Anyone trad climb without cams?

I often go trad with one set of Tricams.
One each of No. .5" - No 7

No

why would i? aliens are pretty useful and light to leave behind. i take take 3 (blue, geeen, yellow...maybe black) of them to be flexible.
EDIT: to add, if the route is near my limit and the route calls for it, i'm-a-gonna weigh myself down with a couple more of them springy camming things to potentially speed my ascent.

Once did the Nose on stoppers and hexes - no pins, no cams (didn't exist).

Below the Great Roof (on stoppers and hexes)

Hey Bernard, rumor has it that you've got an updated book in the works...any truth to that or will you wait to break even on the St. Vrain book?

And as far as the bolting goes, ANY dealings I've had with BG he has gone 1000% farther than necessary to do the right thing and step up to the line. Maybe there's disagreements on the bolting in SSV, but he won't hide behind anything. If you choose not to buy his book you're missing out.

Thanks for all the intense work you've done w/ your guides. SSV and the High Peaks/Crag books have been a huge resource. Gracias!

Oh and I use stoppers and tri-cams. Love the tri-cams. Don't really use hexes, but I keep a set on deck.

Henry Barber on the FFA of Butterballs (5.11c), Yosemite Valley Photo by Jib Knight

I like the jingle-jangle sound of a full rack of hexes on the belt.

I like to go only nuts and tri cams on occasion, but have to admit I've never placed a hex. Maybe I've read too many annoying comments about them but I just take the cams. I never bought any, and haven't really found a spot where I couldn't get a piece when I needed it with my current rack.

Tradster wrote:Another thought on passive pro. If I'm leading a long pitch, I usually will deliberately use my passive gear first, because that way when I reach the belay, I will have more cams left to rig the belay with, plus you are 'saving' the cams for up higher when you may be a bit tired or perhaps passive placements have vanished. Just a thought.

wait, wait, wait....you save the cams for the belay? That doesn't make too much sense to me. i.e. I try to minimize the use of cams in an anchor so that the cams are available to lead the next pitch. Nothing worse than seconding a pitch and getting to the anchor that you partner has set up using hand sized pieces only to look up at the handcrack that I have to lead next.

I use passive pro whenever possible on lead because I am a big baby and solid nut placements calm my brain down, as in, "there, that will have to shear the F off before it comes out...whew!!"

IMHO nothing feels better than a bomber hex placement. Very intrinsically satisfying.

As my "name" indicates , I've been around the hill a few times. I started climbing in '69 and banged a few pins in, back in the day.

I shifted to hex's not much later, once they became commercially available but that's all there was in the '70's. Here's one of my favorite old shots of Malcolm and me out in "The Valley", 1976.

During the brief hiatus I took when my kids were born, cam's came out; and when I got back into it I racked up with cams and stoppers.

I still carry a small handful of hexs as bail gear on Alpine routes.

Been there, done that, whatever it is.

Only pins: 1958 to 1968 or so.

Only stoppers and hexes: 1968 or so to around 1980.

Stoppers and cams: Around 1980 to present.

At this point I don't see any reason to prove anything by restricting my protection opportunities. The fact that protection has gotten so much better and so much easier to install blunts what would otherwise be a much steeper decline in climbing ability for me. Even so, I've noticed that when I climb with younger climbers (most of 'em are younger) I tend to place more passive gear than they do.

Scott McMahon wrote:Hey Bernard, rumor has it that you've got an updated book in the works...any truth to that or will you wait to break even on the St. Vrain book? And as far as the bolting goes, ANY dealings I've had with BG he has gone 1000% farther than necessary to do the right thing and step up to the line. Maybe there's disagreements on the bolting in SSV, but he won't hide behind anything. If you choose not to buy his book you're missing out. Thanks for all the intense work you've done w/ your guides. SSV and the High Peaks/Crag books have been a huge resource. Gracias!

Hi Scott - I'm not working on any guidebook at the moment. If the rumor mill says I'm writing, my only guess as to its origin is that I've been working on a calculus text book (and attendant supplements) for the last several years. We (my co-authors and I) are almost finished with that monster project, so there's a chance I'll turn to writing or updating another guide in my down time. I certainly have no immediate plans to do so (though I've always thought a sport climbing guide to the Estes Park area would be welcomed in the community). I doubt the success/failure of my St Vrain book will have much to do with whether I write another guide; as mentioned earlier, it's the creative process that is most attractive to me. Of course I enjoy making a little money, but it's not a big disappointment if I don't.

