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Aid climbing is a form of rock climbing that uses mechanical devices and equipment, such as (or ladders), for upward momentum. Aid climbing is contrasted with free climbing (in both its traditional or sport climbing free climbing formats), which only uses mechanical equipment for protection, but not to assist in upward momentum. Aid climbing can involve hammering in permanent and bolts, into which the aiders are clipped, but there is also 'clean aid climbing' which avoids any hammering, and only uses removable placements.
While aid climbing traces its origins to the start of all climbing when ladders and pitons were common, its use in single-pitch climbing waned in the early 20th century with the rise of free climbing. At the same time, the Dolomites became the birthplace of modern "big wall aid climbing", where pioneers like Emilio Comici developed the early tools and techniques. Aid climbing's "golden age" was in the 1960s and 1970s on Yosemite's granite big walls led by pioneers such as Royal Robbins and Warren Harding, and later Jim Bridwell, and was also where Robbins' ethos of minimal-aid, and Yvon Chouinard's ethos of clean aid climbing, became dominant.
In the 1990s, the traditional A-grading system was expanded at Yosemite into a more detailed "new wave" system, and with the development and growth in clean aid climbing, the A-grade became the C-grading system. The grading of aid-climbing climbing routes is complex as successive repeats can substantially change the nature of the challenge through hammering and also the build-up of large amounts of in-situ fixed placements. It is not untypical for a new A5-graded aid-climbing route, to migrate to an A3-graded route over time.
Aid climbing is still used on large big wall climbing and alpine climbing routes to overcome sections of extreme difficulty that are beyond the difficulties of the rest of the route. A famous big wall climb such as The Nose on El Capitan is accessible to strong climbers as a partial-aid route graded VI C2, but only a tiny handful can handle its grade as a free climbed route. Aid is also used to develop "next generation" big wall routes (e.g. Riders on the Storm on Cordillera Paine, or the Grand Voyage on Trango Towers). Extreme C5-graded aid-only routes are also still being established, such as Nightmare on California Street on El Capitan.
Traditional aid climbing relied on fixed placements, which were mainly metal that the lead climber hammered into the rock as they ascended. These placements remained permanently fixed on the route (and in such cases, the second (or belayer) didn't have to take any placement out and just jumaring up on a fixed rope). Clean aid climbing avoids any hammering and uses the temporary protection of traditional climbing (e.g. spring-loaded camming devices) for placements; these are then removed by the second climber as they make their own ascent. This method therefore avoids the damage that repeated hammering of metal does to aid routes, and has been advocated as useful training and building up of experience in the placing of traditional climbing protection.
While the sport of aid climbing has waned as the free climbing movement has grown, elements of aid climbing are still a regular feature of many major big wall climbing and alpine climbing routes. These routes are long multi-pitch climbs where it is possible to find specific sections that are considerably above the difficulty level of the rest of the route. For such sections, aid climbing techniques are accepted, even by free climbers. For example, the renowned big wall climbing route The Nose on El Capitan is a 31-pitch 870-metre graded partial clean aid climb at VI C2, but as a fully free climb with no aid, it is graded VI , which is beyond the skills of all but a very small group of elite free climbers.
In 1946, John Salathé developed a piton made from high-carbon chrome-vanadium (salvaged from the axles of Ford cars), which enabled him to overcome the hard granite cracks of Yosemite and climb the iconic Lost Arrow Spire in 1947 with Ax Nelson. Salathé's new aid climbing equipment (including the skyhook), led to a "golden age" in big wall aid climbing. In 1957, a team led by Royal Robbins used Salathé's aid tools to climb the Northwest Face of Half Dome in Yosemite, ushering in modern American big wall aid climbing. In 1958, a team led by Warren Harding aid climbed The Nose on El Capitan using siege tactics (600 pitons and 125 bolts) over 47 days; while the ascent got worldwide recognition it was controversial due to the excessive use of aid. Robbins' ethos of minimizing the use of aid prevailed over that of Harding, and his legacy of partially-aided ascents including the Salathé Wall (1961), the North American Wall (1964), and the Muir Wall (1968) cemented Yosemite, and the granite walls of El Capitan, as the world's most important big wall aid climbing venue, and Robbins' place in climbing history.
