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Mountaineering, or mountain climbing, is the process of reaching the highest point of a mountain. The process is dictated by whatever terrain and conditions you encounter. For example, you might have to hike, climb, ski, camp, and more to successfully reach the summit.
The sport is often conflated with rock climbing because, well, they both involve climbing, but they’re considered separate because they have distinct goals. Mountaineers want to reach the mountain top while rock climbers want to ascend a rock face.
Since mountaineering has such a broad definition, mountain climbers either need to be the most skilled or can be the least skilled climbers. That’s because the sport could entail scaling a frozen mountain side or just climbing over big rocks on a trail.
Given that mountaineering is a potpourri of activities, we’ll cover a few different gear lists in this article. The first list, the mountaineering essentials, is fairly broad but applicable to any mountain climbing trek you go on. And then, we’ll cover more specific climbing activities.
Mountaineering Essentials
The 10 essential items you need for a mountaineering trip were devised by outdoor education non-profit The Mountaineers. They said they developed the list using the collective knowledge of hundreds of skilled outdoorsmen. The items include:
- Navigation like a map, altimeter, compass, or GPS device
- Headlamp with extra batteries
- Sun protection like sunglasses, sun block, or UV protected clothing
- First aid, which includes foot care and insect repellent
- Climbing knife (like a pocket knife, but designed to cut rope)
- Fire starter like matches, lighter and tinder, or stove as appropriate
- Shelter, as in a lightweight tent or bivy
- Extra food, as in beyond minimum expectation
- Extra water, as in beyond minimum expectation (or the means to purify)
- Extra clothes, as in sufficient to survive an emergency overnight
Additionally, The Mountaineers suggest as you collect your gear, you should try to answer two basic questions:
- Can you prevent or respond appropriately to an emergency?
- Can you safely spend one or more nights outside?
The reason this list and those questions are so important is that gear packing is a constant struggle. You’re trying to strike the right balance of what you’ll need and what you might need in finite space.
Types of Mountaineering
Your goal as a mountain climber is to summit a mountain. Like we said before, how you succeed will require a mix of activities, but you can prepare for those activities ahead of time. The gear you need when you go out on an expedition depends entirely on your terrain and weather conditions. As far as climbing is concerned, there are three types.
Rock Climbing
We’ve already defined rock climbing as ascending a rock face, but there are multiple styles you can take to get there. There’s free climbing (with a rope); free soloing (without a rope); and bouldering, which involves traversing left and right on a low wall rather than up and down.
When most people talk about rock climbing, they’re talking about free climbing. The basic gear for a free climb is:
Ice Climbing
Ice climbing is a lot like rock climbing, but you’re climbing a wall of ice. As the old saying goes, where there’s smoke, there’s fire. In this case, where there’s a mound of ice large enough to climb, it’s probably in an area that’s cold. So, you’ll need not just climbing gear, but cold weather gear as well. For obvious reasons, you won’t have the physical dexterity to climb up ice, so in addition to basic climbing gear and cold weather clothes, you’ll have to rely on tools like:
Trail Climbing
In many ways, trail climbing parallels hiking, but the difference is the state goal. A hike could be on a trail through the woods or around a pond whereas a trail climb is to reach a mountain top. While you will have to scramble up or over rocky terrain, you probably won’t need any technical climbing skills or specific gear to succeed.
Summit Time
As the old adage goes, “Man plans, and God laughs.” While you can’t prepare for everything, you can acknowledge that something bad could happen and you can prepare for what’s probable. So, make sure you have all the climbing and hiking gear you need ahead of your next mountaineering trip with CampSaver.
