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Get access to the Google Drive folder with Brent B’s pack lists for big wall climbing & rope solo objectives.
Brent B's Climbing Pack List Folder
See what professional wall climbers Brent Barghahn and Amity Warme brought for an 8 day ground-up big wall free climbing adventure up El Nino, a 2500 foot 5.13c on El Cap.
Also includes...
Lead Rope Solo Cragging Pack List
Multipitch Climbing Pack List
Nose in a Day Pack List
Top Rope Solo Cragging Pack List
Multi-Day Big Wall Free Climbing Pack List
Preparation is key
Checklists - All of my big wall ascents have an associated packing checklist. For an upcoming mission, I just make a copy of my last wall's checklist (or the past ascent most similar) and make the few needed changes. This greatly reduces the mental load of planning - why reinvent the wheel each time! Critically, I also recap post-ascent and edit that list to account for any misses.
Packing - Related to the checklist, I go through my packlist once while pulling items out onto a tarp, and then do a final checking off of items as they go into the bag. It can be hard to know what is in the black hole of a haul bag without keeping track as things go in.
Haul Bag Choice - Multiple smaller bags are much easier to dig through than a giant haul bag. For El Corazon, Jordan and I each had two medium haul bags (each with our personal items/clothes), two small haul bags (one food, one water), two bullet packs (personal day items like snacks, drinks, approach shoes, gloves, etc), and two waste cases (poo bag storage). A key to making so many bags haul well is to use accessory cord "branched tethers", keeping the weight of the heavy lower tier bags off the upper tier ones (see photo below).
Kits - Thinking in terms of kits is very helpful for gear organization. I generally don't intermingle items between my anchor kits, TR solo kit, haul kits, tag kit, jug kit, poo kit, skin kit, and so on.. To me, it is worth the small bit of redundancy in item weight for the mental clarity of where to find key items. I also label relevant bags and stuff sacks with climbing tape and a sharpie to make it easy for both partners to know what is in a given bag. Bringing many spare tiny wiregate carabiners (10-20!) is nice for camp organization without having to disassemble draws and other kits.