A flake is a thin slab of rock partly detached from the main face, creating an edge or crack a climber can pull, pinch, or layback. Flakes range from solid, useful holds to loose, dangerous blocks, so testing a flake before fully weighting it is an important safety habit.
A pocket is a hole or recess in a climbing hold that fits only one, two, or three fingers, requiring precise placement and finger strength. Pockets are common on limestone and on moulded gym holds, and the number of usable fingers — a one-finger pocket is a 'mono' — defines how hard it is and how much it stresses the tendons.
A jug, also called a bucket, is a large, easy-to-grip climbing hold with a deep, positive edge you can wrap your whole hand around. Jugs are the most secure and beginner-friendly holds, often marking rests or the start of a route, and let climbers hang comfortably even when tired.
Climbing holds are the features — natural on rock or moulded on a wall — that climbers grip with their hands or stand on with their feet. They come in distinct types, from big friendly jugs to tiny crimps and rounded slopers, and each is gripped with a specific technique. Recognising hold types is fundamental to reading and climbing a route.
Ice climbing grades use the WI (water ice) scale, running from WI1 to WI7+, to rate the difficulty of frozen waterfalls and ice routes. The number reflects steepness, ice quality, and how sustained and protectable the climbing is. A parallel 'AI' (alpine ice) scale is used for glacier and alpine ice that is generally less steep.
The British trad grade is a two-part system for traditional climbs combining an adjectival grade for overall seriousness (Moderate, Severe, E1, E2, and upward) with a technical grade for the hardest single move (4a, 5b, 6a). Together they convey not just difficulty but how bold or well-protected a route is — a distinctive feature of British climbing.
The Ewbank system is an open-ended climbing grade scale using a single number — 1, 12, 25, 35 and upward — used in Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. A higher number means harder, with no letters or pluses. It rates a route's overall difficulty and converts approximately to YDS and French grades.
The Font grade, from Fontainebleau in France, is the European system for grading bouldering difficulty, written as a number plus an uppercase letter and optional plus — 6A, 7B+, 8C — with the capital letters distinguishing it from French route grades. It is the main bouldering scale outside North America, where the V-scale dominates.
The munter hitch, or Italian hitch, is a friction hitch tied directly on a locking carabiner that can belay or lower a climber without a belay device. It works by feeding rope through a reversing hitch, making it the standard backup if a device is dropped. Its main drawback is that it tends to twist the rope.
The girth hitch is a simple hitch that attaches a sling or loop of cord around an object — a tree, a harness tie-in point, or another sling — by passing the loop through itself. It's quick and handy but loses some strength at the choke point, so climbers avoid girth-hitching slings together at sharp angles under critical loads.