Tips on practicing setting pro

Hi all.

So I'm new to trad (only led a few routes so far) but I've now got a bunch of gear. It's all passive pro currently. Nuts, offset and micro nuts, tri-cams and hexes. Please don't beat me up for not getting cams. I understand how all the gear works just fine, but I'm wondering if anyone has any tips on how to effectively practice setting.

My idea was to rack everything I wanted to practice with on a sling, walk up to the rock (in approach shoes probably), find a place it looks like I could set some gear, grab some good holds just above ground level (hands and feet), then try and set one-handed finding the gear I need for the placement as I do so. I suppose in better weather I could take it a step further and take my shoes and crashpad and set on some v-easy or another that no-one is climbing.

Any other thoughts? Am I over thinking this? I'm trying to learn how to place gear more efficiently on lead. Take less time setting and more time climbing.

Find trad friend or just friend

Set up top rope (using said trad friend our just find an area where you can walk to the top)

Mock lead route on TR

Take whippers, see what holds and what doesn't

Go out for beers afterwards, better yet save beer money...buy cams

Dude honestly you just need milage on the rock. You've already led routes so you're over the first hurdle. I'd go through the mountain project classic 50 of each area and just start ticking off climbs starting with the easiest.

I'm sure mock placing of gear has it's utility but for me I'd die of boredom.

Beean: weighting is a good idea. I'd considered just yanking on the pieces via a quickdraw, or at the very least putting weight on them via a sling.

Travis: I've actually done the mock lead thing once with an experienced friend to make sure I knew what I was doing. But more of this may not be a bad idea and I think I could wrangle a few people I know who'd like to practice setting too.

Don: Honestly, if it were warm enough to climb, I'd be climbing. I'd much rather put the practice in that way. But it's too cold here in CO right now, so I figured if no-one wanted to commit to a route (not even me given the temps) I could get out somewhere in the sun and practice something useful.

Placing gear while bouldering may help a little bit, but I would recommend getting more mileage on 4th or 5.easy climbs. Bigger routes with varying crack widths and different degrees of flaring. Variation and surprise are more important than placing from a difficult stance.

When starting to lead trad, my biggest issues with passive pro were pieces popping out with an upward pull after climbing past the piece, zippering, and ungodly rope drag. To get this experience and learn how to prevent it, you need to climb long (not necessarily hard) routes. You also have to get more creative as your rack gets used up :).

I spent about a year leading sport routes and placing gear in between the bolts. To me this the most realistic way to practice and creates the same issues one would encounter while climbing, unlike top roping for a mock lead. This way you can actually see what happens to your gear when you fall on it. Unlike pull testing which does not put nearly the same forces as a fall.

IMO there is only one way to really, safely, learn to place pro and lead climb. Find someone who knows what the hell they are doing and follow them, cleaning their gear.

There's the old saying "if at first you don't succeed, freesoloing is not for you."

Oh, also...yer gonna die!

You are simultaneously addressing two aspects of placing gear. (1) Actually getting good placements, and (2) doing that selecting gear from the rack while hanging on with one hand.

I suggest not starting that way. The first thing you want to do is to get good placements and learn to judge them, so I think adding additional stresses is actually counterproductive. First just do the "ground school" part where you place gear and bounce test it. In addition to bounce testing, try jerking the gear in directions perpendicular to the rock to see how resistant it is to being lifted. And remember that good placements mean the gear can be removed too, which means, among other things, don't bury it out of reach. After you have a better sense of what holds and what doesn't and what will lift and what won't, you could move on to the one-handed placement practice from handholds if you want.

One of the mistakes I think beginning trad leaders make in this regard is thinking that placements are all you have to understand. There's quite a bit more for the leader to consider. I wrote a fairly long post about this at mountainproject.com/v/belay…, it might be worth a look...

While on top rope, aide up something above your free-climb level. Trail a rope as though leading - even beter if you have a "lead" belayer as well as the top rope belay.

There is more than one way to do this. And sequence matters as you WANT to avoid falling on gear while clipped directly into said gear.

Although you won't have etriers (ladders made of webbing) or other aide-specific gear, read about recommended sequence for full-on aide climbing substituting nylon slings for etriers.

If you don't have a partner who is experienced at where to be careful in this, put on your thinking cap and bring a friend who can / will do likewise.

rgold wrote: I wrote a fairly long post about this at mountainproject.com/v/belay…, it might be worth a look...

