Heidi and Hans are out for a day of sport climbing, and they both want to lead all the pitches. They don’t have a stick clip. Heidi, being the stronger climber, feels fine with leading without the first bolt being clipped.

But Hans is leading at his limit. He wants to reduce his risk by having the first bolt clipped, eliminating any chance of a ground fall. 

Here’s a simple way to do that, with the one caution that you need to have a bit of extra rope.

Say Heidi leads the route first. She climbs the route, clipping all the bolts, clips the anchor, and calls for a take and lower. 

On her way down, she clips a quickdraw to her belay loop and to the rope running through the bolts; this is known in some circles as “tramming”. Doing this keeps her close to the rope and gear, which is especially helpful on traversing and/or overhanging routes.

Note the quickdraw clipped to the climber’s harness and the rope in this nice diagram from Petzl. Perfect tramming technique!

She calls for a brief take at each bolt and removes all the quickdraws, except the one on the lowest bolt.

When Heidi gets to the lowest quickdraw, she does not clean it, but instead keeps lowering to the ground. Doing this keeps the rope through the lowest quickdraw.

Heidi unties, but keeps the rope clipped through her quickdraw. Hans pulls the rope. The rope zings through the top anchor and falls to the ground, but now it’s clipped to the first bolt. This gives a “toprope” to the lowest bolt for Hans on his lead, with no chance of a ground fall.

Using this technique can be more helpful in climbing areas that often have hard moves right off the ground, or have first bolts that are especially high, or both. (Smith Rock, I'm looking at you!)

Using this “tramming” method guarantees that the rope end will fall to the ground, every time. If the route is fairly steep, without any ledges, shrubs, or anything else the rope may get hung up on, you can probably skip doing the tramming. Just leave the rope clipped to the first quick draw, have the belayer pull the rope, and the end should fall to the ground and stay clipped to the lowest bolt.

But keep in mind, if you do this, and the end of the rope does not cleanly fall to the ground, you're probably going to have to pull it through that lowest draw, and it won't be clipped anymore, which defeats the whole purpose.

Safety notes:

Caution #1: Doing this requires you have enough extra rope that is twice the distance from the ground to the first bolt. If your route is a real rope stretcher, or the first bolt is really high, this technique might not work.

Caution #2: The belayer should always be tied into the end of the rope, or at the very least have a knot in the end to have a “closed rope system”. This technique takes a bit of extra rope, and you definitely do not want to drop your leader. One more reason to get a 70 meter rope . . .