Tricams - placements possibilities and use cases

eli poss wrote:

Guess I'll just have to practice some more. But I stand by my statement about them being more stable on the overcammed side of the spectrum. In my experience, setting them locks them in better when they are closer to overcammed than when they are closer undercammed.

I don't really know why this is but if I had to guess it would be the non-constant camming angle, which increases the camming angle as it expands through it's range. Lower camming angles result in a higher outward:downward force. But I honestly don't know if this effect would be significant enough to account for my observations. 

I do agree with you now that I know what you mean by over cammed. We are talking the same thing in different words. Yes in general, I often place them at what you call 0 degrees. They are very stable when set hard. Less so when the fulcrum points opposite the direction of pull, but still not unrealistic to use as long as the placement is careful and set hard. Then they get really stable when the cam shoulders touch the wall the same side as the fulcrum point. 

My feeling about the loss of stability is that as the fulcrum point moves forward or back from the direction of pull anywhere outside of approximately what you are calling 0 degrees, it loses a lot of outward force in the crack walls since now the fulcrum point is pushing diagonally into and across the crack wall rather than straight down into it. At least until you reach what you call the 90 degree position with the cam shoulders touching the same side of the wall as the fulcrum point. Perhaps this is the same as what you are talking about with the camming angles?

anotherclimber wrote:

I would not want to whip onto the 0.125 white Tricam in either position. I agree it is an aid only piece. If you need something that small and narrow, use ball nuts. They will be much stronger for the size.

Yep, agreed. I was just correcting the strength number.

Anything can get welded into a crack, including tricams. I've seen this in vertical cracks, too. 

Robert Hall wrote: TriCams work in "solution Pocket" holes when nothing else will fit. Often such "holes" are found on granite friction slab...where's there's nothing else (except a bolt).  Thus, even if you don't need them in your "home area" I'd keep 'em and bring 'em along if you head out on friction slab. 

^^This. 

Here are a couple tricams-only placements in NC granite. I don't like carrying unnecessary gear but sometimes these things are lifesavers.

eli poss wrote:

Are you saying that you're using your both fingers and the nut tool to get it out?

I'm saying that most of the time you can get it out with just your fingers by grabbing it from the sides to stop rotation and pulling straight out. Its only if the tricam is really small (black, white), or way deep in the crack that you can't. I do find though that when its way deep in the crack, you tend to have a stable stance to work on it though since the leader wouldn't be able to fidget it back there in the first place from an awkward stance. 

I was agreeing in the sense that if my fingers don't work for some reason, anotherclimber's method of nut tool under the nose is my preferred method of getting them out. Also that most placements are able to get out one handed. 

Alex James wrote:

I'm saying that most of the time you can get it out with just your fingers by grabbing it from the sides to stop rotation and pulling straight out. Its only if the tricam is really small (black, white), or way deep in the crack that you can't. I do find though that when its way deep in the crack, you tend to have a stable stance to work on it though since the leader wouldn't be able to fidget it back there in the first place from an awkward stance. 

I was agreeing in the sense that if my fingers don't work for some reason, anotherclimber's method of nut tool under the nose is my preferred method of getting them out. Also that most placements are able to get out one handed. 

Dunno about you but I have a hard time doing much with my fingers on anything smaller than red tricam. I love my pink but I usually need a nut tool to extract her, unless it's placed in a pocket, which tend to be fairly shallow and outward flaring around here. Maybe I just have sausage fingers, though.

eli poss wrote:

Dunno about you but I have a hard time doing much with my fingers on anything smaller than red tricam. I love my pink but I usually need a nut tool to extract her, unless it's placed in a pocket, which tend to be fairly shallow and outward flaring around here. Maybe I just have sausage fingers, though.

yeah pink is trickier. It's normally finger tips and some wiggling. Definitely not as clean as the larger sizes but still doable.

nbrown wrote:

^^This. 

Here are a couple tricams-only placements in NC granite. I don't like carrying unnecessary gear but sometimes these things are lifesavers.

I love pictures of Tricam placements and making the placements themselves. There is something so satisfying looking at it and realizing that there is nothing else that would have worked there. 

eli poss wrote: Dunno about you but I have a hard time doing much with my fingers on anything smaller than red tricam. I love my pink but I usually need a nut tool to extract her, unless it's placed in a pocket, which tend to be fairly shallow and outward flaring around here. Maybe I just have sausage fingers, though.

