Adaptive Rock Climbing for People With Disabilities: Top Rope System

Video Transcript

"The rock climbing system we have in place today, when helping someone with a disability such as quadriplegics, is we're using a hoisting system. Basically, we will be pulling somebody up and down a rock climbing wall. Now, for some people that are extreme rock climbers you might think, oh, that's not too exciting. I wouldn't want to be pulled up and down a wall. But imagine if you've--you're a child and you've always been in a wheelchair, and you're peers go rock climbing, and you think, I really want to go rock climbing too. How can I do that? Well, the suspension we have in place basically it'll be taking the participant up and down this wall right here. This is called a top rope system. In rock climbing there's various ways to climb. There's bouldering--that's when you stay fairly low to the ground and don't use any ropes. There's top roping, which means you're tired into a harness on a rope that the rope then goes on top of a bar, and you're belayed up and down the wall. There's crack climbing when you grab onto a rock wall and you hold onto a crack and sort of shimmy up that way. The system we have in place today works best for top rope systems, and it's basically a pulley system is what we'll be using today."