Then weight the foot by twisting your big toe downwards and bringing your knee more parallel to the crack. With your foot tilted sideways, pinky toe at the bottom, insert as much of your shoe into the crack as you can. Start with your knee facing out like you’re sitting cross-legged, and bring your foot roughly level to your other knee. Hand-cracks tend to offer great foot placements, but you have to twist your feet into them. It’s not as secure, and you often have to straighten and engage your fingers, but cupped hands are great for the crack that is a bit wide for bomber hand-jams, and too tight for fists.įootwork is essential to all climbing, and crack climbing is no different. Thumbs-down, in general, will slot better into slightly tighter cracks.Īs hand-cracks get wider, you can bend the knuckles at the base of your fingers and make cups out of them inside the crack. Thumbs-up allows you to reach a bit higher. You can either hand-jam thumbs-up or thumbs-down. Flexing these muscles makes that part of your hand fatter, allowing you to easily hang off your hand as it jams into the crack. The best way to hand-jam is to insert your hand into the crack and slide your thumb down towards your palm, engaging the muscles in the hand around the thumb.

The easiest way up a crack climb is if the crack swallows your hand like a glove. This is the bread and butter of crack climbing. It may be painful at first, but once you start to master the movement, it can be exhilarating to move quickly and confidently up a crack system. Jamming various parts of your body into the crack is essential. (Note: this post does not cover off-width or squeeze chimney crack climbing.)Ĭracks are often the only feature on a crack climb and therefore the only way to move up is to use the crack. Here we will help with the basics of how to crack climb, from the right shoes to the right gloves to the right technique. The Adventure Junkies is here to put you on the right path to enjoying, not despising, cracks. However, crack climbing can be an acquired taste, one that can bring you to a world of pain and misery. Climbers roam the country, from Utah to California to Kentucky, all year round in search of crack lines both new and classic. Have you ever looked at an aesthetic crack climb, but had no idea how to crack climb? Where are the holds? Where can you put your feet? But crack climbing is one of the most rewarding and beautiful ways to climb, often on radiant sandstone walls in the desert or gorgeous alpine granite, following perfect splitters up endless rock faces.

How to crack your thumb