An ascender is a mechanical device that grips a rope when loaded downward but slides freely upward, letting a climber ascend a fixed rope. Used in pairs with foot loops, ascenders are essential for big-wall aid climbing, rope access, and crevasse rescue. The handled type is commonly called a jumar.
A static rope is a low-stretch rope used for rappelling, ascending, hauling, and rigging, where stretch would be a disadvantage. Because it does not absorb fall energy, it must never be used to lead climb or take a top-rope fall on — that role belongs to dynamic rope. Static ropes are common in caving, canyoneering, and rescue.
A dynamic rope is a climbing rope engineered to stretch and absorb the energy of a fall, reducing the force on the climber, gear, and belayer. Its stretchy kernmantle construction — a core sheathed in a woven cover — makes it the standard rope for lead climbing and top-roping, distinct from low-stretch static rope used for rappelling and hauling.
An ATC is a lightweight tube-style belay device. The name comes from Black Diamond's 'Air Traffic Controller' and is now used generically for similar tubes. The rope bends through a slot and against a carabiner to create friction for belaying and rappelling. Simple and versatile, it works with one or two ropes and has no moving parts.
A nut, also called a stopper or chock, is a passive piece of trad protection — a tapered metal wedge on a wire cable that a climber slots into a constriction in a crack so it jams when pulled downward. Nuts are light, cheap, and reliable in tapering cracks, forming the foundation of a traditional rack.
A cam, short for spring-loaded camming device (SLCD), is an active piece of climbing protection that a trad climber slots into a crack. Pulling a trigger retracts the spring-loaded lobes; releasing them lets the lobes expand to grip the crack walls. Cams place quickly and hold well in parallel-sided cracks where passive gear can't.
A dihedral is an inside corner where two rock faces meet at an angle, like the open pages of a book — also called a corner or open book. Climbers ascend dihedrals using opposing pressure between the two walls, with techniques such as stemming, laybacking, and jamming any crack in the corner.
An arete is a narrow, outward-facing edge or ridge of rock where two faces meet, often formed by glacial erosion. In climbing, aretes offer distinctive, frequently photogenic lines that require balance and techniques like laybacking and flagging to climb the edge itself rather than a face or crack.
A pitch is a section of a climb between two belay points, no longer than a single rope length. Routes longer than one rope length are split into multiple pitches that the climbing team ascends one at a time. A single-pitch route is climbed in one go; multi-pitch routes link several pitches up a wall.
Climbing grade conversion is the approximate translation of a climb's difficulty between the world's different grading systems — such as YDS, French, UIAA, V-scale, and Font. Because each system developed separately, conversions are only ever approximate, but they let climbers compare routes and boulders across countries.