Orient Yourself When Rock Climbing

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Bill with Zoar Outdoor on behalf of expertvillage.com. We're here today at Chapel Ledges in Ashfield, Massachusetts, the Trustee's of the Reservations Property and in this series I'm going to be talking about preparing to climb. So here we are at the cliff ready to go climbing. What do you want to think about while your here to keep yourself safe? Well, people show up at the cliff and look at that and say, "oh my gosh, if I fell off of there, I'd get really hurt!" That's true, easy to avoid though, if you're going to the top of the cliff make sure you know the edge, you know where it is, you stay at a reasonable distance back from at a body length is real safe. If you're going over to the edge, you might want to get tied in, keep yourself anchored to something up there so you're not going to fall off. But down here you're pretty safe, you want to think about rock fall. If I'm at a cliff that I don't know or with a group, probably going to be wearing a helmet. If you're walking around down here, you might notice there's a lot of tree roots, boulders, other things to trip over. Here is where the actual more common injuries happen, people walking around not paying attention to where they're going, they'll slip, they'll trip, they'll sprang their ankle, so be careful walking around. Once you're on the cliff tied to a rope, everybody is paying attention to you, you're pretty safe."