From Rock and Ice’s Alison Osisus, Fighting the Good Fight: Against Ourselves
This is a great read and an important one to remind all of us about how we shouldn’t let our guard down when climbing. Climbers tend to get complacent, perhaps sloppy even with standard safety procedures, even more complacent the more experienced you get. Climbing starts to feel like second nature and you get in a rhythm but we perhaps should forget those safety practices, double checks, and the communication between climber and belayer that many learn in a very stern way when they first start but that gets tossed to the side with experience. Personally, I know when I feel comfortable with a partner we end up doing a lot of things in an unspoken way when we should be double checking our safety systems and verbalizing what we are doing.
Enjoy the article by Alison, it’s a fitting read.