1970 saw one of the most infamous events in big wall aid climbing with the creation of Cesare Maestri's Compressor Route on Cerro Torre. Maestri drilled an extreme amount of bolts into the famous headwall using a 300-pound air compressor drill; in one section, he drilled across a blank 90-metre face to avoid the wind. Maestri's excessive use of aid was condemned. In 1971, Reinhold Messner wrote a now-famous essay titled The Murder of the Impossible on the trend of excessive aid saying: "Today's climber ... carries his courage in his rucksack". Another famous essay in 1972, by big wall pioneers Yvon Chouinard and Tom Frost, appealed for clean aid climbing techniques to avoid the damage incurred by pitons and hammers. Messner's and Chouinard's essays marked the end of the excessive aid techniques. The 1970s saw new big wall aid climbing pioneers such as Jim Bridwell pushing standards in Yosemite using less intrusive aid (e.g. Chouinard's ) to put up groundbreaking routes such as Pacific Ocean Wall (1975) and Sea of Dreams (1978), with its famous A5-graded "Hook or Book" pitch, the first "if you fall, you die" rope length on El Capitan.
Bridwell and others pushed big wall aid climbing standards into the 1980s and 1990s with ever-harder A5-graded routes like Reticent Wall (1995) on the blank south faces of El Capitan. The arrival sport climbing in the late 1980s saw a dramatic rise in rock climbing standards. Many big wall aid climbs were freed, with the most notable being Lynn Hill's 1993 free climb of The Nose on El Capitan at 5.14a. Aid climbing continued to be a skill set for big wall and alpine climbers in both being able to complete routes that would otherwise be almost impossible to most climbers (e.g. The Nose on El Capitan) and in creating "next generation" big wall and alpine routes that are not capable of being fully freed (e.g. the Grand Voyage on Trango Towers). In a 1999 essay in Ascent titled The Mechanical Advantage, big wall aid climber and author, John Middendorf, said of that Hill's achievement on The Nose: "But without the old piton scars, without fixed protection, without her big-wall aid climbing experience, without the extraordinary free-climbing ability she gained from bolted sport climbs and indoor gyms and competitions, would there have ever been a such a free ascent?"
In 2012, the Oxford English Dictionary added the term "aid climbing".
A number of unique items of equipment are also used in aid climbing:
While different aid grading systems have been devised to address this (e.g. the "new wave"), in Yosemite Big Walls, McNamara argues: "Although it was originally touted as being more precise, than the previous A1-A5 system, it is now clear the new wave system only brought more confusion to the rating process". In practice, aid-climbing authors use a "composite" of the two systems (original and "new wave"), going from A0 to A6, and focused on the number of "bodyweight placements" (i.e. "tenuous" aid placements that can only hold a static bodyweight) as opposed to "bombproof placements" (belay-like aid placements that can hold a falling body) on a pitch, as a guide to the consequences of any leader fall.
The original aid climbing grades are described by the American Alpine Club as follows: "In general, older routes, routes with little aid, and those put up by climbers without extensive big-wall experience use the original aid rating system":
"New wave" grades are described by the American Alpine Club (republished in 2013) as: "Newer routes put-up by big-wall aficionados often are given a "New Wave" aid rating using the same symbols with new definitions":
History
Aid climbing traces its origins to the start of all climbing, with ladders used on historic ascents such as the 1492 ascent of Mont Aiguille, the 1786 ascent of Mont Blanc, or the 1893 ascent of Devils Tower, and with drilled bolts on historic ascents such as the 1875 first ascent of Half Dome. (2025). 9788885475809, Versante Sud. ISBN 9788885475809 By the start of the 20th century, the widespread use of aid (e.g. ladders and ) was challenged by the free climbing movement led by Paul Preuss. While the use of aid diminished on single-pitch routes, big wall climbers in the Dolomites, such as , further developed aid climbing techniques. The legacy of the Dolomites as the birthplace of big-wall and modern aid climbing was cemented by pioneer Emilio Comici who developed the multi-step aider (or ladder). In 1933, Comici used these aid climbing techniques to climb the overhanging north face of the Cima Grande, then the world's hardest big wall aid route. Comici's aid techniques were used by the leading European big wall and alpine climbing such as Riccardo Cassin on famous routes across the European Alps.
Equipment
Modern aid climbing typically uses most of the equipment used in traditional climbing and particularly the protection equipment of traditional climbing (e.g. nuts, hexcentrics and , and spring-loaded camming devices) that are needed for clean aid climbing. Where aid climbing is done as part of big wall climbing – which is normally its most common format – then even more equipment is required (e.g. including , hauling pulleys and ; , and ).
Fixed placement equipment
Before the introduction of clean aid climbing, placements were hammered-in by the aid climber as they ascended, with metal hammered into cracks being a common placement (and the various piton types including , bongs, angles and ), but also including copperheads (or heads); aid climbers may also use bolt kits to place fixed bolts where there are no suitable cracks for pitons while ascending.
Aiders and daisy chain systems
The equipment used to ascend via the hammered in placements are dual sets of , which are like ladders made of webbing material, and come in various styles including adjustable strap-aiders, and stirrup-style "etriers". These aiders are attached to the aid climber via a matching dual set of daisy chains (which can be loop-style or adjustable), and the aid climber will use to manage the effective length of the daisy chains.
