Your First Time Bouldering Outdoors: Laying Crash Pads and Spotting

🌏 中文版

In a bouldering gym you barely think about landing. The floor is one continuous, thick, flat mat, and missing it would take effort. Gripped's guide to safer outdoor landings opens with the difference: outside you have the one or two pads you carried in, and the ground has roots, rocks and slopes.

In other words, outdoors you build the landing yourself. How well you build it decides whether a fall ends in a roll and a laugh or a foot on a rock.

This is post 0 of the Outdoor Bouldering series, written for people who have bouldered in a gym for a few months to a couple of years and want to try real rock. Landing technique itself (downclimbing, landing on both feet, rolling back) is covered in Bouldering Problem Solving and Bouldering Falls and Ankle Injuries. This post covers only what outdoor bouldering adds: choosing pads, laying them, and spotting.

The fall zone is bigger than you think

In the gym you stand under the start, and a fall lands you roughly there. Outside, not necessarily. Gripped points out that the fall zone often extends beyond the start, and the steeper the problem or the further it traverses, the further you land from where you began. On a problem that tops out, the last moves may be above the far side of the boulder.

So before laying pads, run through the whole problem:

• Where are you at the start?
• Where is the crux? If you come off there, which way does your body go?
• If you fall during the top out, where do you land?

Gripped's advice is to be generous, because landing on the edge of a pad is a very common way to sprain an ankle.

Evidence level: climber consensus (magazines and experienced boulderers). No study has compared injury rates between pad layouts.

Before your next trip: in the gym, watch someone on a steep or traversing problem and point to where they would land from the third move and from the last move. The two spots can be a metre or two apart.

Crash pads: hinged or not, size, and where to get one

A crash pad is layered foam wrapped in nylon. According to Wikipedia, most have two or three layers of foam of different firmness inside a tough nylon shell; the first commercial pad came out in 1992 and is associated with early boulderers at Hueco Tanks in Texas.

Check three things when choosing one:

• Hinged or not. A hinged pad folds in half and carries easily, but the hinge is thinner and is the pad's weak point. A pad without a hinge is one continuous slab of foam with no hinge to act as a weak point, and has to be bent to carry. English uses names like taco and burrito for these, but brands define them inconsistently, so check the product description for "hinge" instead.
• Size and thickness. Bigger pads cover more of the fall zone, but they are heavier and harder to get onto a bus or the metro.
• Slider pads. Thinner, smaller pads for covering gaps between main pads or keeping your shoes clean at the start. They are not a main pad.

You don't have to buy one for your first trip. Some Taiwanese gyms rent pads. T-UP Climbing's Nangang branch (in Chinese), for example, asks you to book two days ahead, sign a rental agreement and leave ID. As of October 2026 a single pad costs NT$300 for the first day, NT$200 for the second, and NT$100 a day after that. Shops change their rules; check the page before you go.

If you're taking the Taipei Metro, its passenger rules (in Chinese) limit any carried item to 165 cm on its longest side and 220 cm for length, width and height combined. Measure your pad folded before you leave.

Before your next trip: decide how many pads to bring. For two people on a first trip to low problems, at least one main pad plus a slider. The more people come, the more pads you have and the easier the landing is to build.

Laying pads: likelihood first, then consequence

Climbing's guide to bouldering safely boils pad placement down to two questions: where are you most likely to fall, and how bad would a fall there be?

Sometimes the answer is easy. On a three-metre problem where you're most likely to come off the last move, put the biggest, firmest pad under the lip, not by the start. Sometimes you have to split the difference: you're most likely to fall on move two, but a fall from move ten would be nasty, so protect move two with the thinner pad and save the big one for the end.

Lay them in this order:

1. Clear the ground. Pick up stones and sticks that would turn an ankle.
2. Fill holes and level the landing. Gripped folds small pads into the holes, lays a big pad on top, then walks across it to check nothing collapses. Climbing's highball guide featuring Jason Kehl suggests filling small holes with clothes or a pack, and on a slope, folding a pad in half under the main one. A sloping pad makes it easy to roll an ankle or slide off.
3. Leave no gaps. A foot that goes into a gap between pads hits hard ground. Gripped notes that people walking around, sitting on pads and falling on them all push pads apart.
4. Mark hidden rocks. When a pad covers a protruding rock, Kehl marks the spot on the pad with chalk so he knows not to land there.
5. Re-check after every attempt. Climbing says pads shift when stepped on, fallen on or placed on uneven ground, so be ready to adjust between every go.

