Small cams - how low do you go?

rgold wrote:I don't understand most of this discussion. The "rolling angle" of the flare is double the cam angle, so in principle a cam with a bigger cam angle could hold in more severe flares.

That is all the poster that brought this up was thinking about.

Maybe I'm the future they will make a "conformable" cam that could change size and cam angle.

I whip on my yellow x4 all the fucking time. Never popped even in irregular Gunks cracks

I know this post is old but I just ordered my first trad rack. I got doubles from .2-.5 x4s and doubles from .75-3 in wild country friends. They were sold out of the .1 x4s. I will be climbing in NC will i be ok not having these cams? I was noticing the .2 and the .1 where 2mm different.

You’ll be fine.

You'll be fine. I climb in NC, I have a .1 X4 and could rattle off all the routes I've used it on, but it wasn't really essential on any of them.

By the time you've scratched up what you just bought, you'll know if you need more or not.

They're nice for making belays at the tops of pitches

When tip toeing upon a perilous precipice,
gazing downward to the lifeline tethered only to the winds. So be it only to the mind, 5kn is infinitely more than none! 

Eli Peterson wrote: I was photographing for a guy who took a ground fall on C3 size 0 from five feet above it and the piece pulled. His back had some blood but nothing too bad. He jumped on another climb and protected a 40 foot run out with that same c3 size zero. Sometimes there's just no better placements and a chance of something catching you is better than no chance. A good belayer can really reduce the falling force as well.

Aside from utilizing a long tether and minimizing rope drag, what other techniques can a belayer incorporate to lower the force applied on gear in a fall. I know this was several years ago that Eli Peterson wrote the above in bold, but wondering what a "good belayer" can do to achieve this- especially as it pertains to the content of this thread, re: small cams...

I place X4 0.2's regularly and have seen them hold a 4-6' fall in not-great rock without a problem, but I am also aware that even the best placement, in the best rock, is never 100%. I'm wondering for the future what I can do as a belayer to lower the chances of them pulling, short of backing it up with a second micro-cam (which I've already begun doing, where possible, since I own doubles). 

Great writes ups from rgold & comments from Patto & cie as well. Food for thoughts

Kevin Mokracek wrote: Why wouldn't you use them??? Better than nothing, and they might hold. That's good enough for me. Don't get caught up in the ratings of gear, a crappy low rated piece of gear that might hold is better than no piece of gear at all.

My personnal take on that aspect at this point is pretty much the opposite. I'd rather have nothing but solid pieces that I trust below. I want to be able, at a glace, to know how far I'm from my last piece and not end up meters above my last piece of gear, unsure of where I'm standing. Yeah it's a not great micro but... but it might, hold, right? How about the one before that? Wasn't THAT far below the squetchy one, was it? Am I suddenly distrusting the micro because I'm above it? Or was I over-confident in it when it was right there in front of me?

I don't like being unsure of where I stand in my climb. To me, putting pieces I wouldn't fall on is a slippery slope. Instead, I don't. I put pieces I'd fall on, or put nothing. Once I'm above it, I'm either comfortable with the fall or I'm not. I remove from the already complexe equation of trying to determine if I should take the fall now, downclimb or keep going on the run out most of the subjective issues involved with dubious gear.

My perspective on this is probably influence by climbing style (mostly flash/onsight, so I typically don't know much about what gear I'll get above). I'm also not pushing grades (10s are the hardest I'm climbing trad right now).

Franck Vee wrote: Great writes ups from rgold & comments from Patto & cie as well. Food for thoughts

My personnal take on that aspect at this point is pretty much the opposite. I'd rather have nothing but solid pieces that I trust below. I want to be able, at a glace, to know how far I'm from my last piece and not end up meters above my last piece of gear, unsure of where I'm standing. Yeah it's a not great micro but... but it might, hold, right? How about the one before that? Wasn't THAT far below the squetchy one, was it? Am I suddenly distrusting the micro because I'm above it? Or was I over-confident in it when it was right there in front of me?

I don't like being unsure of where I stand in my climb. To me, putting pieces I wouldn't fall on is a slippery slope. Instead, I don't. I put pieces I'd fall on, or put nothing. Once I'm above it, I'm either comfortable with the fall or I'm not. I remove from the already complexe equation of trying to determine if I should take the fall now, downclimb or keep going on the run out most of the subjective issues involved with dubious gear.

