Climbing on jungle gyms requires significantly less technique than rock. The structures tend to be reasonably repetitive, and it's rare to find a small handhold. However, varnished wood is not nearly as nice as granite for smearing, so mastering heel hooks and kneebars is crucial.

A large fraction of the good jungle gym problems involve pulling a roof. Often, you start on one side of a structure and go to the other side by going underneath something. Several techniques are important for this.

Many of the principles useful for pulling a roof at the Gunks work just as well on the playground. Pull hard. Try to give your feet something useful to do. Move quickly. Twist lock when exiting the roof. Pull very hard. Heel hook when possible. Use a figure-four when all else fails. Move quickly. Pull VERY hard.

Pulling a roof here has some advantages over pulling one in the Gunks. In the Gunks, you often have no idea what sort of hold you're going to have when you get to the lip. Here, you know exactly what you're going to get, because it's the same as what's right next to you when you start. Jungle gym architects get very repetitive. In addition, there are sometimes vertical posts holding up the roof you're underneath. It's often possible to rest with a kneebar in the middle of the climb.

It should also be noted that for some reason all of the jungle gyms we've visited have been designed for people much smaller than us. So when you go underneath some of these structures, you often have to hold yourself much higher then you normally would. (Need picture!)

There are basically only two types of handhold--a horizontal beam and a vertical beam. (We'll make it more complicated later.) Generally, you'll use an open grip on the horizontal beams. Even at the Gunks, it's hard to find a jug as nice as the upper hold in the photo. Unfortunately, presumably in a effort to discourage climbing on the outside of the jungle gym, many of the horizontal beams have sloping sides. (eg: the bottom one in the horizontal beam photo.) That means that an open grip on them can be painful.

Because open grips are so bomber (or painful), many problems force you to use a a pinch grip. These are generally much less secure than the open grips, although a pinch on a horizontal sloping beam isn't too bad because of the slope.

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