Laybacks: how to climb a flake by leaning away from it

The hold that is not a hold

You get to the bottom of a flake, or a crack running up the edge of a corner, and there is nothing to pull down on. The edge faces sideways. Your fingers wrap round it fine, but every time you try to use it like a jug you slide off it.

That edge is not a hold in the way indoor climbing has taught you to think about holds. It becomes one the moment you lean away from it and push your feet against the rock on the other side. That is a layback, and once it clicks it turns some of the most intimidating features on a crag into the easiest climbing on the route.

It is also one of the most pumping ways to climb ever invented, which is why it deserves a bit of thought before you commit to twenty metres of it.

How the opposition works

A layback is two forces pointed at each other.

Your hands pull towards you on the edge of the flake. Your feet push away from you, flat against the wall the flake sits on. Your body hangs out to the side, between the two, and the harder you pull, the harder your feet press into the rock. The friction under your shoes is what holds you up, and your hands are what generate it.

The strange thing, the first few times, is that leaning further out makes it more secure, not less. Instinct says hug the rock. On a layback, hugging the rock takes the pressure off your feet and they skate. Sitting back and trusting the pull is the move.

If you have climbed a gaston or a side pull you already know half of this. A layback is a side pull you keep doing, move after move, with your feet doing the other half of the work.

Where the feet go

Most failed laybacks are a foot problem.

Feet higher than feels right. The steeper the angle between your hands and your feet, the more the pull drives your shoes into the rock. Feet low and far away from your hands give you a long straight body and almost no pressure through the rubber. Bring them up until you feel bunched, knees bent, hips out, and the whole thing suddenly sticks.

Too high is also a thing. Get your feet level with your hands and you fold up like a deckchair, with no room to move anything. The sweet spot is usually feet somewhere around waist height below your hands, and it changes with the angle of the rock.

Use the edge of the shoe or the flat of it, whichever the wall offers. On a clean wall you will be smearing, toes pointing up and heels low so the ball of the foot carries the weight. If there are small edges or ripples on the wall, take them. A layback with a real foothold in it is a rest.

One foot can go in the crack. If the flake has a gap behind it, the inside foot can sometimes jam or toe into it while the outside foot smears on the wall. It is less elegant and far less tiring.

Straight arms or you will not last

The single biggest thing that decides how long you can layback for is the bend in your elbows.

A bent arm on a layback is your biceps holding your whole body weight at an angle. It burns out in seconds. A straight arm hangs off the skeleton, and the load moves into your fingers and shoulders, which can hold it for a lot longer.

So the rhythm is: arms straight, legs do the lifting. Walk your feet up a step or two while your arms stay long, then move a hand, then walk the feet again. The legs push you up the flake. The arms just keep you attached to it.

This is the same idea as climbing with straight arms and bent legs anywhere else, it just matters far more here because there is nowhere to hide from the pump.

Moving the hands

Hand movement on a layback is a shuffle, not a reach.

Keep the top hand high and move the bottom hand up to just below it, then slide the top hand up again. Crossing your hands over each other is sometimes possible on easy ground but it twists your body off the line of pull, and the moment you twist, your feet unweight.

Move quickly. A layback is not somewhere to hang about deciding things. Read it from the ground, decide where the rest is, and climb to it. Every second spent hanging there thinking is a second of fuel you will want later.

Resting, and getting out of it

Pure laybacking is unsustainable over any real distance, so the skill is really about finding the places where you can stop.

Look for the foothold. One decent edge on the wall lets you stand up straight, take the lean out of your body and shake out.

Bridge across. If the flake is in a corner, a foot on the opposite wall turns the layback into stemming for a move or two, and stemming is far cheaper on the arms.

Switch to jamming. Where the crack behind the flake is wide enough, a hand or fist jam takes the weight off your fingers entirely. Good trad climbers swap between laybacking and jamming constantly, laybacking the bits where the crack is shallow and jamming where it opens up.

And plan the exit. The top of a flake often runs out into a slab or a ledge, and the transition from leaning out to standing on top is awkward. Get a high foot on before you let go of the lean.

The trad catch

On a lead, laybacks have one extra problem. You cannot easily let go with a hand to place gear, because both hands and both feet are holding a balance you have to keep.

The usual answer is to place gear from the rests, and to place it well, because you might be running it out through the pumpiest section. Look at the line before you set off and pick the spots. If you find yourself halfway up a layback fumbling a cam with a bent arm, the route has already won.

It is also worth checking the flake itself. A layback puts a huge outward load on the edge you are pulling. Hollow-sounding flakes, and anything that moves, are not something to lean on. Tap it, look at it, and if in doubt climb it another way.

Practising it

Indoors, find the arête or the big volume edge. Plenty of walls have a feature you can layback on for three or four moves near the ground. It will not pump you out the way real rock does, but it teaches you the lean and the high feet.

Outdoors, start with short, low-angle flakes. Grit and limestone both have plenty of short corner flakes at easy grades. Climb them a few times on a top rope or low to the ground, and consciously try moving your feet higher each time until you feel the moment they stop slipping.

Try it both ways. Most people have a side they prefer. Laybacking with the flake on your weak side is a good use of a session, because real routes do not care which way you like to lean.

The short version

Pull towards you with your hands, push away with your feet, and lean out rather than in. Bring the feet up higher than feels natural. Keep your arms straight and let your legs push you up. Shuffle the hands, move quickly, and climb to the rests you spotted from the ground.

Log the routes where it finally clicked. Sendit keeps your sessions, your projects and your days outside in one place, so the flake that spat you off in September is easy to find again when you go back for it.