Hand care advice

[allochthonous]

So I have recently got back into climbing, and it's great, and I have a group of friends who I've managed to get hooked on it as well, and I'm saving up for a climbing holiday later in the year, and it's all wonderful. Except that I appear to be steadily losing the skin on the inside of my fingers. Last time I realised that I had ripped all of the skin off the bottom third of my fingers on my left hand and was bleeding (nice). I never ran into this problem when I climbed before, and I guess it's just because I've been out of the game for a while, but is there anything I can do until my hands harden up? Loads of lotion? No lotion? Just tape it up? It's not particularly painful, but I don't want the scrapes to get infected. If you climb regularly, do you just expect calluses? Or do everything to avoid them?

Comments

[wpadmirer]

Great tips! And I can vouch for the blister under a callous thing. I did that when I did 50 ascents in 1 hour on the auto-belay.

I try to keep my callouses smooth because they do protect. I also use a balm on my hands periodically to add moisture to the skin. It does help.

[allochthonous]

50 in an hour - ouch! Fortunately for my hands, I have nowhere near that much stamina :)

I will certainly be adding some kind of decent balm to the list for the next care package from home.