This book presents the most current techniques and equipmentconcerning the roped safety system as it applies to outdoor climbing. Basicmethods have changed little in forty years, but the gear has so steadilyevolved that belay and protection devices, harnesses, and shoes from asrecent as 2000 look downright archaic today. Climbing’s surging popularityis matched by a tsunami of lab testing data and field-based testimony aboutgear and rigging systems, and how to best use them. This information hasshaped our methods and attitudes, sometimes incorrectly.The following chapters derive from the ocean of physical data andtechnical analyses available, combined with our decades of teaching andwriting about climbing, and shape it all into one coherent system. Mostmethods described here are known, exhaustively tested and widely used,but a collective review of proven techniques, clearly and simply presentedin one sourcebook, is long overdue.