Climbing Pitons
Learn the traditional craft of placing, testing, and cleaning rock climbing pitons. Understand crack shapes, hear placement quality by sound, and master when steel protection is appropriate.
Like Duolingo, but for Climbing Pitons. Tomo turns the whole topic into a game you play five minutes a day, until it actually sticks.
A short one: 10 levels across 2 sections, about 20 minutes end to end, roughly 4 days at five minutes a day. It moves through Driving and Reading the Pin and Clean Removal and Modern Ethics. It starts from scratch.
Free forever · No credit card · iPhone & Android
Key ideas in Climbing Pitons
- Pitons hammer directly into blind seams, flared scars, and hairline cracks where modern nuts and cams fail to seat
- Passive nuts require constrictions and cams require parallel rock walls to bite securely
- A driven piton bites through friction and direct steel-to-rock deformation, holding even in flaring crevices
- Knifeblades and micro-blades have paper-thin, tapered edges specifically forged to wedge into hairline fissures
- In hard, unyielding stone like granite, knifeblades seat securely without needing open space
- Thicker pitons will blunt or bounce off hairline cracks rather than entering them
- Lost Arrow pitons feature a thick, tapered rectangular steel shaft designed for medium cracks
- Their parallel, solid shape wedges evenly against both walls of medium-sized fissures
- A knifeblade would be too loose and rattle out of a medium crack, while an angle piton is too wide
- Knifeblades fit paper-thin seams, Lost Arrows fit medium parallel slots, angle pitons fit finger-sized cracks, and bongs fit wide cracks
- Angle pitons and bongs are folded into U or V shapes so their sheet steel flexes like a spring when hammered into wider cracks
- Matching the piton shape to crack width is what creates holding power
- A piton must first be slid into the crack by hand without hammering to check its fit
- Under the two-thirds rule, it should slide in between half and two-thirds of its length by hand, leaving the final portion to be driven with the hammer
- Hammering begins only after confirming the hand-fit; driving a pin that enters too easily or not enough yields a dangerously weak placement
- Angling a piton slightly downward channels the downward pull of a fall directly along its length
You've tried the other tabs
Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.
You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.
One answer, then back to scrolling.
Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.
Tomo gives Climbing Pitons the Duolingo treatment: levels, streaks, and quick quizzes that test what you just learned. That game loop is what the tabs above never had, so it's the one you actually finish.
Here's what playing it feels like
A real question from this course. Take your best guess.
What kind of rock cracks do modern passive nuts and cams need to stay safe?
Get it right to open this lesson and 9 more in the app.
Where Climbing Pitons takes you
- 1
Driving and Reading the Pin
- Matching Pitons to the Crack
- Placing and Testing by Sound
- 2
Clean Removal and Modern Ethics
- Extracting and Managing Steel
- Modern Piton Ethics and Alpine Use
2 sections · 4 units · 10 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.
Tomo is in ChatGPT
Tomo is also a ChatGPT plugin: the same playable courses, built and played inside your chat.
Add Tomo to ChatGPT- What to ask
- “Make me a Tomo course on black holes.” “Turn this chat into a Tomo course.”
- What you get
- Quick questions with instant feedback, hearts and stars, ready to play in about a minute.
- Where it goes
- No sign-up to start. Connect your Tomo account and your streak carries on in the app.
You pick the voice
Climbing Pitons is taught in the Explain Like I'm 5 style: no big words. promise.. Want a different feel? In the app you can spin up the same topic in any of Tomo's teaching styles. Same facts, totally different vibe.
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Start Climbing Pitons today.
Download Tomo, search Climbing Pitons, and play your first lesson in under a minute.