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zip
Trad climber
pacific beach, ca
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Topic Author's Original Post - Dec 17, 2017 - 03:12pm PT
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I just got back from three great days in Joshua Tree.
Most of it was solo climbing, but I did hook up with a couple of partners.
We were using my rack, and flopping leads.
Neither of the partners ever placed a nut.
I have old school BD Camalots, and Aliens for my SLCD selection.
Several of the placements of the cams were kind of placed like nuts.
Above a constriction in the crack, and in full umbrella mode.
I believe the BD units will hold a fall like that, but don't believe the Aliens will.
I have always preferred a bomber nut over a cam. Cams can move around. Once you set the nut, it doesn't generally move around.
I know a couple of local guides who don't place nuts with their clients.
I would imagine this is to make it easier for the client to remove it, and guides don't usually fall.
I have an assortment of smaller brass nuts too. One of the partners didn't even know what a RP was.
Maybe with all these new SLCDs that come in really small sizes now, nuts are antiquated.
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Batrock
Trad climber
Burbank
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Dec 17, 2017 - 03:29pm PT
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I would rather my partners place cams only because some of the guys I climb with over set their nuts and I end up having to waste time trying to unweld a nut when a cam would have been easier to place and remove. I do think nut craft is becoming a lost art but I don't believe in placing nuts just to show what a badass old school trad climber you are.
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ec
climber
ca
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Dec 17, 2017 - 03:31pm PT
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Wow...
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looks easy from here
climber
Ben Lomond, CA
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Dec 17, 2017 - 03:41pm PT
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My offset Wallnuts are both my and my cousin's favorite pro. We're 36 and 29, respectively.
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AP
Trad climber
Calgary
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Dec 17, 2017 - 04:57pm PT
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I won't part with my nuts.
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Mark Force
Trad climber
Ashland, Oregon
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Dec 17, 2017 - 05:59pm PT
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Good one, Cosmic!
Cams are cool...
...but a good cam will never be as bomber as a good nut.
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thebravecowboy
climber
The Good Places
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Dec 17, 2017 - 06:01pm PT
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yeah I see my tradlings scoff off the nuts for the cams all the time. I am secretly waiting for that expando or that hangerless top anchor, for to revel in the right proper crustiness of me age. And I'm only a third of a damn century.
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Don Paul
Mountain climber
Denver CO
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Dec 17, 2017 - 08:42pm PT
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Try some aid climbing on lowe balls or whatever slider nuts. They come right out. Although, I couldn't swear that a tiny RP would hold a real fall, either.
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drljefe
climber
El Presidio San Augustin del Tucson
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Dec 17, 2017 - 09:49pm PT
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Spring loaded camming devices have been replaced by....
cams.
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Mark Force
Trad climber
Ashland, Oregon
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Dec 17, 2017 - 10:07pm PT
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Try some aid climbing on lowe balls or whatever slider nuts. They come right out. Although, I couldn't swear that a tiny RP would hold a real fall, either.
Aiding definitely gets you clear about placing gear that sticks!
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dh
climber
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Dec 17, 2017 - 10:22pm PT
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It all depends on the nature of the crack (super parallel vs. constrictions / locks). When the latter, nuts rule and are fast.
I once led church bowl tree with just a single biner of nuts. coulda dropped a truck onto any of the placements.
But, then, when aiding the upper dihedrals of the muir, I just had 0.5 and 0.75 camalots attached to each aider and just leap frogged 50' at a time.
Gear. It's all good. Now, let's talk hexes!
D.
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Mark Force
Trad climber
Ashland, Oregon
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Dec 17, 2017 - 10:58pm PT
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That’s cool about the Muir. That’s a dream route for me.
Hexes are awesome! There’s something about the craft of climbing on passive gear.
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rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
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Dec 17, 2017 - 11:03pm PT
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Nuts for tapered placements, cams for parallel-sided placements.
The rock will dictate whether you can do without one type of gear altogether.
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ec
climber
ca
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Dec 18, 2017 - 02:01am PT
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Thank You, rgold..,.
It’s about reading the rock...
‘Must stay intimate with the stone!
 ec
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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Dec 18, 2017 - 02:47am PT
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The title sounds like a troll. Of course cams have replaced nuts although nuts still have a place. I never use them in places like IC but I always carry a small selection on multi pitch in areas like the Black Canyon. On new routes I bring more for possible rap anchors.
