Passive-Only Trad Anchor

I would definitely carry tricams on an all-passive rack! Up to brown or maybe even blue.

rgold wrote:The "idealistic" perspective, which is to say the voluntary restriction of means, lies at the very heart of climbing, which loses all meaning and content if absolutely anything goes. Climbers who don't get this actually don't get something essential about climbing itself.

That's true. It can be easy to forget that you can always just walk up El Cap...

Kyle Drott wrote: Can anyone tell me how to safely build a trad anchor out of only passive pro?

We can "tell you" but that's not the same as teaching you. PLEASE seek in-person instruction from an instructor. There's more to gear placement and system dynamics than can be communicated over the internet. And you need to PRACTICE, and no one here can properly evaluate your mock anchors based on photos you might post.

Hi Kyle: I started climbing without SLCDs, although I did have tricams. You didn't mention where you climb, but in certain areas with lots of pockets and horizontal cracks, nuts, hexes and tricams are fine to build anchors with, and they can be bomber.

Everyone has given you appropriate advice to protect against upward pull, in an effort to make the anchor somewhat multidirectional. Just remember that you can build a bad anchor no matter what gear you use, so the answer is more in understanding directional forces and less about gear selection.

If anything in the previous comments is beyond your knowledge, I would recommend you get "Climbing Anchors" by John Long, which will give you a good foundation for building safe anchors regardless of gear. Then go to a crag and build anchors on the ground, and yank on your powerpoint in every direction to see what happens. Even when anchors seem intuitively solid, unexpected forces can dislodge pieces quite easily.

You can build an anchor with only nuts, but i dont know if 60 is going to be enough. You probably need around 120 nuts to do what you want.

Nah, 60 is fine as long as you use a sliding X.

You own 60 nuts and hexes and don't know how to build an anchor with only passive pro? Why did you acquire so much gear without learning how to use it?

Buy the two or three main anchor building books and read them, find somewhere you can build anchors from the ground, and get a mentor or hire a guide to teach you. Books and ground practice might be enough, but are no substitute to learning from someone with time and
experience.

Find some rock to practice on (from the ground), take some pics, and post them up.

Feedback guaranteed!

Best, OLH

Old lady H wrote:Find some rock to practice on (from the ground), take some pics, and post them up. Feedback guaranteed!

We don't even need pics to give feedback: Yer Gonna Die.

Gunkiemike wrote: We don't even need pics to give feedback: Yer Gonna Die.

Yup. Mauled to death by MPers. Lol!

I think it is perfectly fine to learn to create an anchor out of all nuts and hexes, I started that way too...especially as you certainly can run out of needed sizes in cams at the end of pitch and be forced to build a proper anchor with what you have left... Building a safe anchor on all passive pro is really required for competency in trad climbing....

However not having the funds and being into climbing is one thing...but being too cheap to buy cams is truly nonsensical. People use them because they are the superior tool and make moving over stone more fluid, faster and safer instead of fiddling with hexes taking up so much of your day. I don't think it is a stretch at all to say you climb twice as fast with cams than hexes, though you can get to be a very fast draw with stoppers.

Not only is it perfectly fine, it makes sense if you are multi-pitching. Nothing screams noob like making the belay out of half the cams you and your partner are carrying. Most of the time you belay at a stance or ledge where time is less important than moving quickly through some off fingers section on the next pitch.

I think the OP is just being passive aggressive.

Hexes are great. Still, throw for throw in ~parallel cracks, they do not replace SLCDs. At least initially, it may be best to treat them as large nuts.

Tom Stryker wrote:Not only is it perfectly fine, it makes sense if you are multi-pitching. Nothing screams noob like making the belay out of half the cams you and your partner are carrying. Most of the time you belay at a stance or ledge where time is less important than moving quickly through some off fingers section on the next pitch.

Better an anchor that screams noob than a noob screaming because his whole anchor just pulled...

Ted Pinson wrote: Better an anchor that screams noob than a noob screaming because his whole anchor just pulled...

Oh come on. If you have your nut craft even remotely dialed-in, constructing an anchor out of all passive gear really isn't that difficult at all.

Oh, for sure. I was admittedly being hyperbolic, as have most of the responses in this thread. When starting out, however, it's probably better to lean towards overbuilt anchors, and you'll probably be doing well protected routes where the likelihood is that you'll have multiple possibilities for gear placement and so not have to worry as much about conserving gear in the anchor. That is, unless you do something truly noobish and place doubles of a piece in your anchor...not that I've *ahem* ever done that before...

Marc801 wrote: Oh come on. If you have your nut craft even remotely dialed-in, constructing an anchor out of all passive gear really isn't that difficult at all.

To which one might add that it is quite easy to construct a crappy anchor with cams if the cracks you're working with aren't perfectly parallel-sided. It isn't clear to me that the attention to detail required for such cam placements is any less than what nuts require, and it is harder to judge the actual solidity of cams in irregular rock than it is to evaluate nut placements.

Has anyone ever stacked nuts for use in a masterpoint set up? What was your experience?

If you used one out of necessity while climbing, did you feel like it was bomber, or did it add too much negitive headgame?

I use one once as a directional just to see what would happen... As soon as I put force on the rope, the stack rotated with the slightest side force from the rope shifting (as it was a directional, the next piece was a few feet to the right of it). while it held as a directional for most of the climb, it would have blown imediatly if weighted downward. Stacked nuts seem very sensative to side movement of the rope. it may have held if the next piece were directly vertical of it. Thoughts?

Dan.G. yorlig wrote:Has anyone ever stacked nuts for use in a masterpoint set up? What was your experience? If you used one out of necessity while climbing, did you feel like it was bomber, or did it add too much negitive headgame? I use one once as a directional just to see what would happen... As soon as I put force on the rope, the stack rotated with the slightest side force from the rope shifting (as it was a directional, the next piece was a few feet to the right of it). while it held as a directional for most of the climb, it would have blown imediatly if weighted downward. Stacked nuts seem very sensative to side movement of the rope. it may have held if the next piece were directly vertical of it. Thoughts?

Stacked nuts are nothing to trust unless you are well and truly desperate.

Honestly, its a relic of the days before cams and dirtbag climbing on the ultimate budget. Not something anyone used regularly, but they were happy to tell the epic tale. More something of campfire legend.

Of course, they were the precursors to sliding nuts (Ball Nuts, Sliders etc) which I have used commonly in thin parallel cracks for free and aid climbing. But I never recall building an anchor with any, unless they were used in a more traditional constricting placement.