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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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I think nowadays that stacking pins is pretty much a historical footnote. Even when I used them, I could have probably used a cam, I just didn't have any cams. I was too cheap. Pins were cheap and plentiful as everyone wanted to climb clean. I just wanted to do walls and I couldn't free much past 5.9.
So I made my own haulbag out of old canvas mailbags, scrounged a bunch of pins and a hammer and tried things that I wasn't sure I could do. Stacking wasn't that hard to figure out. I have probably tried fifty stacking placements. Most of them worked without too much fiddling. There is so much more new gear and techniques available these days that stacking doesn't make much sense except to see how the old guys used to do it.
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ec
climber
ca
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I led that 2nd to the last pitch on WOEML so long ago, there were no stacks, just short arrows on that funky ramp and then a few of the tiniest RPs on the straight-in crack...I was just climbing to get off the wall after a good part of a week. I do recall Ed Sampson remarking about most all of the arrows falling out while cleaning, lol
 ec
edit: on other occasions, pin stacks saved my ass. I actually learned by nailing stacks on some remote boulders close to the deck BITD. Had a buddy try to call BS on some placements only to become a believer after forcing him onto them.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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The cabled stack to which you refer was just one of many "cable-cammed" stacks that work really well in flared, bottomed, sandy slots. I've done quite a bit of "pin-stacking" in my day, and I've always found that it works best to use not just pins. Any "classic" stack of pins can be made better by integrating a cable, small nut, or small copperhead into the mix.
In this case, it was a flattened #2 copperhead (what used to be sold as a #1). You can mash the desired taper into the head, making it into a very small, semi-pliable "nut." Then, tappy-tappy with whatever stack of pins creates the necessary wedging action. Of course, you weight the cable rather than any of the pins, and, of course, you thread a keeper sling through the pin-eyes prior to weighting.
Small nuts, rivet loops, and small copperheads all work great to integrate into the stack (I've even found a knotted or folded sling to work well), and the upside to that sort of approach, rather than the classic approach of tying off the stack itself and weighting the tie-off, is significantly reduced leverage. The cable is weighting "inside" the stack, "in" the rock, rather than outside the crack.
Moreover, you can create some excellent purely-cammed placements, where you never hammer the pins, just press them in hard as you jerk down/out on the cable. The whole goal is to get the cable or small nut to wedge up on the wedge of the pin(s), so that it's like "inverted nuts," only for thinner placements than inverted nuts can do. That sort works best for vertical placements rather than horizontal ones.
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gruzzy
Social climber
socal
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Aid climbing sounds like an interesting adventure. I learned a few things.
Thank you
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McHale's Navy
Trad climber
From Panorama City, CA
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Excellent post madbolter. To add to that I would suggest practicing this stuff in a 'bouldering' fashion rather that high on a wall. Practice and develop impossible placements 1 one foot off the ground. That in itself is a lot of fun. That goes with clean stuff too. I often thought years ago a book showing placements would be cool - I even wanted to make a poster. With the internet, methods could be compiled and everyone could go bigwall climbing!
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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^^^ Amen to that. Aid bouldering is an art in its own right.
Edit: Of course, like traditional bouldering, being willing to make the move one foot from the ground is a very different thing from standing on that same placement facing a bad fall. ;-)
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micronut
Trad climber
Fresno/Clovis, ca
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Honu I'm digging this thread.
that pitch is the kind of pitch where, before you get on the wall, your'e like "Oh yeah bro, I'm all about clean climbing practices, yeah bro, we need to make sure the wall is preserved for future generations"
Then when you're on the pitch, you're like "Hey Tag me up all the pins and an extra nut tool and 15 tie-offs "
Too funny and too true!
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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Nothing says fun like bounce testing a stack and realizing your real problem is the sound of tearing fabric.
For me, that's typically the sound of my undies filling beyond the bursting point.
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Honu
Big Wall climber
Boulder
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Topic Author's Reply - Jan 10, 2018 - 01:56am PT
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Madbolter1, I really appreciate your response on the thread, that level of intricacy in a stack seems like something that could be really fun to play around with. I have some busted up circle heads I used to aid boulder with, the perfect kind of flattened head you mentioned. On a cold day I'm going to go out to some boulders and mess around with that technique to get the pins to cam just for shits and giggles. Seems like a good trick to have in the bag if I ever man up enough to take on one of your fishers routes!
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Gnome Ofthe Diabase
climber
Out Of Bed
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Jan 10, 2018 - 05:53am PT
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MUSICAL INTERPOSITION? IF IT SOUNDS RIGHT AND HIGH-STEPPIN' IS THE NEED,
WHEN/IF THERE IS A GOOD-R' PLACEMENT IN-SIGHT,
GET ON AND OFF THAT STACK WITH THE SPEED AFFORDED BY THE FOREBODED FRIGHT,
IT IS THE THING THAT KEEPS YA MOVING UP
NOW FOR THAT SONG
[Click to View YouTube Video]
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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Jan 10, 2018 - 10:42am PT
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On a cold day I'm going to go out to some boulders and mess around with that technique to get the pins to cam just for shits and giggles.
I hope you have a great time! People that find this sort of thing intriguing are increasingly anachronisms. Welcome to the club of the utterly useless!
:-)
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JLP
Social climber
The internet
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Jan 10, 2018 - 10:56am PT
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Pin stacking was replaced by copper heads - like back in the 70's. The addition of modern small offset cams make it 100% unnecessary in all situations.