Hooks and hangers
Various types of rock climbing use hooks as temporary placements, but they feature most commonly in aid climbing where on more difficult aid-climbing routes (e.g. grades above A2+), the aid climber is expected to be able to use placements that can only handle their static bodyweight (but may otherwise fail in the case of a dynamic fall); the range of hook types used in aid climbing includes skyhooks, cam hooks and .
Ascenders and fixed rope jumaring equipment
Aid climbing, and particularly for the belayer following the lead aid climbing, usually employ fixed rope ascending equipment, with ascenders being the most common devices, to reduce the effort on long big wall aid climbs.
Techniques
Aid climbing, for both "clean" and "traditional", is a very different type of climbing to traditional climbing, relying almost exclusively on mechanical devices for upward momentum. A number of specific techniques are important in aid climbing, which include the following:
Making placements
Aid climbing relies on the climber making placements onto the rock into which they attach aiders and ascend. Traditional aid climbing involved hammering in fixed placements (e.g. pitons, bolts, copperheads), a practice that made traditional aid climbing routes easier over time as later teams could use the placements of earlier teams. On advanced aid routes (i.e. A-grade above A3+), the act of hammering in fixed placements can be enough to shake the climber off the existing tenuous placements, so care and skill are required. Clean aid climbing avoids using any hammers, and thus the placements are effectively those of a traditional climber (although hooks are also used). Aid climbers generally try to make placements as high above their current position as possible to move efficiently.
Using aiders
Once a new placement is made, the aid climber will clip their daisy chain and an aider into the latest placement above their head and then bounce-test it; on passing that test, they then fully step into the aider attached to this new placement while clipping in the rope into the lower placement. Once completed, they release the lower daisy chain and its aider from the lower placement and climb up the new aider. These steps must be done in sequence to avoid a position where the climber comes free of any placement, or becomes temporarily dependent on a weak position.
Bounce testing
Free climbers will only know if their protection placements can carry the weight of a fall if it happens; some will pull on their placements as a simple test, but placing their body weight on the placement would be a form of aid. In contrast, aid climbers continuously "bounce test" their placements by loading their body weight onto them while using the lower placement as a backup in case the new placement fails. Excessive bounce-testing can make the extraction of the placements by the second climber difficult (i.e. the placements become really wedged into the cracks) and can result in longer timelines, damaged rock (where hammers are used to extract the placement), or having to leave placements on the route.
Jumaring on fixed ropes
The second climber in aid climbing usually jumaring up on a fixed rope while taking out any removable placements on the way. Even the leader may also jumar back up the rope after having retrieved lower pieces of equipment that are needed again. This is in contrast to traditional climbing where the second (or belayer) will normally climb the route (albeit on a top rope).
Grading
Issues with aid grading
The grading of aid climbs is regarded as being complex and in a state of flux. (2025). 9788885475809, Versante Sud. ISBN 9788885475809 Aid grades can change materially over time due to improvements in aid equipment and the impact of repeated ascents that subsequent aid climbing teams make to a route. Climbing author Chris McNamara outlines in his 2011 book Yosemite Big Walls, how the grade of a typical "new A5 route" in Yosemite evolves over time: (2025). 9780983322504, SuperTopo. ISBN 9780983322504
Original A-grades
Original aid climbing grades go from A0 to A5 and focus on the number of "bodyweight placements" as opposed to "bombproof placements" on a given pitch. They are less concerned with the physical demands of an aid route. In Yosemite, the "R" and "X" suffixes of the American YDS free climbing system are added for routes with dangers of falls onto ledges or ramps or the risk of cutting the rope on an edge, such as pitch 13 on Reticent Wall at A4R.
New wave A-grades
In the 1990s, Yosemite aid climbers created the "new wave" aid grading system that expanded the range of the original system to A6, introduced an intermediate (+) grade from A2 onwards for specific strenuous sections, and gave detailed definitions for each level. As with the original system, the main focus is still on discerning the number of "bodyweight placements" on a route, and therefore the consequences of a fall.
Clean C-grades
When the original or the "new wave" aid climbs can be ascended without the use of a hammer (for pitons or copperheads) the "A" suffix is replaced by a "C" to denote "clean climbing". In Yosemite, an "F" suffix is placed after the "C" if fixed gear (e.g. bolts) is still required.
Milestones
The following are some of the most notable milestones in the development of aid climbing routes:
High altitude and expedition
(2025). 9788885475809, Versante Sud. ISBN 9788885475809
North America
In film
A few notable films have been made focused on aid wall climbing including:
See also
Notes
Further reading
(2025). 9788885475809, Versante Sud. ISBN 9788885475809
(1994). 9780934641630, Falcon Guides. ISBN 9780934641630
External links
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