Set your placements or die

Someone was giving me crap in another thread about my rules for placing pro so I'm calling them out here:

1. When you place protection, stoppers, hexes, cam's, give them a good hard yank, or two or three. See if you can just pull the thing straight out with a downward pull. Sometimes you'll find it pops out on that third try. (The reason for this is obvious, right?) And of course you're setting it for the downward pull being mindful of forces and shifts as you climb past the piece.

2. If your second is cursing you on cleaning your pro you're climbing safe. That nut tool should get used regularly.

So there's your troll. Go ahead and look foolish.

I disagree. Certainly sometimes it is necessary to set a nut so firmly that the second curses the leader, but not always. In fact, most of the nuts that I place require little more than a slight tug to set into the placement, and would definitely hold a whipper. Of course I'm setting them to withstand both downward and outward pull.

If a leader is placing their cams in such a way that the second is constantly cursing them, perhaps the leader ought to re-evaluate their placement strategy. Cams should come out easily [i]when the triggers are pulled[/i] but not otherwise.

Rules are stupid. There's not just one way to do something that works all of the time. One has to be adaptable to the terrain...

after leaving behind several nuts in eldo, i finally found that finesse was a much better way to get any nut out of a hole (heh). usually tools just got me in more trouble, and i would have trusted my life to any of my partners placements, cam, nut, or otherwise.

but thats just me

Spider Savage wrote:When you place protection, stoppers, hexes, cam's, give them a good hard yank, or two or three. See if you can just pull the thing straight out with a downward pull. Sometimes you'll find it pops out on that third try. (The reason for this is obvious, right?)

It seems like if you're pulling on a piece with only your hand to see if it's gonna hold, it's probably not a piece you should trust. Yanking on it with your hand isn't even gonna come close to a fall force, so if you're testing to see if it pulls by yanking on it, there's a good chance it will definitely pull if you fall on it, but that's just my $.02 (I do yank on cams, though, just to see if they're biting and engaging the rock the way I want them to; I only yank on nuts to set them so they won't just fall out easily)

Abram Herman wrote: It seems like if you're pulling on a piece with only your hand to see if it's gonna hold, it's probably not a piece you should trust. Yanking on it with your hand isn't even gonna come close to a fall force, so if you're testing to see if it pulls by yanking on it, there's a good chance it will definitely pull if you fall on it, but that's just my $.02 (I do yank on cams, though, just to see if they're biting and engaging the rock the way I want them to; I only yank on nuts to set them so they won't just fall out easily)

This is very true.

I yank on nuts to set them well enough to deal with rope drag, but pulling on a cam won't set it at all. The springs will cause it to recoil. That's like jumping in the bed of a pick-up truck in the hopes that it will make the tires stick better later.

Part of climbing efficiently is picking placements that are not going to slow the team down. That means avoiding tricky placements that only go in or out one way, not setting nuts overly hard, or placing a bazillion pieces at the crux. If your second is regularly cursing at you, you could be doing your job as a leader better.

Seriously, the "screw the second" attitude is for noobs.

I like to yank on my nuts before I climb.

• *Edit for pre-coffee grammar***

Hmmm, I can handle looking foolish. I'd beg to differ about your rules...

1. Cams don't need to be "yanked" on. A little wiggle to make sure they're seated is best.

2. Give stoppers a solid tug to seat them into the placement and avoid them popping out, but welding them in is not a virtue. I'd say my placements require a tool about 1/4 of the time, and usually on the small ones. I haven't had a nut pop in a few seasons.

3. If your partner is slowed down, you are stuck on the rock, which makes you less safe. It increases your chances of epic-ing, losing gear, and fatigue.

Personally, I say it's about having the experience to know when to do what. Seat a stopper because it needs to be done, not because you're afraid or following a rule.

My belayers, though, have a similiar frustration. I'm tall enough to place high in a crux from a stance, which means I'm protected farther through the crux but my second needs to stop mid crux to clean. IMHO, if the issue is add a margin of safety at the cost of some effort from your second, go for it. But, if you're just doing something because its a "rule" or you are afraid, then that's silly. It goes back to the experience piece.

