Almost all of us are afflicted with one of these climbing disesases, and sadly, many of these go undiagnosed and untreated. Every day, at crags around the country, people are climbing with the burden of an unchecked, treatable illness. It’s a national tragedy.

Thankfully, with better medical technology and improved diagnostic abilities, we’re now able to identify these diseases in their early stages. But we still need your help. Our hope is that this document may raise awareness and help prevent needless suffering.

Onsightis

This condition generally presents as obsessiveness with the act of climbing every route on the first attempt, every time. Mild onsightis does not often cause the patient any discomfort and can actually be seen to provide some modest benefits, however it has been known to suppress redpoint grades in chronic sufferers.

Signs and Symptoms

• Noticeable lack of enthusiasm for repeated attempts
• Demanding/needy, especially at new crags
• Resistance to attempting overly difficult routes
• May display aggression toward unwanted beta in advanced cases

Treatment

• Gentle application of harder routes for the purpose of stimulating the red and pinkpoint glands.

Cragger’s Malaise

Just like the common cold, this common climbing disease is surprisingly rampant for the simple fact that prevention is so difficult. Little is known about the causes of cragger’s malaise and its effects can be shockingly debilitating, leading sufferers to view climbing as more of a social pursuit than an athletic one.

Signs and Symptoms

• Overly chatty
• Maximum of 2-3 routes in one session
• Patient displays preference for beer over climbing
• Usually accompanied by low level of skill or ability

Treatment

• No definitive cure exists. Most professionals recommend tolerance rather than intervention. Occasionally resolves without treatment.

Obsessive Tick-Listive Disorder

Also known as “Buzzfeeding,” damage to the right mesial prefrontal cortex can result in abnormal collecting behavior. In the sport of climbing, this lends itself to list-ticking and peak-bagging, practices which value completion of an arbitrary list over objective quality of the routes contained therein.

Signs and Symptoms

• Patient climbs horrible shit for no good reason
• Often accompanied by shameless guidebook fetish
• Acquired choss resistance and skewed risk acceptance

Treatment

• An immediate course of crags with horrific rock quality or protection
• Most cases will be resolved with a one-time application of loose Eldorado Canyon “classics” or Fisher Towers mud climbing.

Boltulism

Doctors and scientists have been unable to reach consensus on a definitive explanation for this very unenjoyable climbing disease. High-functioning patients have been known to produce many quality routes, despite the odd squeeze or contrivance, whereas severe cases can manifest in full-blown grid-bolt mania. All patients are grouped by the overwhelming desire to “get their name in the guidebook.”

Signs and Symptoms

• Often financially unstable due to hardware purchases
• Observes “phantom lines,” a condition similar to colorblindness, in which vague and spurious routes are reported by the patient.
• Often results in link ups.
• Sometimes narcissistic
• Places bolts in unstable geological formations

Treatment

• Removal of drill privileges, followed by bedrest

Partneraphobia

Essentially a condition which results in anti-social tendencies, mild cases often present as a preference for “exploratory missions” to “scope lines” and “check conditions” in wilderness areas, in which partners are not invited. However, if left untreated, this disease can lead to some really weird shit like bouldering alone and rope soloing.

Signs and Symptoms

• Patient avoids human contact
• Unexplained disappearances
• Strong odor, questionable hygiene
• Often found in possession of unusual gear, including but not limited to traction devices and aid gear

Treatment

• Gradual reintroduction to social stimulus and bathing
• Proven effective if paired with a high-quality single-pitch cragging experience

Human Projecting Virus (HPV)

It has been hypothesized that HPV was spread to humans through contact with bats. Proponents of this theory argue that this is the reason for which HPV sufferers tend to spend a majority of their time in caves, flapping their arms about in a sort of interpretive dance known as “sequencing.”

