Aid Climbing Sequence Question

Not to blow my own horn, but my TR about Max's and my ascent of Reticent a few years ago has a few good points about climbing hard aid (not to mention being a good read, in my humble opinion).

"Make your best placement, bounce the shit out of it, get on it, forget about it, repeat"

Hmmm.... my attempts to post a link are not working.

Go to hudonpanos.com, go to Trip Reports, and then hit the Reticent link.

Mark Hudon wrote: David, here's the deal. If you don't bounce test a piece you never know if it's just going to explode at any moment or not. You get on that piece that you haven't bounced and it's a question mark. You get on the next piece that you haven't a bounced there's another question mark. And on and on and on. So now you're 10 pieces out and you have no idea if any of them could hold a fall or if the one you're on is going to blow at any moment. Dang man, I call that scary! There was some guy either here at mountain project or super topo who was able to record the force he was putting on a piece when he bounced it. He was your average size guy and found that when he went totally nuts, he put about 600 pounds of force on a piece. 600 pounds would probably hold a little fall but more importantly you know it's just not gonna blow at any moment. And also, the guys who bounce pieces aren't superheroes, I'm as scared as anyone, but I'd rather be scared at that moment rather than the whole time I'm standing on a piece wondering if it's going to blow!

Thanks Mark, don't worry I get the whole thing. I just needed to find out if people were less concerned about the piece blowing during testing, or did something clever to suppress the horror, or had any tips, or I'd missed something obvious. Like, only daisy testing A3 pieces whilst standing below the lower piece, or as one person said extend the aider with another.

I can't see me carrying another aider up a route, but when I'm stepping high and making a big reach, I might try clipping a draw to the top of the top aider so I can bounce test with my waist below the lower piece whenever I'm worried. I could then remove it before ascending the aider. Bit slower. But if it gives me more confidence, it might end up quicker over all.

Sound feasible?

Yes, excellent plan.

Waist at your old piece, hold on for dear life with one hand, feet level, bounce, bounce, bounce (go nuts) and be as happy as a pig in shit when it pulls! You're happy because you saved yourself from a potential fall!

Mark Hudon wrote:"Make your best placement, bounce the shit out of it, get on it, forget about it, repeat"

Yes. If you want to climb aid (and not be sweating bullets the whole time), this is what you have to do. If you have a solid piece at your waist, then bounce testing shouldn't be stressful. If the piece pulls, you try again. For me, the most stressful is that moment when I'm committing to the piece, even after bounce testing it. There's always that nanosecond of concern, but it passes quickly and you move on. It does get easier and you do get better and faster with placements.

Mark Hudon wrote:"Make your best placement, bounce the shit out of it, get on it, forget about it, repeat"

The forgetting part is prob the most important tidbit of knowledge on this thread. Aid is all about trusting your systems and your tests.

Once it's passed the test you have to let it go otherwise you'll be like me, wasting minutes and hours over the course of the route looking down at the piece that you know is good because you tested it well but still thinking "what if what if oh no I'll hit that wall and destroy me ankle then I'll die of exposure trying to crawl down the trail and a bear will eat my eyes and then my mom will have to decide whether to have a closed casket funeral or replace my eyes with marbles and I'm pretty sure that they don't let you into heaven with marbles for eyes and that would suck because there's def no aid climbing in hell oh wait what was I doing? Oh yeah, need to get on another hook but damn, what if I fall? I wonder if that piece I tested will really hold? Man I really don't want to fall into that wall, then I'll mess up my ankle and etc etc etc."

Wait, why do we do this?

^ it's FUN damnit!

Whenever I click that hudonpanos.com link, I get an 404 error. When I type it into the browser, I go right there. Is anyone else having trouble?

Fwiw. When I click on the link you provided, it takes me right to your site. Nice site and the link works fine from my mobile phone.

Ryan

Thanks, Ryan.

From my Reticent TR:

"I looked at the cams I had placed and at the peckers below that and just laughed. Everything seemed solid but everything was small, there was not a whole lot of metal holding anything."

Okay, here is another thing that both Max and I did before Reticent that I don't mention in my TR (but it is also something I did this summer before working Freerider this fall (see my post in the Training forum)).

Neither Max nor I consider ourselves to be badass aid climbers. We do consider ourselves to be at least as good as the shittiest climber ever to do the route and we are both confident in our abilities to figure out any problem.

