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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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Jun 10, 2010 - 01:31pm PT
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I thought cams were cheating Fritz. Got over it and have been hooked ever since.
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tolman_paul
Trad climber
Anchorage, AK
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Jun 10, 2010 - 04:59pm PT
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I like the old school adage of don't fall. If you don't fall, you can't get hurt, if you do fall, the gear might protect you, then again it might not.
I have popped a friend that was marginally placed in a flaring sandstone crack, but fortunately backed up with a bomber hex so I didn't crater.
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ontheedgeandscaredtodeath
Trad climber
San Francisco, Ca
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Jun 10, 2010 - 05:14pm PT
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I trust, but verify.
And back it up.
Heck, I'm not shy about putting three pieces in before launching into a crux that's feeling 50/50 for me.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Jun 11, 2010 - 07:38pm PT
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Cowpoke:
Wife: [dismissive stare] Did you feed the dog?
Oooh, that's cold. We're climbing on my gear from now on!
Maybe that was her plan all along.
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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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Jun 12, 2010 - 11:27am PT
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interesting about stats, silver. i've noticed that there is great vulnerability the first two years people begin leading--they get into situations they just don't foresee. didn't know about that "spike" down the road. glad i survived it. what comes after that?
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rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
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Jun 12, 2010 - 03:09pm PT
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"If you don't have implicit trust in gear and faith in your ability to place it, you should be clipping bolts or climbing in a gym.
And why exactly should I trust bolts place by someone with unknown skills that have endured unknown conditions?
Personally, I have faith in my placement abilities but an implicit distrust of gear. You name it; I've had it pull on me as well as at least a few other people I know. Moreover:
1. Cams are faith-based protection. You plug 'em in, observing a few elementary bits of conventional wisdom about appropriate location and cam compression. There's nothing physical about the placement that tells you the cam will hold. The physics involved in cam design, which I think I understand pretty well, involves only the most elementary first-order models. The governing concept of coefficient of friction may or may not make any sense for the aluminum/rock interface, and there is typically no attention paid to shear failure, which might be the actual failure mode in many cases.
Frankly, I find it surprising that cams work as well as they do. An often mentioned Metolius study found, over a wide range of placements, that "perfect" placements still had a failure rate of 1 in 20. From a field perspective, cam placements judged by experienced people are likely to be good, but there will always rare (but not exceptionally rare) failures that are completely unexpected. The system approach described above by Ksolem seems to be by far the best approach.
2. Nuts ought to be more reliable and are to the extent that once can form clear assessments of their strength based on the nature of the placement and the type of rock. But there is a substantial downside. Nuts lift from rope motions, and highly experienced climbers regularly misjudge the circumstances that cause this to happen. The protection you thought was bombproof might have been if it happened to be in place when it was needed.
For all these reasons, the "system" approach mentioned by Ksolem is the best long-term investment in continued health. We are playing with probabilities, and it is certainly possible to get away with a lot for a long while, and indeed maybe not have any of it catch up with us. But an unexpected failure happens in an instant, and what happens next will depend on what else was done besides the placing of a purportedly bombproof but now blown piece.
It seems to me that willingness to fall on gear is not some absolute but should also be based on one's estimate of the probabilities involved. Small cam with nothing backing it up? I'd say you're in do not fall mode. Large stopper keyholed in a horizontal crack with more stuff below it? Go for it. In between those extremes are a host of more nebulous decisions that are, of course, part of what makes climbing (which is to say trad climbing) interesting and challenging.
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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Jun 12, 2010 - 03:18pm PT
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There is no reason not to trust your gear, trusting your placing of the gear is another matter.
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Studly
Trad climber
WA
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Jun 12, 2010 - 06:24pm PT
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I don't know about that Jim, did you see that Link cam photo on the first page? I don't have any Linkcams but seems like for a failure like that described, their alloy mix must be off. Scary.
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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Jun 12, 2010 - 07:07pm PT
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True, but human error trumps manufacturing defects by a large margin.
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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Jun 12, 2010 - 08:30pm PT
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Was in Leavenworth on Tuesday and saw a young climber take a 45 ft. leader fall ending in an upside down position with his head 5 ft from the ground. He pulled a small cam placed badly while under duress and was held by a well placed .5 camalot. Score: equipment 1, climber 0, he's lucky to be alive.
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rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
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Jun 12, 2010 - 11:45pm PT
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The trouble with "gear is good but fails because of human error" is that it quickly becomes a definition rather than an explanation.
