Our Story | Flapstopper Climbing Skin Care
We kept tearing our hands open. So we made something for it.
Flapstopper is a small Danish company run by climbers. We make one thing: a file for taking down the hard ridges of callus that catch on holds and turn into flappers.
You know the move.
It's usually the last good attempt of the evening. You catch the hold a little low, your fingers slide a few millimetres, and you feel the skin go before you look.
Then it's tape, a long stare at the wall, and a few days off while it closes up. The callus grows back thick around the edge, and a couple of weeks later it goes again in the same spot.
We went round that loop for years before it clicked that it wasn't really bad luck. Almost every time, there'd been a hard ridge sitting there for days beforehand. We'd just ignored it.
Most flappers start as a ridge you could have filed down last week.
What we tried first
The same stuff everyone tries. Some of it helped a bit. None of it was made with climbing skin in mind.
Fine once the damage is done, and we still carry it. It just doesn't do anything about the ridge that tore.
Slow going on proper climbing callus, and hard to aim at one spot without sanding down the whole pad.
It works, sort of. It also ends up as a crumpled ball at the bottom of the chalk bag, and it's easy to take off more than you meant to.
So we made our own.
Flapstopper was developed in Denmark, over a lot of sessions and quite a few prototypes that didn't work.
What we wanted wasn't complicated. Enough bite to get through thick callus, small enough to work one edge at a time, and tough enough to live in a chalk bag. The callus you've built up is worth keeping. It's only the lip on top that has to go.
It should take a minute or two after a session. If it feels like a skincare routine, we've done it wrong.
How we use it
Run your thumb over your pads after climbing. Anywhere that feels like a step instead of a slope is worth a few passes.
File across the ridge until it sits level with the skin around it, then stop. If it starts to feel warm or look pink, you've gone far enough.
Board sessions and sharp rock build ridges fastest, so that's when we check more often. On a rest week you might not need it at all.
Less time taping up.
Developed in Denmark and small enough to keep in your chalk bag.
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