Nesting & clipping Totems

I think scenario 1 looks fine.  It will blow the bar tacks and extend a few inches, no big deal.  I'm actually curious why the sling is made in the shape that it is instead of just a single loop.  At first I thought it was to reduce horizontal force (as in the classic death triangle sling anchor), but the totem wires are so flexible, the two "ears" would come together anyway as soon as you weight it.

What if you modify Scenario 2 by clipping the top cam's biner through both loops?  This would keep the force in the right direction when the totem pulls out and save the bar tacks.

Steven S wrote:

Holy shit dude, you need to calm down and take a break from the internet. None of the previous comments come off as the person being a jerk just saying that you're overthinking things and that is unnecessary or they were tongue-in-cheek comments that you are apparently way too sensitive to understand. If you think this is the climbing community being toxic oh man I can't wait until you find Reddit or when actually go out climbing.

As someone who spends time both on the climbing subreddit and is at crags a lot (I do a lot of mid week rope soloing), MP is a raging dumpster fire in contrast to either of those two things. This place has strong frat vibes with an endless competition where in every thread people try to be the least helpful and snarkiest possible, and those are the comments that are always upvoted the highest. It's incredibly juvenile and annoying and both reddit and real life are massive improvements. This place is a hell hole 

Ricky Harline wrote:

As someone who spends time both on the climbing subreddit and is at crags a lot (I do a lot of mid week rope soloing), MP is a raging dumpster fire in contrast to either of those two things. This place has strong frat vibes with an endless competition where in every thread people try to be the least helpful and snarkiest possible, and those are the comments that are always upvoted the highest. It's incredibly juvenile and annoying and both reddit and real life are massive improvements. This place is a hell hole 

Rope soloing eh? Reddit is the poster child of groupthink and is similar to instgram where people post just for likes and not for any real life learning. Nice of you to drop by and tell us all how bad the proj is!

Ricky Harline wrote:

As someone who spends time both on the climbing subreddit and is at crags a lot (I do a lot of mid week rope soloing), MP is a raging dumpster fire in contrast to either of those two things. This place has strong frat vibes with an endless competition where in every thread people try to be the least helpful and snarkiest possible, and those are the comments that are always upvoted the highest. It's incredibly juvenile and annoying and both reddit and real life are massive improvements. This place is a hell hole 

if you like r/climbing so much why don't you marry it

Ricky Harline wrote:

As someone who spends time both on the climbing subreddit and is at crags a lot (I do a lot of mid week rope soloing), MP is a raging dumpster fire in contrast to either of those two things. This place has strong frat vibes with an endless competition where in every thread people try to be the least helpful and snarkiest possible, and those are the comments that are always upvoted the highest. It's incredibly juvenile and annoying and both reddit and real life are massive improvements. This place is a hell hole 

I found all the comments in here extremely helpful in illustrating  that once again this guy is overthinking everything.

Idk man, Reddit is full of garbage gumby vomit that others unknowingly gobble up as fine cuisine.. I've seen so much solid advice on there and it rarely ever gets noticed as much as "use a quad" and "you need 12 lockers" or "I noticed the bealyer could have blablabla". This post would do well on there and would have every boulderer and sport climber arguing the merits of each clipping style for linking totems. 

1. Ur Gonna Die.

2. Clipping one cam to another to back up the one with the rope tied to it is fine and is commonly done to reduce the number of knots cluttering the system.

3. Don't over think it.

4. Get strong placements and tie yourself to them in a redundant fashion. 

5. If you have to rely on one biner, use a locker.

That is all you need to know about anchor building. The rest is trying to sell you something (their course/expertise or gear you don't need).

F Loyd wrote:

Idk man, Reddit is full of garbage gumby vomit that others unknowingly gobble up as fine cuisine.. I've seen so much solid advice on there and it rarely ever gets noticed as much as "use a quad" and "you need 12 lockers" or "I noticed the bealyer could have blablabla". This post would do well on there and would have every boulderer and sport climber arguing the merits of each clipping style for linking totems. 

