Rock climbers will increase: Access and Safety in focus

With Covid-19 and all the restrictions in place in 2021, we will probably see more climbers than ever in the local crags. Many unexperienced gym climbers and families will try rock climbing as soon as the crags are warm enough. This will most probably create new access challenges as well as put safety in focus. A couple of weeks ago, the biggest Swedish newspaper said, via a doctor, that rock climbing should be avoided in order to reduce pressure on the hospitals.

In any case, getting outdoors doing physical and mentally challenging activities is a very good activity for the population. This means, experienced climbers should pay more attention in regards access and safety meeting all these beginners outdoors this spring. Solo climbing as well as doing scary trad climbs or high ball bouldering should stop. Gyms and instructors could have introduction courses on how to act outdoors. Furthermore, it might be wise to add some extra bolts on many of the dangerous old-school bolted easier routes? Other options could be to develop super easy very low boulders as well as put easy access top anchors on new 10- meters routes graded 2 - 4.

At the same time, it will be hard to keep the interest going for all the hard training competition teenager groups. Here there is a great opportunity to introduce these keen climbers to open up new boulders and possibly as well finding new routes to develop. Creating a broader rock climbing interest will make them mentally stronger during upcoming comps later. A failure is not such a big thing as they can take advantage of all their hard training also outdoors.