We have fallen into a crevasse that is overhanging. We are free hanging, unable to touch the wall. We are tight against our knot, so have little rope slack to work with. What do we do first, to stabilize our situation, and then how do we ascend the rope to self-extract?

If we have a climbing partner injured on rappel (abseil) who is weighting the rope, how can we get quickly down to them to render aid? Here is a method that has evolved over time.

Every May, we make videos on the mental side of climbing and adventure in recognition of National Mental Health Awareness Month. This video talks about close call assessments, discussing what they are, who uses them, how they can make our climbing safer, and walks through a low-effort way we can apply them to our own climbing.

Every May, we make videos on the mental side of climbing and adventure in recognition of National Mental Health Awareness Month. This week, we are getting into a question I was asked about how I view risks verses dangers in climbing. Drawing heavily from my upbringing, I get into the importance of differentiating between risks, dangers, probabilities, and consequences and then apply those concepts to help us better mitigate risks.

Every May, we make videos on the mental side of climbing and adventure in recognition of National Mental Health Awareness Month. This week, we are going deeper into a subscriber's question about how I balance climbing, video creation, work, family, all of it along with how the goal of balance affects what and when and how I climb.

Every May, we make videos on the mental side of climbing and adventure in recognition of National Mental Health Awareness Month. In this video, we discuss how shared decision making creates empowerment which, in turn, improves team performance and our enjoyment of the mountains.

In the older days of gas stoves, conventional wisdom was that a larger pot would make turning snow into boiling water more efficient when on a climbing expedition. But new equipment may have changed the calculus. Here's an experiment I ran to see if smaller or larger pots would be more efficient given different stove types.

New climbers, and even some experienced climbers, can improve both efficiency and safety by learning how to tie a high-quality figure eight retrace knot regardless of changing rope diameters. Here's a step-by-step process to get a knot that meets all the best-practice criteria, a breakdown of those criteria so we understand why they are important, and a walkthrough of a final knot check we should perform every time we tie in.

When I am out climbing, there are times when I might choose to lower a first climber down a pitch rather than have the climber rappel. Here are five circumstances that I have faced, personally, and have at least sometimes decided to lower that first climber.

Context is key. The systems we choose to employ on our climbs will be more or less effective depending upon the specific circumstances we face. So, I am hesitant to use the words "always" and "never" when it comes to climbing techniques. For example, here are four exceptions to the notion that we always belay a leader from the harness and a follower from the anchor.

Our boys, Connor and Kade, have been gathering up a pretty good amount of cold, winter, snowy camp experience. So, they wanted to each share three tips - so six tips total - that they find to be the biggest difference makers when it comes to staying warm in camp.

Remote canister stoves often improve stove performance in cold weather when compared to standard canister stoves. But remote canister stoves can be hard to use in the harshest environments when there is no means to safely hang the stove. Well, here's a DIY(ish) solution for that problem.

There are lots of ways to maintain a warmer temperature for your canister fuel, thus improving the performance of your camp stove when out climbing, backpacking, or camping in the snow. One way is using a bath for the canister, into which you can pour warm water. Here's how I made one and some options on how to use one.

Depending upon your part of the world, winter climbing can bring extreme cold that can make the seemingly simplest things complicated. I got asked a question about how we stop our drinking water from freezing when temperatures dip into the extreme. We can borrow lessons from many high altitude climbers who regularly face those types of extreme temperatures.

When winter sets in, the cold, the gloves, and the snow and ice all make tying and - particularly - untying weighted climbing knots more difficult. So, easier-to-knots to untie can make transitions in and out of systems faster. Here's three ways that I start using a bowline on a bight when wet, winter weather shows up in the mountains.

While the "backside clove hitch" method of connecting to the anchor is getting more and more popular for ascending routes, we can extend that same thinking to a multi-pitch rappel. The method was developed to address the problem with managing knots in the ends of our rope, as we need to remove them to pull the rope but need to add back for the next rappel, which creates opportunities for mistakes. Here's how it works.

Like the old "choose your own adventure" books, each climb we make presents many choices, big and small. Let's look at two different transitions, moving from climbing to rappelling in a team of two, to see how our choices impact the various risks we can both avoid and bring into play by those choices.

Counterbalanced simul-rappelling is something expert climbers will do in unusual circumstances, and this gives the impression of relative safety. But in nominal climbing circumstances, what benefit are we really gaining? We break down the time-savings benefits so that we can weigh the costs.