guad) and Table Scraps Pinnacle. Bolted for Beginners is like 5.3 or 5.4 or something and has tight bolting, so you could probably with a little instruction just hop on lead there instead of messing about with so much mock leading. 

If you're willing to drive out my way I'd be happy to take you out to Senior Wall or The Grotto at Table Mountain and practice on some moderates (or other options up here, too), or if you're willing to find me a case of Rekorderlig strawberry lime cider I would be willing to drive out to you and spend a day at the Hicks Road crags. 

I don't climb hard but I do climb a lot, and have for some years now. 

Even if you don't have draws or a rope, find a way to practice clipping at home, then get a few hours of mentorship whether from me or someone else (I found Touchstone's lead climbing class to be good when I did it about four years ago), and then boom, you'll be a lead climber.   

Edit: Also a lot of lead belayers belay like fecking idiots. So also learn how to keep your leader from decking unnecessarily, and you will be among the rare group of lead belayers at Castle Rock and Mount Diablo who actually belay properly.

If you don’t have a mentor who has been leading for a good while, I recommend taking classes or hiring a guide for several sessions. Many climbing gyms offer clinics, and this should suffice if all you want to do is lead in the gym. If you want to lead outdoors, many guiding companies offer classes and clinics—you just need to decide if you want to lead trad, or sport, or both. (COVID permitting, of course)

It will cost you a little money, but first getting your feet wet in a clinic setting (with other  climbers new to leading) and then dialing in some more specific skills with a one-on-one with a guide, will set you up to be a safe, confident leader.

You’ll likely meet potential partners in a learn-to-lead clinic, and you could also just forego the guide route and go out with them and fumble around. Not as safe, but that’s your risk to evaluate.

Good luck and be careful out there.

You're gonna have to find folks to climb with anyhow.

Might as well find folks who know how to lead and get them to teach you as yall go.

Be honest.  Read a lot and watch a lot of videos. Go make some friends.  

Be a good reliable fellow climber, and you'll find what you are looking for.

[edit]

Specifically, local FB climbing groups, climbing gyms, and posting on MP have been the places where I've found folks.

Start on level ground

Take a lead class at your gym, that will teach you to lead belay & most likely get lead certified at your gym. Then you can get a lot more practice. And it’ll set you up to lead belay people outside. And before you know it, you’ll be leading too & you’ll live happily ever after.

Leading is trivial. Start on the ground, climb up, and clip your rope to the bolts. Look up some instructions on lowering/cleaning safely, ideally using a method that doesn't require you to untie from the rope.

Rappelling is dangerous, and best avoided for routine sport leads, but important to know how to do safely in case there's miscommunication with your belayer or they turn out to be incompetent and you don't trust them to lower you. The principle is simple, but tie knots in the ends of your ropes, and look up how to use a friction knot (an "autoblock" in this context) to back up your brake hand.

Learning to lead belay is the real bit that requires some attention. Many people have decent enough mechanical intuition to just pick it up naturally. Some people lack that intuition though so you gotta watch out. 

Whether lead or top rope belaying there are two key principles your belayer must abide by. (1) the belayer should never have to react to catch a fall. Their default stance should be such that if the leader does fall, the belay device will lock off automatically. For an ATC this means that the default location of your brake hand should be below your belay device. For a grigri the location is tucked slightly below and behind where the brake strand exits (look at the gri gri manual for an illustration, the correct default brake hand position is more subtle than with an ATC). (2) the belayer must have a hand on the brake strand at all times. 

There are different ways of meeting these requirements, some specific stereotyped motions are what you will learn in a gym, but there are various permutations, and you already know some subset of them as far as they pertain to top rope belaying. All you need to learn now is how to pay out slack while still sticking to those two principles. You can learn on your own on the ground if you practice paying out and taking in slack with a buddy walking towards or away from you and tied into the load end of the rope. Look up some videos if you need inspiration. But as long as you're abiding by (1) and (2) above, you will find confidence in your ability to keep the leader off the deck.

There are other more subtle belay techniques like soft catches and such, but the main thing is to keep your partner off the ground, and you can learn the rest as you go along as long as you take things slowly and respect the learning process.

FWIW I started by buying some quick draws and just going for it. There was no mentorship, not courses, no instructions, I didn't even read the manuals. For many people it's not a big deal. I've also met people though who I wouldn't trust to climb with me even with instruction due to a mind boggling lack of mechanical intuition. Figure out where you stand on that spectrum and pace your learning process accordingly.

A lead class at your local gym is probably going to be the easiest/safest place to learn the basics of lead climbing and belaying. There are a few more things to think about outdoors, but it's a lot easier to find a mentor for that if you know how to belay and clip the bolts.

If you find someone to mentor you I'd recommend going out of your way to show your appreciation. Teaching someone the skills needed to safely trad climb can be a lot of effort from the mentor. Show genuine interest and effort in learning to be a great belayer, offer to use your rope, get good at cleaning gear, support them on their climbing projects, offer buy them lunch/dinner if they have taught you a lot, verbally thank them, etc. I think being like that will help you in finding partners to teach you this stuff. If their is a local Facebook page for climbers I'd recommend posting on there saying you need partners,being honest about your skills, and that you are stoked to learn!  Oh and find an older crusty looking trad guy at the gym and see if he'll take you under his wing haha