Thanks for your positive comments; it's nice to hear you've made good use of my books.

Hexes WERE the first cams, along with Forrest Titons and probably Lowe tri-cams. Still seems like a true trad' route to use only stoppers and hexcentrics. Anyone ever use the old original 'drilled' size 7, 8,9, hexcentrics?? Before they made them from a lighter, thinner stronger aluminum alloy, they had holes drilled through out the surfaces to lighten the gear load. Scary stuff!
Basic and Advanced Rockcraft were THE only instructional books out when I started. Read then dozens of times, to be sure I got it right.

Years worth of bail gear.

Bail Gear

WoodchuckATC wrote:
"Anyone ever use the old original 'drilled' size 7, 8,9, hexcentrics?? Before they made them from a lighter, thinner stronger aluminum alloy, they had holes drilled through out the surfaces to lighten the gear load"

I own, and still use, the very first set of hexes.
Chouinards very first "original" Hexentrics did not have the drilled holes.
The first rendition had no holes. The second version had the holes and then later, the third incarnation were again without holes, but of a thinner stock.

I still have and use pre-Chouinard nuts (Troll, Clog and Peck).
All from Britain, where the concept for nuts was developed when climbers heading up to pull down at Cloggy hiked along the Clog railway tracks and put the threaded hex nuts they found along the tracks into their pockets. Then they would thread those hardware store nuts to use on a climb. They evolved to have the climbers file out the inside threads to eliminate wear on the cord.
Prior to this, climbers would put stones of varying sizes into their pockets and fit them into cracks and thread them.

J. Albers wrote: wait, wait, wait....you save the cams for the belay? That doesn't make too much sense to me. i.e. I try to minimize the use of cams in an anchor so that the cams are available to lead the next pitch. Nothing worse than seconding a pitch and getting to the anchor that you partner has set up using hand sized pieces only to look up at the handcrack that I have to lead next. I use passive pro whenever possible on lead because I am a big baby and solid nut placements calm my brain down, as in, "there, that will have to shear the F off before it comes out...whew!!"

I like the flexibility of having cams for the belay, especially if the cracks are weirdly shaped and so I have a greater choice to build a bomber belay; or if I have never done the climb before and have no clue about what the belay anchor might need. However, if I can use a passive piece at the belay, well that's even better. Also, in my earlier post I said a bomber stopper placement is my favorite piece, so I do prefer to use passive gear when i can.

I really do believe in the thought of less moving parts results in less problems, any mechanic, engineer, or weekend garage rat should agree on this. I pretty much live my life with a strong belief in simplicity. Such beliefs in my opinion cut down on the headaches. This goes hand in hand with my trad climbing. I look for passive first, unless of course I see that parallel sided crack; I'll throw in a cam then. Then again if I hear of someone using only passive just to prove something, kind of like the guy with the huge diesel truck that pulls up next to you at the red light, I may think you're an idiot. Just my thoughts.

I started with all passive pro and added friends when they came along

I have also used pins/hooks copperheads and bashies aid climbing and this stuff was all some of the realy cool old timers had so f**king what.

To use what ever works and is the best fit/makes me feel all warm n fuzzy with minimal fussing around has always been my mantra

I think the statement cams are faster is BS if you know how to place gear/read the rock than it won't matter if its a cam or a hex or a slung IPOD....

I also think that in certain situations a bolt is acceptable BUT before I stir the pot on this let me explain what my definition of acceptable is..........
1)Manky bolt replacement
2)solid well thought out rap/belay stations And YES even if there is a
crack there to place gear in I would rather hang "MY ASS" from a
solid well placed bolt than a CAM Anyday of the week and anyone who says otherwise is full of shit yet we all belay/hang our ass off cams or nuts or ?????
3) to cover a blank section( no place to set std pro) on a climb...

Yes I sometimes climb on all passive pro to prove for no other reason
than to myself I can do it.

There is always more than one way to protect something use what works and is safe for you and your partner go home the way you came "Alive"

Sometimes I'll climb a route with only cams....

you know, to keep my skills sharp....