Big Wall climbing is a constant problem solving endeavor. Setting up anchors, lowering out the bag, cleaning, on and on and on. Climbing a pitch is the same thing, every placement is a problem to be solved.

What we did then and what I did this summer, was to constantly tell ourselves that we needed to be the best climbers we've ever been, we needed to have an open and creative mind when searching for the next placement. We needed to be confident in our solutions and happy and relaxed with them.

I hesitate to say this because I don't want to give a false impression of the route or our abilities, but neither of us felt it was too, too bad. Don't get me wrong, I was bounce testing #1 copperheads, from a hook, above another #1 copperhead, above a ledge, certainly a DFU situation, but I was relaxed, calm and confident while doing it.

Mark,

Can you talk about bouncing and marginal small cams? Do you bounce test small cams? I generally don't on the advice of much better aid climbers than me, but I always feel a little sketchy getting up on a black alien or 00 metolius unless the placement is obviously bomber.

I don't give small cams my usual bounce test and to tell you the truth, I don't know why, I've had enough of them pull out on me.

A small cam has a really tiny working expansion. I try to not stuff them, I try to set them so I can see a little bit of expansion before I get on them.

Sometimes to make a problem easier to see, it's better if we make the problem far larger (Eisenhower told his military planners that in WW2, btw) so let's think about a pretty stuffed BD #3. A stuffed #3 has, what, 3/4 to an inch of expansion? If we stand on it and it starts to slip, it's going to expand as it slips. If the placement is not too flaring, the cam could slip and expand for a fair distance before it catches.
So now go back to the tiny cam. Those 00 must have an 1/8" of expansion? You stuff a 00 and it has to slide only a small fraction of an inch before it pulls!

Also, 3 dimensionally, a #3 has far more leeway, a 00 has far, far, less.

My technique is to place the cam and watch it expand a bit. Then I ease onto it and give it a few little bounces. Still though, I'm more comfortable on #1 beaks in the rock only 3/8 of an inch!

Cause humans make silly decisions;)
Test everything! Then you'll know what it's worth. If you don't test (all) your pieces your bound to end up logging air time and possibly getting hurt and putting yourself and partner in a lame situations. Then putting more people in danger to come save your ass. Doesnt matter how shitty the piece, test it. Then solve the problem if it pops. Aid/wall climbing is problem solving. Easier to solve a marginal placement that won't hold you weight by adding another and equalizing them, then test it. Don't just hope it holds. Be smart smart boys and girls. You might be worried about time/speed. But if you fly and possibly rip more pieces that will slow you down more. Be safe and test those small cams and any marginal placements.. Cheers and now go out and have fun, and be safe.

Matt Desenberg wrote:Good thread! Why would you not want to bounce test small cams?

Because much better aid climbers than me on bigwalls.net once told me that was a silly thing to do.

On this thread about where I took a giant whipper from a small cam on one of my first walls.

bigwalls.net/forumStatic/in…

Hey Scott! Not a super experienced aid climber here, but the only thing that makes sense to me to not bounce are heads, hooks, and obviously bomber pieces. Everything else, includng small cams, bounce it like your trying to rip it out. And that's what most good aid climbers have advised me to do.

csproul wrote:but the only thing that makes sense to me to not bounce are heads...

Of all the things to bounce the shit out of, heads are at the top of my list!

Mark Hudon wrote: Of all the things to bounce the shit out of, heads are at the top of my list!

Of course you do Mark. I'm guessing you have the skills to replace a blown head should it happen, and/or better skills at getting around a blown head. Us novices could be kind of screwed if we rip out a head! If I bounce one out it might mean bailing. So if the fall is clean and the gear below is good, makes sense to me to not temp fate by trying to bounce it out. At least that's my logic.

It's certainly easier to pop a crap head from a bounce test and replace it than to climb above a question mark. If it leaves a deadhead, the cleaning of a deadhead is actually very easy with a butterknife and if you don't have a butterknife, you'll certainly have a pecker which will either clean the sucker out, or will drill down into it and serve as a solid piece in it's own right.

The stories of placing heads being more difficult with each progressive placement are far overblown from what I've seen out there. Most climbs where this may be the case are going to be obscurities or hard aid climbs that a novice is not going to be on in the first place.

csproul wrote: Of course you do Mark. I'm guessing you have the skills to replace a blown head should it happen...

True that, and on the routes I'm currently climbing, the consequences of a blown head are not inconsiderable.