Signs and Symptoms

• Pallid appearance and engorged forearms
• Fixation/obsession with a single route. Can often last months, sometimes years
• Speaks only in numerals
• Comfortable hanging upside down, yet finds walking difficult

Treatment

• Exposure to multi-pitch adventure routes where prior inspection is impossible.
• Prescription of a broad-spectrum ticklist which can remedy deficiencies such as slab and crack

Malignant Ego

Inflammation and swelling of the ego can lead to an inflated opinion of oneself. If left untreated, the inner asshole will expand and devour other elements of the patient’s character. Among climbing diseases, this one is considered highly contagious.

Signs and Symptoms

• Holier than thou
• Toothy appearance, snarls often, occasional frothing at mouth
• Unable to refrain from unsolicited beta-spraying
• Calls all your hardest ticks “soft for the grade”
• Denigrates every style of climbing except for their own

Treatment

• Patients will need to undergo a delicate medical procedure where their head will be removed from their anus.

Chronic Overseriousness

If you find yourself offended by any of the above descriptions, you may be suffering from Chronic Overseriousness. It may be possible that you’re taking climbing too seriously.

Signs and Symptoms

• Offense taken
• Currently limbering up fingers to launch a blistering social media tirade
• Often found in comments sections of websites/social media
• Sufferers tend to insist that climbing is not a “sport,” but a “form of self expression”

Treatment

• Chill out
• Get off the Internet and go outside

If you observe any of these symptoms in your friends or in yourself, don’t delay. Consult your crag doctor as soon as possible. Together, we can beat common climbing diseases.

The post 8 Common Climbing Diseases and Their Cures appeared first on Climbing.

One hot summer day in the early 1990s, my friend John and I watched, dumbfounded, as a pro climber misted himself off with a spray bottle at the Hell Cave in American Fork Canyon, Utah.

“What a loser,” I said, sotto voce. “As if that’s going to make a lick of difference.”

The pro climber explained to his subman, now enlisted to mist off his exposed back, that the water brought his core temperature down, in turn cooling off his fingers and toes so he could send harder. “Ooh, my core’s on fire—mist me off, bro!” John and I snickered from behind the trees like the snarky little creeps that we were.

Who is this guy who cares so damn much about climbing? I wondered. But then also: I wonder if it works.

Hot climbing, of course, is a misery: your hands sweat, nuking friction; sweat pours into your eyes, obscuring the holds; your shoe rubber feels squishier than a grilled-cheese sandwich on a hot dashboard; you get dehydrated, crampy, and grumpy; and there’s even a risk of heat-related illness like heat exhaustion or heat stroke, though we climbers generally do a good job of avoiding the scorching sun.

Which is to say, why not try to cool yourself off when the “sendex”—heat + humidity—is high, be it with fans, spray bottles, cold packs, dry ice in the chalkbag (yes, people do this!), or the clever, little gizmos called Narwhals you may have seen in bouldering videos or at your local gym?

Made by the small company Apex Cool Labs in Boulder, Colorado, Narwhals showed up at my local training and boarding gym, The Campus, a month or so ago, but it was spring then so I paid them little heed. However, even climbing gyms have varying conditions, so I was happy to give the Narwhals a spin on a handful of hot, muggy late-June days (70-degree air temperature, 63-71 percent humidity), the kind where sweat flows the moment you do more than three moves in a row and your dermis flays off like onion skin.

The Narwhals are easy to use—you simply unscrew the lid, add water, grab the “Cool-Not-Cold” packs out of the freezer, drop them into the water, screw the lid shut, and let the Narwhals sit 10 minutes so the copper coils can chill. Then you hold the coils as you rest—perfect for between routes or board rips, and also a good way to prevent idle hands from doomscrolling.

Per Apex Cool Labs’ site, there is some science behind palm cooling. Our palms and soles contain glabrous (smooth) skin with arterio-venous anastomoses (AVAs): the prodigious blood flow in these “direct connections between small arteries and small veins” means that you get a 10X cooling effect over other skin regions, claims the website. So, if you’re overheating, one of the quickest ways to cool off is via your palms or feet.