Evan

hmmm...Cleaning stuck nuts sucks...but I'd rather bloody my knuckles and drop a few f-bombs than watch one of my friends take a 50 footer because their nut pulled...but, that's just me.

I see a lot of peopled yanking on gear as a way of determining if the gear is good. If this is your primary means of judging the quality of your placements, then you may think a placement is good when its not.

There's no way you can generate the same forces by yanking that would be generated during a fall. Instead its far better to do a thorough visual inspection of the placement to make sure the crack is adequately shaped to contact the piece correctly.

A common example is a crack that has just a slight taper. Its easy to get a stopper to set in the crack, and for the placement to survive a few yanks, but under the full force of a fall, the rock or aluminum can deform enough for the placement to fail.

Setting passive pro can be important, but repeated yanks will likely not increase your safety margin, and may give you a false sense of confidence.

Think of Yuji Hirayama onsighting Sphinx Crack: look at the crack, learn its features, grab the right piece, place it, give it a slight tug, then move on.

good thing I climb in an environment that loves easy nuts.

jack your nuts in and expect them to be ripped out -- fatiguing the cable anyway; place them properly to begin with, and it's all good.

second rule of fight club:

f the second.

I believe in field tests where nut and cam placements have been tested it has been proved that a slight downward tug to set the piece (whether passive or active), improves the ability of the piece to withstand stronger forces. I'll try and locate the data I read.

FT2

As an aid climber I like to jump up and down on placements then stand on them and grind them in beyond recognition. Screw the second.

Oops... that's usually me. That's why I have a BFH.

Cheers -E

Yanking on passive pro to set it may seat it better but if the placement requires it be seated with a yank so it doesn't fall out then it's probably a poor placement to begin with.

Not sure why you'd try and set a cam, it's spring loaded?

If your second is getting the nut tool out for every placement then you're probably climbing really slowly. When I first started climbing multipitch trad me and my partner used to set the hell out of nuts, yanking all over them. Then it took an hour or more per pitch, on easy stuff. Now I can lead pitches in half the time. Cams help too.

Hard and fast rules in climbing are pointless. Almost every situation is different and if you don't have the flexibility to adapt then you're gonna have a bad day.

if you french fry when you should pizza, your gonna have a bad time.

I can't wait till Tom Hanson puts his poetic spin on this one! :)

Spider Savage wrote:Go ahead and look foolish.

So everyone that disagrees with your "rules for placing pro" is a fool, eh?

Well, here's me being a fool:

Tugging on every single placement is a waste of effort for both the leader and the second, IME.

Chris Sheridan wrote:I see a lot of peopled yanking on gear as a way of determining if the gear is good. If this is your primary means of judging the quality of your placements, then you may think a placement is good when its not. There's no way you can generate the same forces by yanking that would be generated during a fall. Instead its far better to do a thorough visual inspection of the placement to make sure the crack is adequately shaped to contact the piece correctly.

That's a great point that seems to escape the OP. I never did understand why people try to create hard and fast rules while entirely missing the fundaments behind their "rules."

--Marc

Spider Savage wrote:2. If your second is cursing you on cleaning your pro you're climbing safe.

Like others, I disagree with this statement.

There is nothing more frustrating than wasting time constantly prying-out pro placed by a paranoid, scared, or vindictive leader who has no regard for his partner.

I like to make sure my placements are set by clipping into them, shaking out my arms to make sure i've got enough strength to make the next two moves, and then I fire for the redpoint. Well, only if the grade is <5.8.

it shouldn't be necessary to yank on every piece so much that it's a pain in the ass to remove. some placements, sure...they're sketchy, you know their sketchy, and a few yanks may keep the piece from popping if you fall. and, if nothing else, you get the mental protection necessary to keep climbing.

but, there are plenty of times when you can look at a placement and you know it's not going anywhere. if it's a nice, tapering slot with enough contour to keep the place from pulling due to outward force, you shouldn't need to fuse the nut into the rock.

when i'm following and come across a nut that's been molded into the rock unnecessarily, i make sure to kick my partner in the nuts when i climb past to take over the lead. and, then, i yell "FT2!" as i continue up the pitch, burying his cams as far back in the cracks as i can.

"Rules are stupid."

I concur...except when they are my rules.