There are a few places where nuts work better than cams but I usually prefer to place cams because I find it more efficent and quicker. Removing nuts can eat up valuable time. That said, I always like to have some on my rack.....they can prove to be very useful.
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zip
Trad climber
pacific beach, ca
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 18, 2017 - 06:00am PT
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"Nuts for tapered placements, cams for parallel-sided placements."
Yep, that's how I have always done it.
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Dec 18, 2017 - 06:12am PT
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The learning curve for nuts was pretty long back when we first started using them in the "brand new decade" of the seventies.
This was primarily due to the fact that no one really knew what they were doing or committing to when they crossed the pond from Britain.
It took the brilliance of Doug Robinson to help shorten this curve for both n00bs and the old school iron-bashers.
Today, there's not nearly the confusion about cams for beginners that there was with nuts and beginners, or so it seems to me.
When I had a good nut, it FELT good. And it did take longer to set runners, too, to keep them good.
I canna blame the lads for wantin' to get on with the climbin', or it won't get done in a day, no' willit?
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Nick Danger
Ice climber
Arvada, CO
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Dec 18, 2017 - 06:15am PT
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My rack consists primarily of stoppers, hexes, tricams, and various wired things (RPs, copperheads). I have and will use spring-loaded camming devices where nothing else fits (parallel-sided cracks), but tend to try to get by without using them. That being said, I don't climb hard stuff anymore (prolly haven't been on anything harder that 10a in well over a decade). I actually love the craft of placing passive nuts.
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rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
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Dec 18, 2017 - 07:00am PT
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Removing nuts can eat up valuable time.
It can, but stuck cams are as bad or worse, partially because one is less likely to want to give up and leave them.
Removal of nuts is perhaps more dependent on the skill of the placer, who has to be thinking about a bunch of things, just one of which is ease of removal.
In the Gunks, I almost never use just one type of pro for a pitch, but there are occasional pitches where I only use nuts and other pitches where cams I only use cams. Placements below cam size requiring small nuts are also pretty common. So all in all, heading up a randomly selected climb with just a rack of cams may not turn out very well, so I'd say cams are nowhere near "replacing" nuts here.
I find it not at all uncommon, when climbing with the younger generation (which at this point is just about everyone), to find mediocre cams placed where far better nut placements might have been used.
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TWP
Trad climber
Mancos, CO & Bend, OR
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Dec 18, 2017 - 08:36am PT
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"I haven't place a nut for about three years now. Although, sometimes I wished I had them with me."
Moosedrool
I think that the YOUNG WHPPERSNAPPER MOOSEDROOL - in the above-quoted passage - pretty well gives me all the material I need to launch into a vitriolic diatribe AGAINST all things that have gone wrong in the RAD WORLD OF TRAD since the introduction of these new fangled "what-she-ma-call-its" that go by the silly name of "spring loaded camming devices."
For starters his admission - "sometimes I wished I had them with me" - totally explains why these upstarts don't know how to use hexes and stoppers - to wit: they've never tried using them! They prefer COMMITTED IGNORANCE to commitment to learning "new" tricks - even if those new tricks would be, in fact, OUR old tricks.
Their pedestal of ignorance, however, does nothing to deter the upstarts from denouncing the practitioners of the "old" crafts of hex/nutting as "over the hill", hindbound and recalcitrant. And thus worth ignoring.
Second, these noobs have only been in the game but a few years - yet they dare to speak ill, with snotty disdain, to their olders and betters - like those of us who started climbing before they were even born. (I'll bet this MOOSEDROOL DUDE, whoever he is hiding behind his silly avatar - wasn't even born when I drive my first piton, for Chrissake!)
What has become of respect? Deference? Heeding the counsel of the well-worn wise ones who've paid their dues?
Now that he's heard a piece of my mind, I'LL BET THAT MOOSEDROOL WILL SHUT UP and the good old boys of Supertopo will hear no more of his insolent wisecracking.
What's more I issue a challenge to that MOOSEDROOL fellow. Let's meet up somewhere and climb somethin; I'll bring you a complimentary rack of my old hexes, stoppers and tri-cams so you can learn how to use those old devices that so far you refuse to learn how to use. I'll even offer to teach you a few lessons and give you a few tips - ALL GRATIS - just for the satisfaction of getting you to have to admit on Supertopo that YOU WAS WRONG!
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