How to Climb Cracks: Five Jamming Rules, Which Way Your Thumb Points, and Getting Started at Long Dong

🌏 中文版

People climbing their first cracks at Long Dong tend to say the same thing. In a post introducing the Wild Country Crack School videos (in Chinese), Taiwanese climber elliotway wrote that normal climbing means grabbing and pulling, while cracks mean poking, squeezing and stuffing. Routes that look trivial in the guidebook, he said, felt awkward and clumsy at Long Dong.

This is the last post in the series. The footwork, balance and turning from earlier posts still apply in cracks, but your hands and feet apply force differently: instead of gripping holds, you put part of your body into the rock and expand it until it locks. The American Alpine Institute (AAI) primer puts it neatly: "If sport climbing is gymnastics, then crack climbing is wrestling."

This post covers movement. Placing protection in cracks is in the C series post Placing Trad Protection, and the progression from gym to trad is in From the Gym to Trad.

A note on terms. Taiwanese written sources call this 擠塞 (jamming), use 塞手 and 擠裂隙 as verbs, and call a hand-size crack 手掌裂隙. The neat Chinese labels 手塞, 拳塞 and 指塞 (hand jam, fist jam, finger jam) do not appear in Taiwanese sources I could find, so the Chinese version of this post marks them as translations.

Shared principles: insert, then expand

British crack coach Pete Whittaker's book Crack Climbing has a chapter of five rules, excerpted on Climbing.com. Every crack size below applies them:

1. Fill the space efficiently. Insert the body part in its thinnest orientation and keep it relaxed, like plasticine; expand it and make it rigid only once it is inside.
2. Use your body as a jamming device.
3. Keep everything in line with the crack. Elbows down, knees up, like climbing a ladder; when elbows and knees twist out to the side, force leaks outward.
4. Use structure, not strength. Lock bones, joints and ligaments so you hang with minimal muscle contraction. It is the same reason a straight-armed hang lasts longer than a bent-armed one.
5. More skin on rock means a better jam. If the crack takes your hand to the wrist, don't insert only half of it.

REI's crack primer boils it down to two actions: insert, then expand or torque. It also says to take your rings off, because rings can catch in a crack and badly injure your fingers.

Hand jams: the one to learn first

REI calls hand jams generally the easiest and very secure. Regardless of hand size, a crack about 2 in. (5 cm) wide is typically hand-jam size.

AAI recommends starting on a cupped-hand-size crack and learning the thumbs-up cupped jam first:

1. Put your hand in thumbs-up and tuck the thumb toward your palm.
2. Keep the fingers together, pressing the fingertips against one wall and the knuckles and back of the hand against the other.
3. Flex the hand to push against both walls.

Climbing.com's hand-jam guide adds placement: slide your hand in to just a few inches shy of your wrist, then sink it into a constriction so it acts like a nut and you rely on your skeleton instead of muscle. If the heel of your palm doesn't fill the crack, tuck your thumb under to bulk it out.

Once the jam is set, keep it still. REI notes that shifting around inside the crack is what scrapes up your hand.

Thumbs up or thumbs down

This is the classic argument, but the sources agree once you add context:

For thumbs-down, AAI's cue is to expand the hand and also rotate the elbow down.

Something you can do tonight: at home, tuck your thumb into your palm, keep the fingers together and cup the hand, feeling the back of the hand and fingertips push apart. If your gym has a crack wall, try it on top-rope, alternating thumbs-up and thumbs-down, and compare which one lets you move up more easily.

Narrower than a hand: finger cracks

When the crack is narrower than your hand, REI's finger-crack guide teaches finger jams:

• Insert the fingers to the second or third knuckle, then lock them in a constriction or rotate the elbow down to torque them. REI's image is a key: insert and twist.
• When your index and middle fingers fit, go thumb-down.
• When the crack is too thin for those, turn thumb-up and use the pinkie and ring finger.

Wider than a hand: fist cracks

A bit wider and you switch to fist jams. UKC's Crack School fist episode calls this a particularly feared size, often associated with lots of skin loss:

• A fist has a very small range of expansion, so jams often don't fit well and feel tenuous.
• The thumb is the key. It can still move when your fist is clenched, so use it as a spacer; when the crack is a little wider, lay it along the outside of the fist.
• Fist jams rarely feel completely bomber in parallel cracks. That is normal; don't expect them to feel like hand jams.
• Tape up, even a token amount. As the author puts it, technique is learnt much faster when you are not in pain.