You're not wrong. I just find that vastly preferable over the inevitable dick measuring contest to see who can make the sickest burns on a thread of a guy asking a sincere question. 

Reddit users have saved 1000s of lives by telling every photo poster to wear a helmet

Don't say nest, you'll get the whole thing shut down.

M M wrote:

Magic X baby

I was also thinking this and can’t think of a single downside other than extension, not gonna tie limiter knots on lead, but use a single length and this seems like the perfect solution 

Pat Marrinan wrote:

I was also thinking this and can’t think of a single downside other than extension, not gonna tie limiter knots on lead, but use a single length and this seems like the perfect solution 

In real life its a go to extension for those rare occasions, on mtn project forums its a death wish and YGD.

Pat Marrinan wrote:

I was also thinking this and can’t think of a single downside other than extension, not gonna tie limiter knots on lead, but use a single length and this seems like the perfect solution 

Seems a solution in search of a problem. Way simpler to just clip both independently.

The thing is, if the pieces are shit, the magic X doesn't mean that shit + shit = ice cream. Ryan Jenkins made an interesting video about "shock loading". It does seemt that mostly it is a myth (in the sense that an extending dyneema sling won't explode when the magic X becomes taunt again, if one piece blows). But it will still put greater load on your second piece, which presumably is shit, otherwise.... why do you need to equalize them for?

M M wrote:

In real life its a go to extension for those rare occasions, on mtn project forums its a death wish and YGD.

This is largely true. But then most people don't actually fall on their gear in real life. Especially not leaders on a some 5.8+ trad route that have the luxury to equalize pieces with both feet on a ledge....

Franck Vee wrote:

This is largely true. But then most people don't actually fall on their gear in real life. Especially not leaders on a some 5.8+ trad route that have the luxury to equalize pieces with both feet on a ledge....

Damn you must have some soft 5.8+ in your unknown hometown. The X has certainly helped my head a handful of times in many years, definitely not ever with a decent cam though. Usually its a nest of RPs/tiny stoppers that need equalization because they both are C- placements. Cams almost always get clipped independently.

Elliott Balsley wrote:

I think scenario 1 looks fine.  It will blow the bar tacks and extend a few inches, no big deal.  I'm actually curious why the sling is made in the shape that it is instead of just a single loop.  At first I thought it was to reduce horizontal force (as in the classic death triangle sling anchor), but the totem wires are so flexible, the two "ears" would come together anyway as soon as you weight it.

What if you modify Scenario 2 by clipping the top cam's biner through both loops?  This would keep the force in the right direction when the totem pulls out and save the bar tacks.

Totem cams were designed with aid climbing in mind, so I'm guessing the sling design is to make french freeing easier (I could be wrong though). The sling style makes grabbing it very easy and makes it so you can yard on it harder than the normal cam designs.

M M wrote:

Damn you must have some soft 5.8+ in your unknown hometown. The X has certainly helped my head a handful of times in many years, definitely not ever with a decent cam though. Usually its a nest of RPs/tiny stoppers that need equalization because they both are C- placements. Cams almost always get clipped independently.

I didn't mean that in a condescending way, if that's how it came accross. I don't lead that hard on gear either, 11- is as far as it goes onsight for me, less on a multi. I guess my flowchart on that topic is this:

• If it's a project, the point is moot. Then one can do whatever rig on the ground & place the prepared thing where it belongs.
• If it's onsight, then there are 2 possibilities:
  • It's relatively easy for me. I'm probably OK just placing the gear and going for it. I've never had to place stuff that needed to work toghether that was that tricky (e.g. climping both in a single crab in some fashion does the trick).
  • It's hard for me. I probably can't get fancy to the point where I equalize some sort of mini-anchor. Unless it's a good rest and not much body tension/positioning/gripping is needed. But then I haven't personally come accross that, so that's not on my radar.

All that being said, I don't run after R/X routes specifically either, and definitely not onsight.

