Trad
placing your own protection
Sport climbing you clip what’s there. Trad you place what protects you — and that changes everything about how you read a route. This is where you learn to do it well.
The two days, in short
- Choosing a rack, and racking it so the right piece is always to hand
- Reading a crack, and placing gear you can trust
- Building trad anchors from scratch
- The fall-factor theory that explains why it all holds
It’s not gatekeeping — trad on shaky multi-pitch foundations is just a bad idea, and we’d rather be honest than take your money.
Who this is for
This one has a real prerequisite, and we hold to it — you’ll need to have done the multi-pitch course with us first. If you’ve climbed bolted multi-pitch elsewhere but not with us, no problem: we add a day at the start to refresh the fundamentals on our systems, so the trad days are spent on trad. (we’ll quote that when you enquire.)
What you leave with
The skills to start leading grade 4 and 5 trad routes on your own gear — and, ideally, the itch to keep going.
Inclusions & exclusions
Included
Guiding, accident & rescue insurance, and all the technical gear — ropes, the rack, protection, hardware, the lot. The only personal kit is a helmet, harness, shoes and a chalk bag; bring your own if you’ve got them, and if you haven’t, they rent from us for a small supplement rather than sending you shopping. Tell us your sizes when you book.
Not included
Getting there and back, food and drink for the day, and anywhere you stay the night before or after.
Good questions
Somewhere in Catalonia with the right rock for this course and the right conditions for the time of year — there’s no fixed venue, and that’s deliberate: it means we go where the course works best rather than where the diary says. If you’ve got somewhere in mind, tell us. If it suits what we’re working on, that’s where we’ll go.
Courses are hard to rain off. A skills venue swaps freely, and if the first day’s forecast is grim we can often move indoors to a climbing gym and still get the fundamentals done. It’s only when both days look genuinely bad that we’ll reschedule — and we’ll see that coming together, days ahead, rather than springing it on you.
Most people come solo or in a pair, which is where the learning is richest. Up to four of you can share a course and a guide; if there are more of you — up to eight — we’ll bring a second guide. Just say how many when you get in touch. The price drops as the group grows: €400 for one, €220 each for two, €190 each for three or four.
Free to move or cancel up to 7 days before. Inside that last week the deposit stays — not to be awkward, but because that’s when a course gets properly built: venue, conditions, kit, a plan shaped around you. Weather that rules out both days is the exception — then we reschedule, no drama.
No — and that’s deliberate. A course here is about what you can do, not a piece of paper that says you did it. What you leave with is capability you’ll feel on the very next climb, which is worth a good deal more than a certificate on the wall.
Other courses
Try climbing
A relaxed one-day introduction to real rock. No experience and no kit assumed, no commitment beyond a day.
Sport climbing
Get safely onto real rock and be comfortable there — the gear, the belaying, and the bit nobody teaches properly: cleaning the anchor and getting down.
Multi-pitch
The course the multi-pitch page keeps pointing at — the one that turns a guided big day into something you can do on your own rope.
