Been away from climbing a while...ah, life 🤷🏽‍♂ But still love learning from you. Really like your calm, open and respectful style

I was in the room when my dad was watching some of your videos, and I just thought that they were really good! While I probably won’t be watching personally, I’ll subscribe because I think your videos are great from the bits that I’ve seen. You’re great at talking, and provided clear, justified and explained opinions. (I don’t know what video I saw, and I just commented on your most recent)

Excellent, been watching your videos this past week, got my 1st trad course booked next week and needing to buy some basic kit to get started. Ultimate goal is to ice climb in 2025 and this is the start of the journey

So glad i learned to climb through a uni club where i could borrow gear and slowly build up my own collection. If other people are in that situation i would recommend helmet then harness then belay (then after that its less important) just because club helmets are both a bit grim and you dont know what impacts theyve taken and its nice to have a harness you know fits/a belay you are comfortable with

Also ask your friends. Quite a lot of climbers collect a lot of gear over the years. I have a 4 buckle spare harness that is highly adjustable that fits most of my friends. So if I take a friend who only knows bouldering so far or someone who is just interested to try, I have everything to get started. Most of the stuff just accumulated over the years. I can give away my Grigri and just use an ATC myself. I suspect I am not the only one 😉 So ask your climber friends (and inspect the gear before you trust your life to it. Probably with the person you go climbing with). Also any helmet is better than no helmet. If you have a bike or skateboarding helmet, that will not be perfect, but probably still do the job in most cases. (I still have my old helmet, so can also give that one to a friend.) So maybe just try climbing once without getting any gear and then decide. If you are in super dangerous Rockfall terrain on your first day out, that sounds like an odd choice to me anyway 😉

Hiya, Cheers for the video! Just wondering, are the slings dyneema? And what width?

Thanks!

nice one Jez, as a side note for more alpine disciplines, what light harnesses would you recommended to be comfortably used and worn with rucksack hip belts?

Thank you, nice video as always! Curious that you cite d-shaped carabiners or ovals as options for both the ATC and Giga-Jul (at around 8 minutes into the vid) - I thought HMS was supposed to be preferred shape for belay devices?