Climbing Speed? I need an answer to use in my short story.?

Question

How long would it take a physically fit man with hand and foot climbing irons and no rope to scale a four-hundred foot stone wall? Figure the blocks of the wall to be eight to ten feet high and wide. The mortar has eroded somewhat from between the stones.

Thanks very much!

Answer 1

Howdy, I'm a rock climber. First off are you talking about a pile of boulders? Or a sold sheet of vertical rock?

Vertical rock:

Here's a nudge in the right direction for you. As sky pointed out, the average experienced climber with what we call traditional climbing gear, could do 400 feet in I'd say 2-4 hours depending on speed, difficulty of climb, and difficulty of placing equipment. If they already have gear bolted into the climb they can knock out the climb in an hour or less. Same with no ropes. The average experienced climber climbing at 100 feet on the easiest possible rating could ascend in anywhere to a few short minutes to less than 15. Apply that by a factor of 4 and you can roughly see the time it would take, unless you are using traditional gear, which is a slower process.

A non-vertical scrambling situation of many boulders stacked on each other:

I'd say about 30 minutes to an hour of scrambling up to the top.

Hope that helps, check out the wiki articles on rock climbing to better understand  the terminology and gear.

Answer 2

I  bet you are writing a storie for school....it is cool that is what i did....ur best bet would about like 10 or so minuits if it is like 400 feet and no rope and no really good holds. watch some videos on youtube.com of Dan Osman speed free solo.. Hope this helps.

Answer 3

Lets see, a short story with "hand and foot irons" scaling a 400ft stone wall of blocks 8x10ft each.... sounds like a ninja story to me. So it is likely the climber is attempting to gain access to a place without being detected....

First, foot climbing irons can be a few different things.

1) steal spikes attached to the side of the leg pointed down, used to climb telephone poles, which wouldnt help to climb rock.

2) campon: like what is used to climb ice, not really very good for climbing rock either even with the eroded morter. They would likely be more of a hinderance than help.

Hand climbing irons: it sounds like you are thinking of what they used in Batman Begins to describe how someone can become "invisible"...  These things (if they worked) would work on wood, not stone.

Here are the multiple issues with this idea:

Climbing shoes will work better than crampons especially since the blocks are so tall, the climber wont have anywhere to kick into the mortar with their crampons. So the climber would have to crack climb, wedging hands and feet between the blocks where the mortar had eroded enough. Crampons will also make a dreadful amount of noise scaling the wall when they hit the blocks or even kicking into the eroding mortar(if it worked). That would alert any guards as to the climbers approach who would in turn be able to knock him off with dropping things or shooting him.

If you disregard the above, and use your suggested tools to scale the wall anyway, then it doesnt matter how long it takes to get to the top. Make up whatever is necessary to make your story work.

Answer 4

hand and foot ... climbing irons?

I have no idea what those are ...

No rope wouldn't really factor in climb time besides like gear set-up, 400 ft would be about 4 pitches, this would be an incredibly easy climb.. I'd say about 40-60 minutes

10-15 minutes per 100 feet

Probably closer to the 40 minutes.

Just out of curriosity, where do you find a 400 foot wall?

Answer 5

No rope or safety gear would make the climbing go faster. I assume that these large blocks would be too smooth to climb on their face and 8 - 10ft is too far to reach so you would have to use the cracks between the blocks. Crack climbing goes a little slower because you have to wedge your hands and your feet each time you move up - about 4 feet per minute so around 90 to 100 minutes.

Good Luck