Alternative Way of Connecting Rope to Protection

Pat Lightwrote:

• Racking non loadbearing carabiners to save weight is like...racking non loadbearing carabiners to save weight. It's the archetypal bad idea: the purest form of bad ideas, a distilled and refined bad idea, only comparable to itself, worse than all other bad ideas

Roger that.  I don't even rack my water bottle on a toy biner.

1/10 only for the effort of taking photos

metolius fs mini carabiners weigh 23 g and are rated for climbing. You don’t usually need to extend more than a few pieces per pitch. If you really want to save the biner weight, throw the sling over your shoulder, but my experience is that they are difficult to remove when on harder terrain this way. I don't really think this system adds any value/safety/time/money saved.  The DMM dragons do what the OP wants without the time and safety drawbacks. I wonder what outdoor experience this person has?

I remember my first high too. 

Lilith, yours is a cool idea.  Not for head pointing hard trad, but for a sparsely protected moderate at the end of a long approach, why not?

High point: racking carabiners don’t need to be rated!  Never thought about that.  In general, I only rack rated gear.  But since the racking biner is redundant there is the possibility of shedding weight.  Still carrying a toy biner to save weight is weird.  The next step is some one selling an expensive unrated biner which is secure and super light.

Issues: the tails can get in the way, follower has to untie those slings while the leader waits at the belay, clip the racking biner accidentally and die if you fall, 

Test it yet?

Live Perchedwrote:

Lilith, yours is a cool idea.  Not for head pointing hard trad, but for a sparsely protected moderate at the end of a long approach, why not?

High point: racking carabiners don’t need to be rated!  Never thought about that.  In general, I only rack rated gear.  But since the racking biner is redundant there is the possibility of shedding weight.  Still carrying a toy biner to save weight is weird.  The next step is some one selling an expensive unrated biner which is secure and super light.

Issues: the tails can get in the way, follower has to untie those slings while the leader waits at the belay, clip the racking biner accidentally and die if you fall, 

Test it yet?

Thanks for your critical thought and specific criticisms!

Yep! Tails get in the way and make climbing harder. Not for redpoints. 

Someone does have to untie the slings, but the follower can rack them like ordinary cams: take out the protection and transfer the clip from the rope to a gear loop, saving untieing for the anchor. Though as Pat Light noted, untieing the overhand knots (unloaded except in case of leader fall) at each belay is an unfortunate delay.

The racking system for protection that I'm thinking about doesn't suffer from most of the risks of racking a non rated carabiner because a) the plan is to use a very thin cord clasp system, and only non rated carabiners if that doesn't work (and my tests indicate the cord only system working. The clasp is a monkey's fist pulling through a small loop.), and if there are non rated carabiners, they will have a mass on the order of 1g, a gate opening on the order of 8mm, and be semi-permanently attached to the climber/harness. Pretty much impossible to mistake for a climbing carabiner, and if someone does make that mistake, it would take a long time to worm it out of the racking system and onto the rope (which wouldn't fit into the gate anyways), or other piece.

Lilith Hafnerwrote:

Thanks for your critical thought and specific criticisms!

Yep! Tails get in the way and make climbing harder. Not for redpoints. 

Someone does have to untie the slings, but the follower can rack them like ordinary cams: take out the protection and transfer the clip from the rope to a gear loop, saving untieing for the anchor. Though as Pat Light noted, untieing the overhand knots (unloaded except in case of leader fall) at each belay is an unfortunate delay.

The racking system for protection that I'm thinking about doesn't suffer from most of the risks of racking a non rated carabiner because a) the plan is to use a very thin cord clasp system, and only non rated carabiners if that doesn't work (and my tests indicate the cord only system working. The clasp is a monkey's fist pulling through a small loop.), and if there are non rated carabiners, they will have a mass on the order of 1g, a gate opening on the order of 8mm, and be semi-permanently attached to the climber/harness. Pretty much impossible to mistake for a climbing carabiner, and if someone does make that mistake, it would take a long time to worm it out of the racking system and onto the rope (which wouldn't fit into the gate anyways), or other piece.

What am I missing though? Isn’t the dmm dragons what you are looking for without the clusters of knots etc? If it’s to be used on relatively easy climbing, then what is the purpose of saving a few grams? Why not run it out on easy climbing so you don’t need to extend due to rope drag in the first place? Why wouldn’t you just use the fs mini biner that are rated and only 23 g a piece instead of non rated biners?