This link is gold. You should definitely take a look. It is long, but it long because trad climbing is complex.

how the gear behaves when you weight it in isolation ... and how it behaves in an actual fall can be quite different

you dont start to really start to understand the latter until youve taken a few falls (you shouldnt all when you start out) or until youve seen the gear of folks who have

a few months ago my partner and i (well my partner mostly) had to carry a climber out from the crag to the hospital ... he placed a red, yellow and small blue camalot in that order on a classic 11a testpiece

the yellow is a good placement as its a perfect hand size in a slightly constricting crack, by itself it should not pull ...

however it is below a small lip and the climber might not have extended it enough (which carries its own risk as youre very close to the ledge)

so when he fell and weighted the blue, i believe that the the upward pull of the rope moved the yellow camalot enough that it rotated out of position

then the blue pulled, an the yellow which was rotated pulled ... first time ive seen a good yellow camalot pull

by the grace of good he was caught on the red camalot by is belayer with his spine 6" from a rock ... however the fall was violent enough that he swung into the rock and smashed both ankles (likely shattered em)

anyways the purpose of this rant is to show that individually placements might be fine, but how they behave as a system and under weight is something many climbers dont understand or experience first hand (many dont or rarely fall on trad)

recognize that limitation in your learning until you get to the point where your taking falls

heres one of my other partners on the same climb after pulling a red x4 (never trust a small cam if you can help it) ... he narrowly missed the ledge as you can see

ive seen 6 cams pull who were placed by folks who know how to place gear this year (some of em whove done it for decades)

All points well taken. rgold, I will read your thread as soon as I get a chance. You always seem to pack your posts with wisdom.

Placing on the ground is great practice, following competent leaders, and doing some simple aid lines can help you start to see more how previous placements can affect your next, how rope runs etc.

For even more comprehensive learning, great if you can find someone who knows their shit to help you, plus a lead belayer; fix a line next to the top of a pitch and have them ascend the line watching you as you lead. Placements are only one consideration, and this can give you feedback on awareness of fall potentials, how the rope runs and whether you need to extend pieces with runners, whether you are finding good stances to place, etc. When I was guiding I did this along with following mock leads and real leads and giving feedback, but doing it in real time was able to give better coaching.

BTW, I think learning to place passive pro first and adding cams later is a great progression!

Also if you're looking for a partner, I've been trying to find someone that wants to do easy trad. I'm in Morrison, CO and have about the same rack it sounds like (no cams). My trad training is from NOLS and doing easy stuff. At the very least we could belay each other if we find a more experienced trad climber that might climb along side us.

Okay, so I read rgold's post in the link, which was very thoughtful and thought provoking. A lot of the concepts mention were familiar to me, at least on some level. I realize that reading is not a substitute for time on the rock, but I have read 'Climbing Anchors' and 'More Climbing Anchors' as well as a good deal of 'Freedom of the Hills' and a few other bits and pieces. I also just bought 'Vertical Mind' (which I've started reading and I'm hoping will help me deal with the mental aspect a little more), and a climbing self-rescue book, the title of which escapes me (which will be next). All of which I like to think has helped and will help me to improve as a trad leader.

I've previously been out with a mentor to do a little "ground schooling", top roped and practiced setting, and then led an easy route for my gear placements to be checked. I've only led a couple trad routes since then; one very easy, and one that proved challenging to me not because of the climbing itself, but because of the combination of leading, setting gear to the best of my ability, and the grade itself. Though it proved successful. On both of these routes my placements were checked by more experienced climbers. I need to do more following.

On cams: So far I've found I simply dislike cams. I don't really like how they work, I don't like how they walk around with rope drag or rotate out of position. I've much preferred to set nuts where possible because they seem far more intuitive to me (and stay where I put them). Actually on the more challenging lead that I did, I backed off a section because I was having a hard time finding the right cam and the right placement so chose to down-climb (originally because I didn't think I could lead it safely, though I ultimately did). At the time I was really wishing I'd brought up the third's tri-cams because those would have been so much easier for me to place. I don't know why, but they make sense to me in a way cams don't.