At best, it's a slow pain in the butt. Every pin needs be slung together in case they pop, better have a ginormous and heavy pin rack with you, etc.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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Jan 10, 2018 - 11:14am PT
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The addition of modern small offset cams make it 100% unnecessary in all situations.
LOL
I love universal claims.
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JLP
Social climber
The internet
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Jan 10, 2018 - 02:14pm PT
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With hooks and heads you can eliminate your entire pin rack, it’s just slower.
Stacking - the ultimate aid nerd thread...
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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Jan 10, 2018 - 04:02pm PT
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With hooks and heads you can eliminate your entire pin rack
Since you repeatedly insist, and since it's obvious that NO thread can exist on the Taco Stand without knock-down, drag-out fights, I'll simply respond that your statement is incorrect.
Moreover, what you seem to be saying is: "ANY pitch can be done with just hooks and heads, even if it means that it's A5 to do so, while with proper stacking/cable-camming techniques that pitch could be A2."
I can tell you from numerous pitches, particularly thin-expanding and stuff like Cutler sandstone, that your sweeping statements are either flatly untrue or will result in making pitches much more dangerous or less sustainable.
I'll offer an example out of countless that could be cited. There is a pitch of Line in the Sand that requires you to navigate an ultra-sandy, bottomed, very flared, slightly-overhanging "crack." Try alumaheads or even deadheads all you like. Good luck with that! Nothing to hook, so I guess by your model either trenched heads or manufactured hooks are the "solution."
What actually works nicely, easily, and straightforwardly, however, is to hand-place an alumahead in the back of the "crack" and gently tap an angle-tip in just below the head. As you weight the head, it pulls down onto the tip of the piton, wedges up there, and is "cammed" via the tip of the piton. Because there is essentially no leverage "on the piton," as long as the piton catches at all, the head is the placement.
Well, that's a "stack," and it defies your sweeping statement.
Another such example is the picture people have referred to. You could try a circlehead there all you wish. In that soft sandstone, it just blows out immediately, leaving a blown-out flair there that can't even take a stack. Okay, now you've got either a trenched head or rivet there.
Another example concerns thin-expanding flakes. Many people don't realize that modern active cams put about twice as much "outward" pressure as the "downward" weight on the cam. So, if you weigh 200 pounds with your rack, you are trying to "pry off" an expanding flake with 400 pounds of pressure. By contrast, a cable cam can be hand-placed (I did it repeatedly on the notoriously expanding Groovy Arch pitch) that exerts a fraction of the downward force as outward force. Hence, no expansion. No heads are going to work there. Or, you could cam-hook the whole pitch, making it much more dangerous than it needs to be.
So, in short, your sweeping claim is flatly false in many circumstances; or it demands that pitches are made much more dangerous than they need to be; or it demands that more rock damage is done or drilled placements placed. And all of this because your claim asserts that "the way" means reducing the sorts of tactics you learn to employ.
Stacking and cable-camming are delicate and non-obvious arts, but knowing how to use such techniques can indeed enable you to "lightly" get up pitches safer than if you only know how to employ heavy-handed tactics like blasting heads in everywhere you have a question of what to do. And, particularly on delicate rock, just blasting in heads everywhere is an unsustainable tactic, unless you always leave them in place and/or you're trenching when you should be outright drilling a sustainable drilled placement.
I would literally find your sweeping statement to be laughable or trolling, except that you've repeated it like you're serious.
Maybe you're just into the "fast and light" game, so you eschew any tactic that can't be "instantly" employed. I don't know what your presumptions are. But I do know that your universal assertion is false and/or makes pitches more dangerous or unsustainable than they need to be.
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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Jan 10, 2018 - 04:16pm PT
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Two large angles stacked to fit a 3+" crack. No cams that would fit and nothing bigger than a 2" angle. Simple stack. Try and do that with heads and hooks. Or I could use my biggest hex and stack some pins in there.
Mind you, these are tricks that got us through when we didn't have better gear. We didn't let the fact that we did not have a rack of the latest tech gear stop us.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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Jan 10, 2018 - 04:19pm PT
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^^^ Indeed. And particularly with very flared and/or sandy "rock," the "usual tactics" flatly fail, and you have to get more exotic or resort to trenching/drilling.
Of course, the climb-by-numbers, fast-and-light heroes don't care to learn more exotic tactics. And for good-rock, A3 and below, that's understandable. But it doesn't justify JLP's sweeping, universal claim.
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Roger Breedlove
climber
Cleveland Heights, Ohio
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Jan 10, 2018 - 04:21pm PT
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Welllllllll, MB1,it seems to me the difference in opinion rests on the the definition of climbing. I would prefer to think that the situations you describe, while on rock and part of an ascent, are not part of rock climbing. Too f*#king scary. Come to think of it, I think the same of beaks (whatever those are) and hooks.
I reached the same conclusion about stacking big angles. I either had to lose 180 lbs of my 170 lbs or deplete my pin rack by fixing pins on all-free ascents. Finally, after nearly 40 years, my pin rack was gone: I donated the remaining ca 1970 pins to the climbing museum.
Kidding aside, using pins to create a shape to expand with a head placement is pretty cool. We just used heads in traditional pin stacks to locate the pull force near the axis of the stack force.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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Jan 10, 2018 - 04:36pm PT
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We just used heads in traditional pin stacks to locate the pull force near the axis of the stack force.
That's a REALLY good way to describe it, imo. Thank you.
Many ways to achieve that basic end.
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