The Climbing Company

Sport Climbing Conversion

The aim of this course is to provide a comprehensive introduction to climbing “Sport” routes in the outdoors, tailored specifically to Melbourne’s rapidly growing indoor climbing community.

Take your first steps outside

What is Sport Climbing?

Sport climbing means that there are permanent bolts/hardware in the rock, which has the advantage that a minimum of gear is required to safely climb on them (you don’t need to buy as much gear to start climbing in the outdoors, yay!).
Since the fixed hardware is specially designed for this purpose, the techniques to learn are much simpler than traditional – “trad” – climbing, and can be comprehensively covered in just one day.

Aims of this course

The goal of the session is to first introduce environmental concerns when climbing in the outdoors and how to mitigate these. Every participant will then climb three outdoor sport climbs, each practicing a different skill set. The climbs, in order, are:

  1. a practice run using skills used in regular indoor lead-climbing.
  2. a basic lead-climb utilising methods they learned during the indoor session,
  3. safely bailing from a sport route, without leaving a leaver-biner behind – and when it is appropriate to do this.
    Finally, if time allows, participants will learn some additional skills, including belaying from the top of a route (and safely lowering a partner), how to how to prusik up a rope, e.g. to regain a roof after falling off, and how to clip a bolt that is out of reach.

Next Course Date

Sport Climbing 1-day Conversion
FULL – Waitlist Only

$260.00
Sat, 1 Nov, 9:00 am – 4:00 pm
Geboor/Camel's Hump, Mt Macedon
Join Waitlist


Whack your details here and we\’ll coordinate together to choose dates that suit you.

What will we learn?

On this course you will learn to:

  • Apply indoor lead-belay and lead-climbing techniques to outdoor rock
  • Build anchors on fixed hardware
  • Return at the end of your session without leaving any of your equipment behind (often called “cleaning” the route)
  • Abseiling on a doubled rope
  • Inspect fixed sport climbing hardware and anchors before you use them
  • Recognise the most common sport climbing mistakes and easy methods to mitigate them
  • Make intelligent decisions in the outdoors.
    BONUS – as part of this course you will learn about the humble prusik loop – a very simple, extremely useful piece of climbing equipment that not many sport climbers carry or even own. You will learn just how useful it can be in all sorts of situations, and as a special thank-you for signing up to this course – we’ll give you one to keep!

Prerequisites

The participants start this session with knowledge of indoor “lead” climbing, and will have a lead-pass from any indoor climbing gym.

Location

This session is held on an outdoor location on real sport climbing routes. The area we climb at and the grade of the routes will be tailored to the group participant’s skill levels.

Is it an all-day course?

The session will take approximately 6 hours of learning time.

What do we need to own/bring?

The only piece of equipment you need to own before this course is a standard climbing harness suitable for lead-climbing indoors. All other climbing safety equipment is provided by Melbourne Climbing School, however if you own any of the following equipment please bring it along with you – learning with your own equipment is far better and will provide a great start to your outdoor climbing experience!

  • Helmet *
  • One locking biner suitable for belaying
  • One belay device
  • If you own a chalk bag, rope, quickdraws, slings and any other sport-climbing equipment please let us know prior to the course, and we can plan to teach you using your own gear instead.
    * Helmets are worn on all outdoor Melbourne Climbing School courses – but as with all of the other climbing safety equipment, we have these if you don’t own one, and we will not charge any extra for their use on the course.
    Closed footwear such as tennis shoes are fine for learning on if you do not own climbing shoes.
    Non-climbing gear: You will need to bring suitable clothing and footwear for light hiking, and your own lunch and water for the day (and a camera!).
5 Over 59 Reviews
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Cameron Scates 3 months ago
Had Aaron teach me and three others over two days. Very informative and answers any questions you have with climbing with confidence. Over all great person and teacher
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duncan wakes-miller 1 month ago
Great course location and instructors. Really helpful in preparation for my trip to the Himalayas
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Mike Wilson 1 month ago
As an unskilled an inexperienced alpine trekker, I was looking for course to give the me basic knowledge I needed, ideally in a fun and safe environment – and got that and more. Pauli was a highly experienced, very passionate, safety conscious guide with a great energy and sense of humour. He and Hamid adjusted plans and arranged course content specific to our needs … and then patiently helped a bunch of beginners go from confusion, to some understanding, and then to enjoyment.

Thanks for a great weekend. Highly recommended.
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Junge Zhang 1 month ago
Amazing trad course taught by Aaron himself and it couldn’t have been better👍.
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Martin Aylward 1 month ago
Huge shout out to Hamid and Pauly I have just completed both alpine 1 and alpine 2 courses and they were sick, I learnt heaps from basic walking techniques to complex rope systems with crevasse rescue to self arrests I would highly recommend these courses I went in as a complete beginner and now I can’t wait to get back out there despite getting absolutely drenched today I still had the best time these guys know there stuff and are great at teaching it. Yew cheers guys
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A 1 month ago
Excellent course and very enjoyable delivery. Thank you for a brilliant weekend – perfect preparation for our upcoming Himalayan trip
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Alejandro Gaete 1 month ago
I would say that Hamid is an excellent teacher and a very professional one. Hamid was always there to reassure and mentor me even though I had no prior experience. Hamid was always kind and willing to assist me, even though I probably needed more help than anyone else. The course was great , there was structure and safe rails that enable us to test our confidence. Thank you Hamid. I anticipate returning for Alpine 2 next year, in the meantime I will put the lessons into practice.
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Ben M 1 month ago
Couldn’t be more full of praise for this course. Hamid was a fantastic instructor, very safe, managed to keep a broad age group of participants ranging from 12-50+ happy and at levels that suited each individual’s skills. We finished with a solid understanding of basic alpine skills, which sets a platform for future adventures. We will definitely be coming back for other courses run by The Climbing Company. Highly recommended.
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upcoming sessions:

October 2025

Sport Climbing 1-day Conversion
FULL – Waitlist Only

$260.00
Sat, 1 Nov, 9:00 am – 4:00 pm
Geboor/Camel's Hump, Mt Macedon
Join Waitlist

December 2025

Sport Climbing 1-day Conversion
FULL – Waitlist Only

$260.00
Sat, 13 Dec, 9:00 am – 4:00 pm
Geboor/Camel's Hump, Mt Macedon
Join Waitlist

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