Anyway, I went out again today for a few hours of ground school on my own, mainly with the hexes and tri-cams. The hexes were more of a learning curve than the tri-cams however, but I've now got a good idea of how they work and how they don't. I yanked on every piece in a number of directions to be sure they didn't budge and if they did I tried to figure out why. And I think I'm starting to select the right size and type of piece more quickly now. I did end up stepping up onto the rock more than a few times looking for placements just out of reach of the ground and sometimes working singlehandedly. But that all felt very comfortable as I've already been told (and realized for myself) that being in a secure position when clipping, or setting and cleaning gear is far preferable to struggling and getting pumped. And I took some time to seek out placements for an upwards pull on the gear too. Just to be sure I can more easily recognize opposing placements for anchors.

Brady3, it's obviously too cold right now, but if you want to get in touch when the weather warms up we could probably figure something out. The Flatirons seems like a good mid point between where we both live.

tricams and nuts can easily lift up with rope drag unless you extend them significantly ... especially when theres a chance in angles

its not till you had one rattle out when yr next piece is 20 feet below you that you wondered why you didnt place a cam, or build the piece for an upward pull

nuts and tricams can be individually very solid, but as a SYSTEM IMO they require more experience to place than cams

every piece of gear has its place, cams were invented by mr jardine for a reason ...

a good climber places the best piece he/she can afford at the moment for the placement taking into consideration other factors as well

;)

Mathias wrote:On cams: So far I've found I simply dislike cams. I don't really like how they work, I don't like how they walk around with rope drag or rotate out of position. I've much preferred to set nuts where possible because they seem far more intuitive to me (and stay where I put them)

I agree that there's nothing that inspires confidence like a well set passive piece.

I've never climbing in the UK. But, I get the sense from their forums that the majority of climbers there "go to" passive gear first and use cams second. And they use hexes a lot more. Maybe it has to do with using two ropes? In the USA it's opposite. I get the sense that most climbers reach for cams first. And some spurn passive gear.

IMO, too many new trad climbers mistakenly think cams are "plug and play". They don't give any real thought to correct placement.

It's much better to know how and when to use all the tools.

Mathias: Yes it is a bit cold right now. I keep hoping the snow will start to melt away, but alas it is snowing more now.

I do agree with Wivanoff that some new climbers view cams as something that you just stick in the rock and it's good. I've even heard of someone that would stick cams straight in (until corrected) rather than pointing in the direction of pull. My thing with cams is they're expensive, I do view them more as a luxury. Yes, there are places where a cam is preferable over a hex or tricam, but the opposite is also true for some placements.
And if you climb in Arkansas people are definetely opposed to passive gear. They view hexes as archaic and unsafe.

Mathias wrote: On cams: So far I've found I simply dislike cams. I don't really like how they work, I don't like how they walk around with rope drag or rotate out of position. I've much preferred to set nuts where possible because they seem far more intuitive to me (and stay where I put them).

How 1970's of you!

It was the 70's when Jardine started manufacturing the friend, and that was exactly the initial response of many climbers. I learned with passive pro starting in the 70's then gratefully learned to use cams.

Trust, me you will be forced learn the drawbacks/limitations of passive pro. As Bearbreeder said, you'll really learn this when your nuts and hexes remove themselves below you. Sometimes a cam is useful just to keep the rope in an alignment that will not pull sideways on your passive pieces. e.g. a cam is often preferable as the first piece on a pitch.

Passive pro especially tends to rotate and pull out during lead falls when the rope pulls on it. If a piece or two below your top piece pull and then the top piece goes, you're in serious trouble. You mentioned rope drag. It is a constant necessity to reduce/eliminate rope drag whether placing cams or passive gear both in terms of the tendency to pull the wrong way on your placements, and in terms of cumulative drag that creates higher force on your pro and your body in a lead fall.

Cams also have their idiosyncrasies, but you will be a safer lead climber if you learn to use cams as well as passive.

Thanks for the input on cams. I have a lot of learning to do.

My concern has come from comments made by followers, where some cam placements right below the belay station have been deemed terrible, but I know when I set them they were as good as the others that were consider well placed. So they walked out from rope drag whilst bring up the second. At that point I guess it doesn't matter much in most situations, though it'd be unsafe on a traverse. So far, every nut or tri-cams I've set has stayed where I put it, though I can't say I've set hundreds of pieces so presumably the day will come where one will come out. I do try and extend the draws to reduce rope drag where I can and it's seemed safe to do so. Though I realize there are times when it's really not a good idea.

Cams will be added in time, and I'm sure many of those I climb with will insist on me using them or at least taking some with me on lead pitches. Which makes sense.