Climbing outdoors makes the skin of my palm red and sensitive

Question

I mostly climb at a rock climbing gym, and I can climb for hours until my forearms run out of gas.

However, when I climb outdoors, usually the reason I have to stop is because the skin of my palms and especially my fingers become red and sensitive, meaning whenever I touched a rock the pain is so bad that I am not able to continue climbing despite I still have a lot of gas in my forearms.

I thought about avoiding warming up on V0~V1s because I want to save my skin for harder climbs, but at the same time I feel like skipping warmups is asking for injuries.

I tried wearing gloves but it just didn't feel right and according to the videos on YouTube of people who climb outdoors, no one wears it.

Can someone tell me how to solve this? Currently I feel climbing indoors is more enjoyable because I can actually fully exhaust my muscles, but I read at so many places that climbing outdoors is supposedly to be more fun and cool, and I really want to experience that.

Is the material of the gym holds more skin-friendly? I don't recall myself running into skin problems when I first started to climb in the gym.

Answer 1

Outdoor rock is more abrasive and wears your skin off much faster than the plastic holds in the gym. For example: The rock I climb mostly is considered to be the oldest stone in the Canadian rockies. It is old, weathered, and in places feels like holding onto sharks teeth or a saw blade. It makes your flesh thin in a hurry.

What you are experiencing is not unusual, especially if you are a boulderer who has trained in the gym and is looking for a challenge in the outdoors. Hard climbing, especially inclined climbing where your weight is being borne by your hands and fingers will eventually make you tender wherever you are holding the rock. We've got group pictures from bouldering trips with everyone in a circle showing off their red and raw finger tips. It happens, and there's doesn't seem to be a callus thick enough to prevent the rock from wearing through to near the tender dermis of your finger tips.

After enough climbing outdoors though, you will learn how to grab holds different in order to avoid wearing your skin away as much. Different types of stone are less abrasive than others, sandstone for example is like climbing on pillows compared to karst. Don't skip your warmups, just learn how to take a hold without it taking much of your skin.