Of the many studies I would love to see that will never happen, one would be to have climbers place a small cam, issue a judgment about what kind of load it could withstand (say in term of fall factor), and then test the cam to see how much the climbers understood about its solidity.
Stannard actually did this with small wired nuts when they first appeared. I suspect he understood protection systems better back then then anyone since---I've never heard of anyone else correlating their evaluations of gear with actual tests of the placements.
Personally, I doubt that many of us would do all that well in the cam judgment test, and yet we speak of human error in evaluating placements as if it is a failing that can be eliminated by some combination of common sense and experience. I fervently wish this was true, but suspect that it is not. Experience and common sense can surely reduce the number of way-off estimations but cannot eliminate them entirely. Best to try for some sort of redundancy, and climb with great caution when there is only a single piece between you and a really bad outcome.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Jun 13, 2010 - 04:15am PT
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I'm with Cragman, what an odd topic. And Donini has it right, bad pro is all pilot error - even broken rock and broken gear, because the potential for each has to be factored into every placement.
All in all, I generally see and expect to see a lot of bad placements from two groups: folks crossing-over from sport climbing and folks who are alpine climbers first and rock climbers second. The former I understand, whereas the latter was a surprise on moving to the NW. But after years of seeing it, there is something about 'mountain climbers' that is just downright scary more often then not when they hit rock. Sure, there are alpine folk who are definitely solid with gear, but they seem to be in a minority in my experience over the years.
And then there's the fact that even in the mid-70's prior to sport climbings arrival, you could go to Eldo, the Gunks, or any other crag and after a bit you'd realize that only about 10% of climbers were true artisans with pro, another 10% good craftsmen, and about another 20% were competent but without much of a touch for the subtleties. That other %60? It seemed to me at the time they were always sketching to one degree or another and, in hindsight, nervously awaiting the birth of sport climbing.
Not everyone is a 'natural' with gear, but you definitely want to get to where you are competent climbing above gear without being nervous about your placements. In the end, the essential Callahanism - "a man's got to know his limitations." - was never more true then in trad climbing. That, and placing gear does require a certain level of what is sometimes called 'structural visualization', or the ability to visualize in three dimensions - to look at a placement and have an good sense of what piece[s] would be appropriate.
Overall my personal experience has been that if you have the requisite visualization skills then becoming solid or 'good' with gear is largely a matter of attention to details - getting a real good look at a placement to understand the basic geometry or 'architecture' of it and how it changes shape as it goes back. It also takes really paying attention to rock quality, subtle features and topologies, the level of 'grit' and grain, and how any chosen piece's stem is going to interact with the rock across it's length.
Another reason I see folks really sketching hard on gear is they either didn't learn or failed to grasp it's way more than a matter of individual placements; you're supposed to be building a coherent [rope] 'system' of coordinating placements. And if you don't get that you are likely either slinging things badly or not taking into account the effect of the rope [path] on individual placements or both. This can basically all be rolled up into slinging - and slinging is a particularly hard one for folks crossing over from sport climbing to 'grok' or learn. They often don't get it or underestimate its importance until bad things happen, and even then many still don't seem to understand that the slinging [or lack thereof] was the problem.
As for the folks preferring active to passive pro. Anytime I run across someone who predominantly 'thinks' about and looks for cam placements, I know I'm dealing with a neophyte regardless of how long they've been trad climbing. The universal positronicness, if not downright silky pleasure, of a perfect passive placement where the geometry fits like a glove just can't be overstated.
P.S. On that broken Link Cam: when you put a Link Cam on your rack, it's hard to miss that those cam lobe linkage tabs are real small, thin, and fragile looking; that if you torque them sideways or otherwise out of plane with the cams they are going to break. That means you should instantly recognize that a) these aren't 'regular' cams and can't be treated like they are, b) the stem needs to be oriented (and unobstructed) in-line with the vector of any potential fall, c) they may very well need to be slung, and d) you can't leverage the stem over any kind of edge or otherwise do anything which might cause them to rotate under load. But again, if you put it or any other piece on your rack then at that moment it's 'perfect' and 'is what it is' - if you choose to place it then it's up to you to work within its limitations.
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Wade Icey
Trad climber
www.alohashirtrescue.com
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Jun 13, 2010 - 04:33am PT
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The universal positronicness, if not downright silky pleasure, of a perfect passive placement where the geometry fits like a glove just can't be overstated.
poetry Joseph.
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tom woods
Gym climber
Bishop, CA
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Jun 22, 2010 - 09:51pm PT
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Le Bruce's case is kind of interesting. With the crack where it is, I wonder if it broke due to a sideways, or rotational motion. It you pull straight on the thing, everything should work right, but I could see something moving sideways and catching in that little slot where the second cam attaches. From a sideways rotation, if the side of the slot caught, it looks like a weak link.