Wider still: offwidths and chimneys

Beyond fist size you are into offwidths. Climbing.com's wide-crack techniques list several methods; here are the concepts only:

• Hand stacks: both hands jammed together, used on narrower offwidths; more secure and less strenuous than arm bars or laybacks.
• Arm bar: the inside arm goes deep, palm on one wall and elbow or upper arm on the other.
• Chicken wing: elbow in first, arm bent, cammed down and out; harder than an arm bar but better for resting.
• Heel-toe: the foot sits across the crack, toe against one wall and heel against the other.

Wide enough for your whole body is a chimney. Climbing.com's chimney guide quotes wide-crack specialist Rob Pizem: most people slip because they push down when the holds need them to push out. Just wider than a squeeze, put your back on one wall and knees against the other, feet pressing into the back side, and push out with your palms kept low.

Taiwan has few routes like this. In his article on the Long Dong trad classic Dragon Road (in Chinese), Huang Kuo-wei describes the Grand Auditorium route: pitch two starts as a hand crack and widens into a slot your whole body fits into, climbed by inching up "like a caterpillar." He says routes and climbing like this are genuinely rare in Taiwan.

Layback: not what Taiwanese gyms call 側拉

First, names. In Taiwanese gyms, 側拉 usually means a sidepull hold, the kind covered in the grips post. A layback (also lieback) is something else: pulling back on one edge of a crack or flake with both hands while your feet push against the opposite wall, moving up through opposition.

Climbing.com's layback guide says it is used in corners where the angle or crack size prevents jamming, and on flakes. The method:

• Hands between chest height and slightly above your head, usually top hand thumb-down and bottom hand thumb-up.
• Walk the feet up, push your butt out, pull with the hands.
• Shuffle the hands up, keeping the same hand on top.

The sources disagree on whether laybacks are efficient:

• REI's technique guide says that with good footholds, laybacks are very efficient, because your arms are straight and your feet do the work.
• Climbing.com calls them pumpy, loading the forearms and biceps; your head is pushed away from the crack, so it is hard to see and place gear.

Put together: with good feet on a short section, a layback can flow; with poor feet and a long section, it is a forearm-burning fallback. V-Diff's crack guide frames it as the option when you can't jam or lock. Climbing.com also suggests finding finger locks or hand jams within the layback so your skeleton can take a break.

Something you can do tonight: find a large flake-shaped hold or an arête in your gym and layback up and down two or three moves. Remember which thumb points where on the top and bottom hands, and notice how much you can still see when your head is pushed away from the wall.

Foot jams: easier than hands

Climbing.com says foot jamming is much easier to learn than hand jamming, so even without good hand jams you can work up a hand crack on your feet. REI's steps:

1. Bend one knee and turn it out, pinkie toe pointing down.
2. Insert the toes with the sole against the side of the crack.
3. Bring the knee back in line with the crack and stand up.

Three cautions:

• Insert to about the ball of the foot; you don't need the whole foot in.
• Don't torque harder than needed. It hurts.
• Don't jam a foot horizontally into a hand crack and step down, because it can get stuck.

To remove it, reverse the steps: knee out, relax the ankle, pull the foot out. AAI warns of a painful learning curve. Shoes matter too: V-Diff recommends comfortable shoes that keep your toes straight, because torquing tight bouldering shoes in a crack is very painful.

Tape gloves and skin

Whether to tape depends on the rock, says Climbing.com: coarse rock calls for tape, smoother rock less so. Long Dong is the coarse kind. Mountain Project calls its stone coarse and undulating, and Huang regretted not taping the backs of his hands on Dragon Road, likening Long Dong's rock to "glass concrete."

Metolius's tape-glove guide has three steps:

1. Three strips across the back of the hand, overlapping about ¼ in., with the top strip covering the knuckles.
2. A strip from the back of the wrist up around the base of the index finger and back down; repeat for the pinkie.
3. Several wraps around the wrist as an anchor. Leave the palm bare so you can still grip face holds.

To remove, cut the wrist wraps on the inside and pull the glove off intact; slip it back on and re-wrap the wrist to reuse it. REI suggests 1.5 in. athletic tape, and notes that tape helps beginners learn just how hard they need to jam.

Something you can do tonight: make a tape glove with Metolius's three steps, then climb two routes at the gym in it to check that your palms still grip normally and the wrist anchor holds.

Long Dong: rock, grades and how to start

Two descriptions of the rock

Long Dong is Taiwan's main trad and crack venue, but sources disagree on what the rock is:

• 四稜 sandstone: Chinese Wikipedia's Long Dong article (in Chinese) says so. Climbstone (in Chinese), the site of guidebook author Matt Robertson, describes it as hard, dense sandstone full of cracks, well suited to solid trad anchors. theCrag's Long Dong page also tags it sandstone and calls it "bullet hard sandstone."
• Quartz-rich metaconglomerate: Mountain Project's Long Dong page says "sandstone" is erroneous and that the rock is a quartz-rich metaconglomerate that feels similar to granite.