Evidence level: climber consensus.

Can you stack pads? Three views

The sources disagree, so here are all three:

• Stacking is fine; gaps are the problem. Climbing's 2022 safety guide says many people think the surface must be perfectly even or you'll roll an ankle on an edge, but unless the pads are brand new, their edges compress under your weight. By far the bigger problem, it says, is cracks between pads.
• Lay them flat; stack as little as possible. Another article from the same magazine, featuring Kehl, says many bouldering injuries come from rolling an ankle on a pad edge, so Kehl lays pads flat. If you must stack, fit them like a jigsaw to leave as few exposed edges as possible.
• Stack for height, but mind the gaps. Gripped suggests that on higher boulders you may want a landing two or three pads deep even on flat ground, while warning that every added layer costs stability and deepens the gaps between pads.

All three agree on one thing: no gaps. If you cover gaps with a thin pad, Climbing warns of two risks: it can slide when landed on and pull your feet out, and it can hide a gap underneath.

With only two pads

Gripped's advice when pads are short is to move them with the climber: once the climber is past the start, the spotter shifts the start pad toward the finish. Kehl adds that when you're alone, don't drop your pad at the start and go. Use a thin pad or a scrap of carpet to keep your shoes clean, and put the main pad where you're most likely to land.

Before your next trip: in the gym, mock up a traverse with a friend using whatever you have (jackets and packs work). Agree who moves the "pad" to the right after which move, then climb.

Spotting: protect the head, don't catch

What spotting protects

In a Climbing Wall Association article, the industry experts it interviewed unanimously defined spotting as protecting the climber's head and neck from hitting the ground. The article adds that spotting is more common outdoors, where landings are uneven, smaller and rocky.

Other sources say much the same:

• REI's bouldering basics: a spotter's job is to keep your head and shoulders off the ground, not to catch you.
• Climbing's 2022 guide lists three goals: don't let the climber hit their head; don't let them fly off the pads; and if they fly off anyway, still keep their head off the ground.
• Gripped: the spotter guides the climber onto the pads.

You can't catch someone; that's physics. Climbing points out that a falling body accelerates very quickly, and by the time you reach up it may already be on the ground. In a 1986 American Alpine Club accident report, a spotter was landed on by a partner who fell from two to three metres; his foot was on an outward-sloping rock and he broke his fibula. He wrote afterwards that a spotter can only direct a fall and cannot try to catch the climber.

Evidence level: association and magazine consensus plus accident reports. No study shows that spotting reduces injuries.

Stance and hands

Pulling the sources together:

• Stance. One foot behind the other, knees bent, so an unexpected impact doesn't knock you over (Gripped, Climbing).
• Hands. Arms up, elbows bent. Climbing says to keep your fingers together like mittens or a swimmer's hand, because spread fingers break easily; the Kehl article says to tuck your thumbs into your palms so they don't get jammed.
• Where to hold. Gripped and Climbing say to take the hips or waist and guide the climber to land feet first. Kehl and the 1986 AAC report say hooking under the armpits or pushing the upper back does more to set someone upright.
• Watch for hazards. If there's a rock or tree trunk beside the fall zone, steer the climber away from it (Gripped). If they come down on their back or bottom, protect the head first.
• When sizes don't match. Climbing says that if you're much smaller than the climber, limit your goal to keeping their head off the ground.

The timing also has two camps. Climbing's 2022 guide says to let the climber hit the pads and crumple to absorb the fall, then step in to protect the head. The 1986 AAC report says to thrust your arms under their armpits to stabilise them. The two sources don't say when each applies; our guess is that the first suits short problems with flat landings.

When not to spot

Climbing says it's "almost always a good idea" to spot outside, especially once the climber is a few feet up, using heel hooks that could tip them onto their back, or making dynamic moves that could carry them off the pads.

Gripped lists two exceptions: on a steep problem close to the ground, a spotter is more likely to be in the way; and on a vertical problem that goes straight up and tops out low, the climber will drop straight down onto the pads you've laid and hardly needs guiding.

On numbers, the sources contradict each other. REI says more spotters are always better. The Kehl article says one spotter who knows the job beats six slackers, and that sometimes no spotter is safest.

