[EricH]

Your teammates are incorrect, and so are you.

You may be in a zone, as long as you do not contact the zone (Q&A) Therefore, you may reach above the horizontal for any given zone and come down to the horizontal and be just fine. This is where you are incorrect and your teammates are correct.

However, your teammates are also incorrect, and you are correct (though not for the right reason). Remember that you must contact the zones sequentially, and only two at a time, including level zero, the floor. This is why extending to the second horizontal from the floor is not going to net you any climb points--you're out of sequence, or 3 at a time, or both.

tl;dr: As described, the first method will not get you any climb points, while the second will, but is overly cumbersome (in my mind, not having seen your setup).