This post cannot settle the geology. For climbers, both descriptions agree on the feel: very hard, high friction, rough surface. Mountain Project also warns that the coarse, undulating stone can make placing trad gear complex. For rock types across Taiwanese crags, see Choosing a Crag in Taiwan.

Grades and gear

Mountain Project says Long Dong's grades are centred around 5.10, and that a single rack to 3 in. plus a 50 m rope covers the vast majority of routes.

How to start practicing

AAI recommends getting the motions down in a gym or on top-rope first. At Long Dong, have someone with trad experience set up a top-rope, practise hand and foot jams on easy cracks, and don't start by leading.

One example is Noodle Line in First Cave, graded 5.8 on Mountain Project. The description: fists and hands up a dihedral with feet on both walls; you will be arms deep no matter how you climb it; the rock is very sharp, so long sleeves or tape gloves are recommended.

What Taiwanese courses teach

Know this going in: Taiwanese trad courses mostly teach protection, not jamming.

• Adventure Taiwan's single-pitch trad course (in Chinese) runs two days at Long Dong. Its syllabus covers gear, placement principles, anchors and retreating from a lead, with no jamming module.
• Wild Lily Rocks' phase-one course (in Chinese) uses Long Dong's cracks to practise placements; jamming (擠裂隙) appears in the free group sessions after graduation.

So jamming technique mostly comes from group sessions, climbing with experienced partners, and building mileage on top-rope. For the full progression and a course comparison, see From the Gym to Trad.

Something you can do tonight: open Mountain Project's Long Dong page, pick two trad routes at 5.8 or below whose descriptions mention hands or cracks, and note which area they are in. Next time you go with a friend who climbs trad, ask them to set up a top-rope.

Practice: four scenarios

Answers are under each question; think first, then open.

1. You're climbing a straight hand crack with both thumbs down, and every move feels stuck.

2. The crack slants up to the right, and you keep crossing your hands as you go.

3. A friend says, "I 側拉'd up that section." What they did was pull back on a flake with their hands while pushing with their feet.

4. It's your first crack trip to Long Dong, and a friend says, "It's sandstone, so friction won't be bad. No need for tape."

What's next

This is the last post in the Climbing Movement series. To revisit the whole map, go back to the series overview and pick the next skill to work on; the trade-offs between gym angles are in the previous post, wall angles.

To actually lead cracks at Long Dong, you need protection and anchor skills on top of movement. Continue with the C series posts Placing Trad Protection and From the Gym to Trad. Skin care for fingers and the backs of the hands, and crack-specific training, belong to training and injury and will be covered separately later.

References

• Pete Whittaker: Five Ultimate Rules for Crack Climbing (Climbing.com book excerpt)
• Getting Started Crack Climbing (REI Expert Advice)
• How to Climb Finger Cracks (REI Expert Advice)
• Crack Climbing Basics: Hand Jamming (American Alpine Institute)
• How to Hand Jam (Climbing.com)
• Wild Country Crack School Part 3 – Fist Cracks (UKClimbing)
• Don't Just Wing It: 6 Crucial Wide-Crack Techniques (Climbing.com)
• How to Climb Chimneys (Climbing.com)
• How to Layback (Climbing.com)
• Climbing Techniques and Moves (REI Expert Advice)
• Crack Climbing Technique (V-Diff Climbing)
• How to Tape Hands for Crack Climbing (Metolius)
• Long Dong (Dragon Cave) (Mountain Project)
• Noodle Line (Mountain Project)
• Long Dong (theCrag)
• Long Dong information (Climbstone, Matt Robertson) (in Chinese)
• 龍洞攀岩場 (Chinese Wikipedia) (in Chinese)
• Long Dong trad classic: Dragon Road (Huang Kuo-wei, 山野釣遊 magazine no. 34, 2008) (in Chinese)
• Wild Country Crack School – crack climbing lessons (elliotway) (in Chinese)
• Adventure Taiwan: single-pitch trad climbing course (in Chinese)
• Wild Lily Rocks: phase-one course (in Chinese)
• Placing Trad Protection: Nuts, Cams, and the Three Conditions of a Good Placement
• From the Gym to Trad: How to Progress Through L1–L5, Where to Train in Taiwan, and How Climbers Usually Get Hurt
• Choosing a Crag in Taiwan: Rock Type Decides How You Climb, Rules Decide Whether You Can