My perspective on this is probably influence by climbing style (mostly flash/onsight, so I typically don't know much about what gear I'll get above). I'm also not pushing grades (10s are the hardest I'm climbing trad right now).

I try not to fall if I think I can avoid it. That often means downclimbing.

I disagree on your point and often place gear that I'm not 100% sure would hold a fall. I tend to do a fine job of remembering whether or not there is seemingly bomber gear beneath me. You should know when you're strung out above a series of shwaggy pieces and act accordingly. If you'd rather have zero gear below you than some gear that could potentially hold a fall, thats your prerogative, but I don't personally think it makes sense.

Shelton Hatfield wrote:

I try not to fall if I think I can avoid it. That often means downclimbing.

I disagree on your point and often place gear that I'm not 100% sure would hold a fall. I tend to do a fine job of remembering whether or not there is seemingly bomber gear beneath me. You should know when you're strung out above a series of shwaggy pieces and act accordingly. If you'd rather have zero gear below you than some gear that could potentially hold a fall, thats your prerogative, but I don't personally think it makes sense.

You don't know it's bomber until you fall on it. Don't delude yourself.

Tradiban wrote:

You don't know it's bomber until you fall on it. Don't delude yourself.

Shit, I'd argue that you often don't know it's bomber even if you do fall on it! All you know is that it didn't rip out. No delusion here.

Shelton Hatfield wrote:

Shit, I'd argue that you often don't know it's bomber even if you do fall on it! All you know is that it didn't rip out. No delusion here.

Word. Plug and go baby!

Shelton Hatfield wrote:

I try not to fall if I think I can avoid it. That often means downclimbing.

I disagree on your point and often place gear that I'm not 100% sure would hold a fall. I tend to do a fine job of remembering whether or not there is seemingly bomber gear beneath me. You should know when you're strung out above a series of shwaggy pieces and act accordingly. If you'd rather have zero gear below you than some gear that could potentially hold a fall, thats your prerogative, but I don't personally think it makes sense.

Yeah, some of that is probably just a matter of preference. And possibly that if I were to push grade and work on project, then marginal gear would start to be harder to avoid. But then things are different for me - if I've worked on route, I know what gear will or not turn up later on, and perhaps my marginal micro starts to make some sense. But onsight? I'd rather pass.

But the point about shwaggy pieces is that is it hard to be objective about them once you get in a maybe-not-fall situation. It seems just hard for me to believe one can be as objective about those under stress as one can be when you've got the piece in your face and you're in some sort of stance. Maybe once above I start being overly conservative about pieces that, after all, would be all right, or maybe I was being overly optimistic about marginal pieces I shouldn't write to my mom about. Either case is a bad proposition to me. Almost by definition, a marginal piece is a grey zone, where objectivity is hard to come by. Since I started seeing things this way (good gear or no gear), I feel l'm much faster to evaluate where I'm standing in my climb and my decision making is quicker. On pumpy section this has a value.

But then I get curious about how a string of marginal pieces should be considered. First, what's marginal? A coin-toss the piece will hold a fall? A 3/4 chance? How does one even differentiate between probabilities at that point? If I thing a piece is solid, I'd give it ~bolt chances of holding. Of course in reality some solid pieces might have greater chances of pulling, but I'm willing to consider that if I call a piece good, the chances of holding are high enough that I don't need to consider individual variations that much (what's 97% vs 99%, and then the odds of 2 consecutive pieces pulling gets pretty small). I just don't think it would pull on a fall. But I personally wouldn't presume to be able to take 2 pieces of marginal piece and rate their chances of holding a fall or being 80%, or 50%, or 30%.

Where I want to get at is this: if I have 2 marginal pieces below, and I call them say 2/3 chances of holding. That means I have 1/9 chances BOTH will pull. If I wouldn't be willing to take the fall to the 3rd good piece (coz I ran it out up to that point), why would I be willing to take a 10%? What if my maths aren't even close to reality and it's more 25% both will pull?

If I just don't put the marginal piece in, then I'm clearly in run-out territory at some point above the 1st place were I would have put the marginal piece. Then I'm either cool with that, or not, and I either downclimb of take the fall then & there on a good piece.