Word.ws English Dictionary

portaledge

portaledge noun: a portable tent system used by rock climbers to sleep in during a climb lasting multiple days.

portaledge: a portable tent system used by rock climbers to sleep in during a climb lasting multiple days
Image: https://secure.flickr.com/photos/mariachily/, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

portaledge (plural portaledges)

  1. A portable tent system used by rock climbers to sleep in during a climb lasting multiple days.
    • A ferocious storm kept the two men trapped on a portaledge—an artificial tent platform hung from pitons over the vertical void—for seven days and nights.1999, Conrad Anker, David Roberts, The Lost Explorer: Finding Mallory on Mount Everest, New York: Simon & Schuster, →ISBN, page 99
    • [Warren] Harding, renowned for being tough and hard headed, had climbed the route in the days before portaledges, hanging every night in cramped and claustrophobic hammocks called 'Bat tents' which would fill with water when it rained.2008, Andy Kirkpatrick, Psychovertical, London: Arrow Books, published 2009, →ISBN, page 204

Examples of portaledge in a sentence

  • Well, when you're living on a portaledge, there's no room for such modesty.2017 August 18, Sasha DiGiulian, “What Life’s Really Like 1,400 Feet Up a Big Wall”, in Outside, Chicago, I.L.: Outside, Inc., →ISSN...
  • It's your little pod, and on El Capitan specifically, you end up spending a tremendous amount of time in these portaledges, it becomes your home.2018 November 27, Dave Davies, quoting Tommy Caldwell, “'It Looked Impossible': New Film Follows Free Climbers Up The 'Dawn Wall'”, in...

Forms of portaledge

pluralportaledges

Origin of portaledge

Blend of portable + ledge.

Questions about portaledge

What does portaledge mean?
Portaledge means a portable tent system used by rock climbers to sleep in during a climb lasting multiple days.
How do you use portaledge in a sentence?
Well, when you're living on a portaledge, there's no room for such modesty.
What part of speech is portaledge?
Portaledge is a noun.
What is the plural of portaledge?
The plural of portaledge is portaledges.

Words near portaledge in the dictionary

  1. portal-systemic
  2. portal-to-portal
  3. Portalatin
  4. Portalatins
  5. portaled
  6. portaledge
  7. portaledges
  8. Portalegre
  9. Portales
  10. portalet
  11. portalets

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: portaledge (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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