Fancy Schmancy Anchors

Keep those anchors in the gym where they belong. ^^^KISS^^^.

Where's the emoji with the hand slapping the forehead when you need it?

Way too many lockers in those systems.  I only carry two.  No need for a locker at every point. 

(46 minutes later)

"Off belay!"

"Hey up there, am I on belay yet?"

"No. Wait. Just a sec."

"Well?"

"I'm still working on my anchor here..."

"OK."

...

...

"Are you done yet?"

KISS is a good principle while SRENE and EARNEST may be the first stepping stones. But after many years, SSS is the back drop to the others for me:  Strong, Secure, Simple. 

Jordan Pitts wrote:

What happens when you miss a belay station and run a pitch out so far and you don't have enough of the climbing rope left to build a anchor or the bomber anchor points are far apart? Does this never happen? If its windy, you might not be able to hear your partner telling you that your almost out of rope. Just seems like your going to be a lot safer carrying one 20' cordelette with each person.

Definitly a skill you need, but only as a fall back?

I carry one double length dynema sling on my harness for this. Ditch the cordelette.

2nd one isn't redundant... but it is retarded

Jordan Pitts wrote:

What happens when you miss a belay station and run a pitch out so far and you don't have enough of the climbing rope left to build a anchor or the bomber anchor points are far apart? Does this never happen? If its windy, you might not be able to hear your partner telling you that your almost out of rope. Just seems like your going to be a lot safer carrying one 20' cordelette with each person.

Definitly a skill you need, but only as a fall back?

20' of corrdalett is about the size of a baby head, do you always climb with all that stuff hanging off your harness.  Then you need carabiners to build that multi point anchor.  it all starts adding up.  In 40 years of climbing I can honestly say I have never arrived at a belay and wish I had a cordalette.  It may have been nice to have one but it was far from needed.  People should be practicing making anchors with minimal gear and not practicing making large complex anchors that use lots of gear.

Kevin Mokracek wrote:

20' of corrdalett is about the size of a baby head, do you always climb with all that stuff hanging off your harness.  Then you need carabiners to build that multi point anchor.  it all starts adding up.  In 40 years of climbing I can honestly say I have never arrived at a belay and wish I had a cordalette.  It may have been nice to have one but it was far from needed.  People should be practicing making anchors with minimal gear and not practicing making large complex anchors that use lots of gear.

+1

Same here - 45+ years and never owned one (although used a few, rarely).

You missed out on the rockclimbing.com forum threads on this a few years back where all those variations and dozens more went by. You can do all sorts of fun, amusing and creative things with anchors, but I tend to just do what's necessary skipping the superfluous.

So OP, are you getting the feeling that "fancy schmancy" should not be used with "anchors"?

Jordan Pitts wrote:

... or the bomber anchor points are far apart? ....

in general, if the good pieces of gear are really far apart it is a lot easier to put an anchor together with the rope.  it is basically like a big adjustable length cordalette.  a common example of this is when you top out on a dome that has very few available cracks, or the gear that you have left limits your options.  sometimes you might have 2 or 3 pieces that are 10' apart (or more).

i honestly haven't used a cordalette in years and i don't really miss it at all.  i have a 9' piece of webbing that is folded in half and used for my chalk belt but I haven't ever needed to use it to build a temporary anchor.

Yeah, honestly any reasonable diameter cord is going to be barely noticeable on the back of your harness.  I get the speed/efficiency argument and that “better” anchors can be built with the rope, but the weight/bulk argument is silly.

Jordan Pitts wrote: I know I'm not going to win with you guys but I can think of bunch of times where 20' came in handy for slinging large boulders, also extending a top rope anchor over a edge, anchor building with twin ropes. 40' has saved my ass in a hasty retreat when a electrical storm was rolling in and our rope got stuck when we pulled the rappel.

No one is saying they're not handy, just that for some percentage of us the convenience isn't worth carrying one around.

Doesn't using your rope for a anchor put alot of extra wear and tear on the last already abused 10' of your rope?

Nope. Ropes aren't as fragile as a lot of new climbers think.

Oh and climbing with something the size of a babys head is not that ridiculous. Have you ever seen a number 6 cam, lot bigger than a babys head.

If I'm lugging a #6, it's because I need it - a cordelette doesn't fit that description, so it's just an extra, unnecessary baby's head.

Ted Pinson wrote: ... but the weight/bulk argument is silly.

Nah. It all adds up.

Jordan Pitts wrote: I know I'm not going to win with you guys but I can think of bunch of times where 20' came in handy for slinging large boulders, also extending a top rope anchor over a edge, anchor building with twin ropes. 40' has saved my ass in a hasty retreat when a electrical storm was rolling in and our rope got stuck when we pulled the rappel.

Doesn't using your rope for a anchor put alot of extra wear and tear on the last already abused 10' of your rope? When you could be using something that can easily be replaced.

Oh and climbing with something the size of a babys head is not that ridiculous. Have you ever seen a number 6 cam, lot bigger than a babys head. Hasn't stopped me in the past, well maybe when it gets caught on a granite nubbin, but all trad gear does that right? Maybe you just free solo, kevin? Or maybe all passive?

I think you should use w/e you are comfortable with and works for you.

Just keep in mind, uniformly, the most experienced people in this thread say leave the cordelette at home so there may be a lesson there, consider it as you will.

We learned on 45 and 50m ropes and did El Cap routes with them. There is always enough rope when you are using a 60m or longer to do w/e needs to be done.

I think there have been technique pendulum swings in terms of anchoring, and these are further influenced by the growth of fixed anchors, which make some sort of pretied sling useful.  If one can part ways for a moment from one or the other orthodoxy, it seems to me that there's a time and a place for both approaches.  Personally, I use the rope for between 80--90% of my multipitch anchors.  It is far more robust, adjustable, and adaptable than a cordelette.  The other 10--20% of the time, a cordelette is more efficient.  Some of those cases are when taking novices climbing (i.e. "guiding"), climbing in blocks with trad anchors, and, in my experience most essentially, when the belayer is ideally positioned at some distance from the anchor.

So, after some participation in partisan anchor wars, I've reached a compromise.  Nowadays, I usually have the thinnest lightest cordelette, i.e. one made from thin dyneema webbing.  It is lighter and more compact than the ones made from cord.  It doesn't get used much; primarily for remote anchors as I mentioned above, or a quick slinging of a relatively large tree, especially if sap is running. It will be handy if I need to indulge in self-rescue shenanigans, but that's an extremely low-likelihood prospect in my experience, and not a strong reason all by itself to carry one.

A drawback of the thin webbing is that weighted knots can weld pretty easily.  I never use a quad or tie any extending anchor with limiting knots, and I put a carabiner through an ordinary cordelette power point knot to facilitate untying.

I got the impression from the OP that he was just having fun exploring various setups that have been suggested, he even said he probably would never use them.  The thing that I'm curious about is why those authors suggested those anchors at all.  They are much more complicated than several other options and come with problems that various simpler options don't have.  Anyone know anything about that first anchor in the OP?  I looked at the PDF linked in the post, but it's not in English and doesn't look to give much info.

Jordan Pitts wrote: Oh and climbing with something the size of a babys head is not that ridiculous. 

Reddit : Banana :: MP : Baby Head?????