The comment about people not falling on it is that I'm skeptical about how effective 2 shit pieces "equalized" with an X are really that much better than 2 shit pieces. Are 2 "C-" placements as you say that are equalized really going to hold more often than just clipping them? Say 2 stoppers #3, or a #00 and a stopper #3? Are they going to hold LESS often with the sliding x (from the famous "shock load")? Or is there so much uncertainty in those placements that it's sort of like throwing darts in the dark, e.g. it's so dependant on the specifics of hte placement, rocks, how you fall and how good the rig is that it really doesn't matter? My personal guess is that sliding X, clipping 2 pieces closely but independantly or in the same crab are going to come out roughly even, ssuming not retarded placements/rigs that are obviously bad.. So I'd pretty much always just go for 2 independantly clips... just my guess though.

I'd like to add a bit more definitive info about the sliding x, having climbed plenty of r/x and some of it hard (for me), watched Ryan's video, reviewed some of the Italian, German, and French literature, done drop testing on the subject, and fallen on plenty of gear.

Extension almost certainly increases load on the subsequent piece via what climbers call shock loading. Even Ryan's video demonstrates this, just at inconsequential amounts. However, the whole "shock loading is a myth" thing in the U.S. stems from Long's anchor book, 2nd ed. (which is where the quad originated). In that series of tests, the drops where all FF1. This demonstrates pretty readily that using a sliding x on lead protection is fine as there is adequate rope in the system. However, it does not translate to the FF2 case as piece failure occurs while the rope is stiffened and unable to absorb additional load. Both Long and Richard Goldstone (who reviewed the findings) have discussed this, I believe in these very forums, and stated that drawing analogous conclusions for the FF2 case from the FF1 case was/is a mistake. BUT using a sliding x for lead pro is fine.

Of the potential rigging options while leading, a sliding x is pretty easy to do compared to many choices and can be achieved with a single runner, and perhaps another single runner for rope drag clipped to the masterpoint (and therefore costs no more gear than clipping independently). However, a sliding x only makes sense if both pieces are equally poor. Otherwise, clip the good one and back it up with the bad one, or clip independently. David Coley has a good thought experiment about on his multiptich climbing website.

At the anchor, extension can very much cause complete anchor failure (I've measured one edge case with a load of 12kN). So...maybe don't use sliding systems in a multipitch anchor unless you've got 2 unquestionably good bolts. With gear and screws, I don't recommend sliding systems given the human factor problem of assessing ice quality, rock quality, and/or placement quality. (To wit, someone local-ish to me decked yesterday after ripping the entire pitch they just led; I doubt they thought all of their gear was shit.)

What I do depends on the type of rock and how much of my resources are going to be burned through by fiddling.  If the gear is small (and I think black and blue Totems qualify) then it might be advantageous to distribute the load---if it isn't too costly in terms of the pump clock.  None of my choices would involve any of the questionable webbing or frame clips illustrated here.

Type of rock.  If you have a uniform splitter crack, you can place the two pieces, clip the draw or loop from the higher piece into the top carabiner of the draw on the lower piece or into the draw sling itself if it isn't sewn tight (i.e. a trad draw), and then just move one of the pieces up or down until the load is well-distributed.  This is very quick and doesn't clip webbing from either carabiner.   If the crack is wiggly or has internal features, this may not work because you can't just reposition your cams anywhere.

Pump factor. If it is going to cost a lot of effort, it's unlikely to be worth it. Get the best placements, clip them sequentially, and get on with it, Half ropes are very advantageous for this. On the other hand, if you are comfortable and can quickly arrange for load distribution, why not? Assuming you aren't in a situation where it is easy to adjust the cam locations as above, I think the best solution is to clip a full-length runner to the two pieces and install a carabiner with a girth hitch. This process is fast, accurate in terms of getting the arm lengths right, and can be done one-handed without having Houdini skills. Here's a shot from the Alpine Savvy website alpinesavvy.com/ showing the configuration.

W K wrote:

What's the biggest totem nest you've ever made and how did you clip it?