The Lead Protection System

To protect ourselves from falling, we rely on several strategies—movement skills, limiting our exposure at certain times, and the fall-protection system (the use of our equipment to keep us off the deck when we’re rappelling, climbing, or just hanging out on the side of a cliff).

In trad climbing, we typically place our own protection or use natural features like trees, threaded pockets and holes, or boulders as protection points. It demands a high level of technical skill to maintain safety.

Placing our own protection and building our own anchors means relying on o...