I have no other explanation.

Not Hobo Greg wrote:

Are you serious? Why not? Because there is a much safer and more efficient way to do this, called a “draw.” It uses “carabiners” that were invented for this very purpose. As stated up thread as a joke, it would be even lighter to just untie and retie through the gear like they used to do before carabiners were invented, but we don’t do that anymore because it’s stupid. Kudos for trying to be nice to someone on the internet but nobody should be propping up this cockamamie idea.

Climbing is a cockamamie idea.  Clean climbing, aid climbing, free solo climbing, speed climbing, adventure climbing, top rope solo climbing...all unnecessary risks.  Why fly a helicopter to the top of mountain in Guiana so you can rappel down only to climb up? Cockamamie, no?

I am not afraid of trusting my life to a knot.  The system Lilith proposes is imperfect and I pointed a plus and a few minuses. 

Experimenting with systems is the core of progress.  She and we should not be afraid to try something different or imperfect because value can be extracted from both success and failure.  (Best not to die of course.)

This isn’t a Copernicus or Einstein level idea...but don’t forget they were shouted down. 

Live Perchedwrote:

I am not afraid of trusting my life to a knot.  The system Lilith proposes is imperfect and I pointed a plus and a few minuses. 

We all trust our lives to the correct knot, the figure 8.  As pointed out, tying the cord through the cable section of a cam is unsafe and it isn't safe to take a whipper on the EDK. 

Why are people avoiding the fact that there IS a small lightweight biner and the extendable system on the dmm dragons. 

There is no plus in this system compared to the dragons/FS mini biners (please tell me what it is if I am overlooking it), and LOTS of minuses. The people supporting this really makes me wonder what actual outdoor climbing experience they have.... 

It's great to think outside the box, but it is also great to actually analyze what the current system is... I see this in my field of work a lot (prosthetic limbs)! I see prosthetic hands being 3d printed and shared all over the internet as being so innovative with disregard for the tested/accepted known features, those people just don't do their homework first.   ie...It is stupid to have a hand controlled from elbow flexion when independent control can be had from shoulder motion.  That person cannot grasp an object unless it is a certain distance from torso based on the "new" "outside the box" method. I feel this falls in the same category.

Or one could simply basket a 60cm skinny sling through the gear and clip that.

The only time heavy gear holds you back is on the approach.

Hike harder.

This is a solution to a problem which creates many more problems. Ranked #2 for worst pretengineering idea I've ever seen posted to MP. Keep trying...

Aside, to OP: the "old" system (rack cams together like nuts on one carab) might be more like what you want. Let's say you need .2-4 with some doubles for a long multi, but you might only place 2-4 cams plus 2-4 nuts a pitch. Then you carry your cams racked on 1 or 2 crabs just like nuts, instead of a dozen racking carabs. Then you can choose 6-8 draws or loose carabs for rope side. This is only heavier than your proposed system by the difference in the sum of the toy carabs to however many racking carabs you use.

To extend without gear side carabs, the options mentioned upthread are good (dragons) or making your own extendo-slings with bar tacks (make your own Dragon slings).

As far as I know this system is only common now in old guy big wall circles, due to the longer time to place gear, but it still gets used. I do it with sizes I think I am less likely to use on a route, mostly to save carab space on my loops.

Gunkiemikewrote:

Or one could simply basket a 60cm skinny sling through the gear and clip that.

I like that.  Using a sling, avoids adding new gear to the rack.  As someone pointed above, slinging over the shoulder is easy but less comfortable than racking on gear loops.

One could combine two slings with two biners to create a double alpine draw for racking.  A doubled alpine draw racked with cams on light weight rated racking biners would accomplish much of the weight saving Lilith is seeking without the cludgey overhand knot in the system.

Has anyone considered hiring a caddy? A nice fellow on a fixed line next to me, handing me the gear as I need it.

If the blue doesn't fit, no tip!

[thread title]  "Alternative Way of Connecting Rope to Protection"

[me] huh, how alternative could this be?

[clicks on thread]

[me] oh.  that's pretty alternative, alright.

Now that I think about it, I don't think I've ever seen a metric tape measure before.