Dylan from Charlottesville, Virginia, was rock climbing at his brother’s bachelor party when he heard other climbers called gumbies. Dylan figured that a gumby must be the kind of beginner or overconfident participant whose skills don’t...
Chris from San Diego, California, asks about climbers’ chossy, meaning rock so crumbly or unsafe that it may break loose under a handhold, foothold, or piece of protective gear. A bad formation may be called a choss pile, and choss up means to wreck...
The highly specialized vocabulary of people who work outdoors, communicating with sled dogs, a word from the sport of rock-climbing, church key, browse line, smeuse, nitnoy, mommick, zawn, zwer, boom dog, and I think my pig is whistling. This...
A rock climber in Omaha, Nebraska, wonders about the term beta, which her fellow climbers use to refer to information about a particular route. It comes from the old practice of using Betamax video to record information about a climb. A good...
The Climbing Dictionary by Matt Samet includes a fantastic term that can be used by non-climbers as well: high gravity day, a day when all routes, even easy ones, seem impossible due to a seeming increase in gravity. This is part of a complete...
rap v.—Gloss: short for “rappel.” «He kept falling, flailing and failing to make the moves, eventually just hanging on the rope and begging me to lower him down to the last ledge. He was out of steam; we rapped back to the...