It can oftentimes be intimidating to stare up at a blank wall and know exactly what to do. The thought that in a few hours you need to have a complete, perfect route up for your customers can reek havoc on ones creativity.

In cases like these it helps to know a few simple rules that can help guide one through the myriad of options.

But what are the rules of routesetting? And more specifically what is the #1 rule? This is the question we posed to our Global Advice Panel.

Here’s what our panel thinks and you too can give us your two cents by commenting below.

Johan Andersson – Build the problem or route so you yourself can’t wait to get on it!

Louie Anderson – This one seems easy to answer. Make your climb fair to all climbers.

Whatever the difficulty, the climb should be that difficulty for all who climb it; regardless of size, gender or familiarity with the facility or holds. Bottom line: when a climber steps off the climb (whether having succeeded or not) they should grade the climb similar to their peers.

If there are height dependent moves on your climb – make sure there are alternatives (of a similar difficulty) for other sized climbers.

If a setter can achieve this goal of fairness (regardless of the difficulty level being set), they will seldom get complaints.

Audrey Seguy – In my opinion the #1 rule in routesetting is to take pride. If you do that then all else falls in place. Route setters who take pride in their work set good, safe, interesting and fun routes at all grades. They make sure that all the pesky admin and tidying up work is done at the end of the day. They try to continually develop their skills by learning from others, watching climbers on their routes and trying new things.

Chris Larson – Just narrowing routesetting down to one rule (besides “don’t strip the
t-nuts”) is pretty tough. The more thought I put into it, the more I
keep coming back to one word: consistency.

Now I would like to take this one word and apply it to almost every facet of routesetting:

* CONSISTENT and regular setting schedule
* CONSISTENT and flowing movement
* CONSISTENT hold selection

But this ends up being a bit of a combination of rules.

So to simplify, I would say the number one guiding rule that I would pass along to a route setter would be: strive for consistency.

Charlie Lamb – Set to please your customers, not your ego.

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