How to Lower Yourself After Rock Climbing

"Hi, I'm Bill with Zoar Outdoor on behalf of expertvillage.com. We're here today at Chapel Ledges in Ashfield, Massachusetts, Trustees of the Reservations Property and in this series I'm going to be talking about preparing to climb. Once you're at the top of your climb, that can sometimes be only half the battle for new climbers, getting down can be kind of scary, but you know the right technique and communicate well with your belayer things will go find. What do you need to think about up here? First thing you want to do is get all of the slack out of the rope, that's about communicating with your belayer. The command take is often heard at cliffs, just means take up all the slack or simply say, hey can you take up all that slack please! Once that's taken care of I'm going to get into my lowering position, looks like this. I got my feet straight out in front of me, my heels are on the rock which is more of a reminder for me to keep my legs straight out and extended. This keeps my away from the rock so I don't get scraped up on the way down. I can hold on to my end of the rope in front of me if I'd like, not that I need to because I'm tied in, but it keeps me oriented in case I start swinging around. Once I'm set, then I want to go down, down please! Watching out for obsticles along the way like this over hang that I want to step over and just keep walking down. Keeping my feet spread apart, watching where I'm going, communicating with my belayer about the pace. This is great!"