Understand How to Use & Gage Stoppers While Top Rope Rock Climbing

Video Transcript

"Hi! I’m Bill with Zoar Outdoor here on behalf of expertvillage.com. We are here today at Chapel Ledges in Ashfield, Massachusetts, the trustees of the reservations property. In this series, we are going to be talking about anchors for top rope rock climbing. Stopper placements for anchors, or for lead climbing, need a constriction in a crack where the crack starts to get a little bit narrower and that is going to hold the wedge stopper and you also want to look at a couple of other things so we can call macro and micro structure. So the macro structure is the overall big picture. Is this a solid piece of rock? Hit it, give it a whack. Does it make a hollow sound? Does it move? Nope, good! This is a solid piece of rock. The macro structure here is good. What about micro structure? Micro structure is the sand of the gravel that is in the way. The flaky service of the rock if it is going to cause the stuff that you put in there, did not get enough friction on its services and slip. So does this have good micro structure. Yeah, there’s not a bit of grit on that. There’s no sand in there so this has got good macro structure, good micro structure and a reasonable amount of friction so we can place a stopper in there. "