Where he fell on Taurus is the start of the traverse so the cam was likley placed upward into the crack. It would be very easy and expected for the cam to be pulled sideways as the climber moves right.
Dang interesting, but what do I know? half my cams are chouinard camalots.
EDIT- Healyje beat me to it on a possible link cam failure explanation. At least I can say- I agree.
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SteveW
Trad climber
The state of confusion
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Jun 23, 2010 - 01:52am PT
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If'n I put it in, for the most part I can trust it.
Sometimes it's mankey, but then again, if it's needed,
you never know, it might slow you down.
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spidey
Trad climber
Berkeley/El Cerrito
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Jun 23, 2010 - 02:54am PT
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I'm pretty careful about backing up my gear and don't take a lot of falls on it. In 15 years of climbing I have pulled at least 3 crappy placements though, only one of which I knew was crappy. That was a camalot jr (purple I think) in a weird pod with lots of crystals in it on Rocktology (a rarely done Backcountry route near Tucson). I fell when a hold broke off while I was trying to get a better piece in. I whipped about 40 feet onto a nice fat bolt (on an 8.5mm double rope) and walked away bruised and scared and happy to be alive. There were no other opportunities for protection between the bolt and the pod as far as I recall. I've had a couple other pieces rip out under bodyweight, but never in a place where the consequences were dire - one was at the lip of the big roof on the Salathe pulling onto the headwall, I got complacent and weighted a cam that wasn't bomber, ended up taking a nice ride into space and had to jug my lead rope to get back on the route. That was quite invigorating!!!!
I've never climbed on Link cams but the design looks pretty prone to failure to me. The spot where it cracked is an obvious weak point - you don't see anything like that on a camalot for a reason. Thanks for posting the picture - after seeing that I think I'll avoid using them.
And I will second the notion that aid climbing and jugging on a route with lots of gear placements definitely helps to figure out what is bomber gear and what is not and how to sling your gear better. I learned a lot from aid climbing and jugging on big walls and it has definitely helped my confidence in my gear placements and systems.
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jstan
climber
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Jun 23, 2010 - 03:24am PT
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Irrelevant comments from the back row.
When all the new nuts were coming out in the 70's there was very little actuarial data. In one case I trusted a single nut protecting a deck fall from about 60 feet. Would not have been rational had I not personally done the hydraulic testing.
When cams first came out a number of us did not trust them. Prone to walk and they were just too complicated. Lot of materials engineerng in there, some of it potentially inadequate.
As I said back then, when making placements I found it helpful sometimes to stick my nose in the crack. If your eyes are up to it, putting your eyes closer to the rock at the placement gives you a better 3D visualization.
A very bad feature of failing placements has not been pointed out here. A failing placement supplies an impulsive force that can flip you upside down, as in the event Jim mentions above. At that point you are dead meat if there are more failures.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Jun 23, 2010 - 04:10am PT
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Had a rurp catch a 25 foot overhanging fall once and a fixed knifeblade that you could wiggle with your hand back and forth catch an 8 foot slab fall.
that said, aid climbing teaches you a lot and I've stood on pieces that should have been good and after a minute or so, just ripped out from under me.
Sometimes I'll follow a lead, and as I am cleaning the gear each piece would be better in a slightly different placement. Some people are just not mechanically inclined and they are the cause of most of the "gear pulled" horror stories.
This is true but it's also true that gear moves around sometimes due to rope movement and so what the second sees isn't always what the leader placed (but should have made consideration for cams walking and nuts lifting up)
I trust my gear but tend to be in the "Don't fall" category of leaders. I run it out when I could almost be soloing but place two before real cruxes if I can
Peace
karl
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rockermike
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Jun 23, 2010 - 12:48pm PT
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Haven't read all of the above, but my opinion is that people who learned to make placements with passive gear (those aging grays amongst us) have a better eye for solid placements. I know young climbers who just see a parallel crack and slam in a cam without ever looking at the possibilities. They seem to assume the camming action will hold in anything. But at least for myself I'm always looking for even the slightest indentations in which to plug my cam so that the natural shape of the rock helps with holding power. Climbing with hexes and stoppers was definitely good training for placing gear.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Jun 23, 2010 - 01:06pm PT
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Ditto rockermike, but add that time spent aid climbing, even easy aid climbing, quickly teaches one to carefully assess possibilities, and make the most of them.
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