Agree on roles before you start

Climbing reminds you that spotting is itself dangerous: when a falling climber hits you, some of that force goes into you. So agree before the climb:

• Who spots and where they stand.
• Who moves the pads, and after which move.
• After which section the spotter steps back.

That last point has a real example. In a 2025 AAC accident report, a climber on a roughly 25-foot problem at Hueco Tanks told his two spotters to stay clear once he was past the crux. That day he had only five pads, laid narrower than usual. He fell from about 15 feet, his left foot hit rock, and he badly sprained his ankle. In his own review he said more pads, gaps covered, and not telling his spotters to stand back would have given him the shove he needed. That's a highball; post 3 comes back to it.

Before your next trip: in the gym, have a friend stand behind you with fingers together, thumbs tucked and hands at your waist, and practise three low falls. Practise steering, not catching.

What the research says: very little about outdoors

First, be clear about this: most bouldering injury research looks at gym boulderers or at emergency patients without separating indoor from outdoor. Data specifically on outdoor bouldering is scarce.

• A Swedish study of outdoor climbing trauma from 2008 to 2019 included 38 injured outdoor climbers, only nine of them boulderers. All nine injuries were to the foot and ankle, and most were fractures. The authors themselves call the sample small and say larger prospective studies are needed to estimate incidence.
• Josephsen and colleagues' 2007 bouldering study followed indoor and outdoor boulderers for a year and concluded that outdoor bouldering carries a higher risk of finger injury. The abstract also says traditional preventive measures appeared largely ineffective, without saying which measures.

Gym and emergency-department figures (the share of ankle injuries, how many falls are involuntary) are in Bouldering Falls and Ankle Injuries, which also covers when a sprain or fracture needs a doctor.

So most of this post's pad and spotting advice is consensus from magazines, associations and accident reports. It's sensible, but no study shows that following it prevents injury.

Before your next trip: save the emergency information from Crag First Aid and Emergency Response on your phone.

Pre-trip checklist

Everything above in one list:

• Pads: main pad, slider, and people who can move them.
• Levelling: an old pack or a few clothes to fill holes.
• On you: Climbing suggests removing keys, phone, wallet and belts before you climb.
• Brush and shoe rag: for chalk and dirty soles, covered in the next post, Reading a Topo and Crag Etiquette.
• First aid and contacts: first-aid kit, power bank, and your partners' emergency contacts.

Practice: four scenarios

1. A problem traverses from bottom left to a top out on the upper right, and you have two pads.

2. There's a fist-sized rock in the middle of the landing that won't come out, so you lay a pad over it and start climbing.

3. A friend who is 20 cm taller and 20 kg heavier asks you to spot a vertical problem.

4. A friend says, "Three layers of pads is safest; the edges don't matter."

What's next

The pads are down, but which line is the problem? Where does it start, where does it finish, and how do you get down after topping out? That's post 1, Reading a Topo and Crag Etiquette.

The whole series:

1. Post 0 (this one): crash pads and spotting
2. Post 1: Reading a topo and crag etiquette: finding problems, starting them correctly, and keeping the crag open
3. Post 2: Taiwan's bouldering areas: where to go first and where to get pads
4. Post 3: Highball bouldering: how high is high, and when to toprope instead

References

• Bonnie de Bruijn: Bouldering Outside? 5 Tips for a Safer Landing (Gripped, 2019)
• Everything You Need to Know to Boulder Safely (Climbing, 2022)
• Your Complete Guide to Highball Bouldering (Climbing, 2022, originally in Rock and Ice)
• Perspectives on Spotting (Climbing Wall Association, 2013)
• Bouldering Basics (REI Expert Advice)
• Fall on Rock, Poor Position—Improper Spotting, Colorado, Horsetooth Reservoir (Accidents in North American Mountaineering, 1986)
• Bouldering Fall — Poor Pad Placement, Texas, Hueco Tanks (Accidents in North American Climbing, 2025)
• Bouldering mat (Wikipedia)
• Outdoor crash pad rental, T-UP Climbing Nangang (in Chinese)
• Carry-on item rules, Taipei Metro (in Chinese)
• Patterns of traumatic outdoor rock-climbing injuries in Sweden between 2008 and 2019 (Journal of Experimental Orthopaedics, 2021)
• Josephsen G, et al. Injuries in bouldering: a prospective study (Wilderness & Environmental Medicine, 2007)
• Bouldering Problem Solving
• Bouldering Falls and Ankle Injuries
• Crag First Aid and Emergency Response