If you go bouldering, you’re going to fall. That’s the simple truth. Bouldering can be dangerous since when you fall, you don’t have a rope to protect you from the dire effects of gravity. Most boulder problems are between eight and 20 feet high, not that high when compared with 3,000-foot El Capitan in Yosemite Valley, but plenty big enough to get hurt on. Even if you drop off a problem from just four feet off the ground you can easily sprain an ankle or tear tendons. Injuries are compounded from higher falls and bad landings. The ground is unforgiving.
Crash Pads Revolutionized Bouldering
To combat the effects of falling while bouldering you use a spotter, your bouldering partner who guides or “spots” you as you fall, and you land on a crash pad after falling. Crash pads, which came on the climbing scene in the early 1990s, have revolutionized bouldering. Before crash pads, hardcore boulderers would plummet to the ground and hope that they could stick a good landing like an Olympic gymnast. Busted ankles, compressed spinal discs, and occasional broken bones were sometimes the price of falling.
The First Pad I Saw
The first bouldering crash pad I ever saw was in 1989 at Hueco Tanks, a marvelous bouldering area 30 miles east of El Paso, Texas. I had climbed a couple routes on the Front Side and headed over to East Mountain with my buddy to crank a few boulder problems in the afternoon. On the way over, I hiked past a couple scruffy climbers that were manhandling a dusty full-size mattress, which was swaddled in grey duct tape. “Wow,” I said. “Look at that. Those guys are real weenies.” Twenty years later, after picking myself off a thick crash pad, I think, “Wow, what was I thinking. These things are great!”
Crash Pads Soften Your Landing
Crash pads are great. Their sole purpose is to soften your landing. They save your ankles every time you fall. It’s pretty rare these days to see a serious boulderer working on a hard boulder problem without a pad beneath him. That’s not to say that crash pads aren’t over-used, because they are. If you’re cruising easy problems or even harder ones with a good sand landing, then you probably don’t need to be using your pad.
Use Crash Pads Responsibly
Likewise, crash pads and the environmental damage they make have caught the attention of land managers. At two popular California bouldering areas, on BLM lands near Bishop and at Joshua Tree National Park, bouldering crash pads are to be used only when necessary, must not be laid atop vegetation, and must be picked up and carried rather than dragged to avoid breaking fragile desert plants. Other land managers are looking at banning crash pads altogether because their irresponsible use not only damages and kills vegetation but also compacts and hardens the ground at the base of boulder problems.