Watch Matt Samet test the Narwhal:

The Narwhals were developed for endurance athletes (cycling, running, etc.) who routinely experience high body temperatures but also people who work in jobs with exposure to prolonged heat (firefighters, etc.). So it just happens to work to us climbers’ advantage—despite the fact that ours isn’t really an endurance sport—that you also grasp the Narwhals using our main point of contact with the rock. In other words, we get the double benefit of cooling our bodies and our palmar skin.

So, did the Narwhals work, or was it mumbo-jumbo? As I said, these were far-from-prime days when I used them, providing ideal conditions for testing. I began by holding them between burns on my warmup and mid-session climbs, doing one problem a minute in the V4-V7 range for 10 minutes on the Tension Board 2, with my heart rate up, breathing accelerated, and sweat lightly flowing. The Narwhals are deliberately cool—not cold—so you can clasp them for minutes on end without frozen skin: these aren’t painful cold packs. The cooling effect was subtle and pleasant, and I did notice feeling overall less hot and sweaty, which in turn made me less frantic on the board.

But best of all, with my chronically slick, hard, dry skin, the coils’ near imperceptible moisture made my palms and fingers “sticky,” and I was able to, with a chalk base on, often go straight to TB2 after holding them, skipping my usual ritual of spraying my hands with a spray bottle (yes, I know…), lightly drying them, and then chalking.

The real test would be sloper problems, where cool hands are king. First, I selected the TB2 Classic The Silver Mountain (V9 at 35°), which has a stab off a micro-crimp nugget to a full-hand sloper which must be controlled, bumped off to a soap-bar slimper, and then recycled for the finishing lunge. The Silver Mountain had eluded me, so I gave it a whirl despite the 70 percent humidity.

Lo and behold, I sent The Silver Mountain on my third go after nearly doing it the first two, when I came up a centimeter short on the last move. After I grasped the Narwhals for a few minutes before each burn, my skin felt pliant, gummy, cool, and grippy, and the sloper felt like a jug, whereas before I’d often dry-fire. Maybe I was just having a good day. Or maybe it was placebo—a few of us boarding joked that the real magic was the mere act of doing something between burns; I could just as easily have come down and hugged a teddy bear. Regardless, I saw positive results, and, as this first session wore on, the cooling action had a welcome painkilling and skin-preserving effect, letting me climb a good four hours, versus my usual two or three.

On another, even worse day on which I was a sweaty mess—having just come back from cragging in the Flatirons—I used the Narwhals to good effect again on my warmups and then pulled up another unvanquished baddie from my project list, Spinnin, a V9 at 40°. This problem starts on tiny crimps and underclings, but then revolves around deep locks to rounded slopers on its upper half, including the final match—another sloper test requiring cool, sticky skin. Moves that had eluded me went quickly, and I wrapped up the problem in a handful of tries. Late in the session, tired but curious to test more, I pulled up the classic V10 (@45°) Might of Manon—more sloper wrestling, with a powerful crux lunge. I gave it my best effort to date, nearly sending, and look forward to coming back with fresh skin, after cooling my scene off with the Narwhals.

So would I recommend the Narwhals for climbers? Yes, absolutely—they work. They are expensive at $399 a pair (though they seem basically indestructible, so will last you a lifetime), and if you were taking them to the boulders or the crag, they weigh three pounds, which is not nothing. But if you are serious about your skin, training, and results—gym and rock—you have no reason not to try. They felt perfect for limit bouldering, and would likewise be ideal for sweaty work like 4x4s, lead doubles, and so on, great for bringing your body temperature down during those welcome five-minute rests between sets.

Plus, sitting there holding Narwhals looks way less dorky than having your subman mist you off—and likely works a hell of a lot better, too.

Buy for $399 (set of 2)

Pros

• Successfully keep the hands and body cooler while training on hot, muggy days
• Copper coils feel soothing on the skin, reducing skin pain during long sessions
• For dry skin, coils impart palpable humidity, making palms and fingers “stickier”

Cons

• Pricey, but hopefully your local gym or an obsessive-boulderer friend has them
• Would be heavy to transport to the rock, with a filled weight of 3 pounds

The post Does This Weird Hand-Cooling Device Actually Make You Climb Harder? appeared first on Climbing.