Alex James has it spot on. But yeah, finger size may play into this. 0.50 pink is sometimes questionable for me to get out with fingers too. Especially if it's placed deeper into the crack. For a few sizes up from that if placed deeper into the crack where my whole hand won't fit in that can also still be an issue where the nut tool is required. Black 0.125 absolutely needs the nut tool to tap it loose and hook it out.

I usually carry a pink red and black on every route, barely any weight and can be critical

I really like them actively placed in flares and passively placed behind thinner flakes that would blow out with a cam. 

You tricam junkies.  I just imagine someone sitting at their keyboard sweating profusely, hand furiously working their......mouse.  

“More tricam pics MORE!   Mmmmmm horizontals mmmmmm keep going,   Any pink on black action?”  

“Please another angle on that placement!  Ahh beautiful beautiful”

Tricams are my personal favourite type of gear.  But, I climb at a pretty low level -- I'm not usually leading much harder on gear than a 5.10a.  They tend to be a bit more fiddly to place than a cam, and the same to clean, that on higher-end climbing, they're not likely to work nearly as well.  At the level I climb, though, where I'll usually have a good stance to place, they'll place well.  And I climb a lot of stuff that isn't parallel-sided cracks -- and that is one of the big strengths of Tricams.  They can be placed in pockets, horizontals, strange triangular-holes and such where neither a cam nor a nut will do.  (Also, they can be placed passively like a nut, and actively in a lot of places a cam would work -- so they act as doubles for both my cams and my nuts on my rack.)  

I also like carrying them for old-school "sport" routes that end up run-out between bolts or run-out to the first bolt, where often they can be used to add a re-assuring piece between clips, but without the weight of carrying cams.  

Of course, I'll lead routes with just a double-set of Tricams from small-white to the largest of the blues, plus one big white and big green.  I've sometimes done this for fun, and sometimes when I've lent the rest of my rack (nuts, and full set of cams, plus doubles .75 to 3) to someone else and wanted to climb at the same time.

Have to say I haven’t carried tricams since the late nineties. I might still if I lived somewhere different than the PNW where they might still be relevant, but cams and a double set of HB allow offset nuts pretty much covers what you run into out here.

A hopefully helpful suggestion for TriCam aspirants, wonderers, doubters: when climbing a relatively easy multi-pitch, place a fair number of "extra" TriCams and then have a competent follower grade your placements, ideally with accompanying photos as they clean.  Based upon my own experiences, you might proceed as follows:

• initially place them "by-the-book", to the best of your understanding, within ideal spots (e.g. horizontal with plenty of pockets and rugosities) and connect them optimally to your lead rope (i.e. extended alpine draws to  prevent undesirable stresses on the TriCam) in order to free them of being yanked around in directions other than that of an anticipated fall that would fully activate your circuit
• get good enough that your follower can find no suspect placements upon cleaning
• proceed from here to make bomber placements that are hobbled by short draws that place a great number of insults upon the TriCam and see how they do
• proceed from here to make less-than-bomber, or even tenuous, placements that are helped by extended alpine draws, especially 120cm nylon with a clove on the rope end and free wire-gate biner at the TriCam end and see how they do

An even better way to put it all on your shoulders is to do this during a day of rope soloing in which you're climbing a route that's a bit more chill, maybe only a few pitches, and the climbing conditions are beautiful.  In this manner, you can be your own worst critic, learn from doing and keep any uh-oh moments to yourself while also making notes about the type of placements that surprised you, especially if they seemed like they would be just fine when you were on your way up, yet once you rapped down to clean and get ready to TR-solo your way back up to the anchor, you find a placement that had wiggled its way completely out or had become a "donkey on the edge" and ready to blow were it called upon to save you.

I've been placing TriCams, from 0.75/pink to 5/orange-stamped-riveted-beast, extensively in Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area for the past several years and find them to have limitless possibilities within the Aztec Sandstone.  Recently, leading the first pitch of Olive Oil (5.7-PG, 4-5p, Rose Tower), I used a pink TriCam together with a BD x4 "Alien Killer" to render the first pitch, and hence the entire climb, 5.7-G instead of -PG.  My lead climbing ethic was most informed by guide Marc Chauvin back in 2009 when he taught me that the first rule of lead climbing is do NOT fall.  While I've treated myself to a good number of sphincter-tightening, sewing machine moments while leading, I've thus far been fortunate in being 100% compliant with that blunt-yet-sublime "Chauvin-ism" yet whenever I've scrutinized my TriCam placements during exercises like those of the four bullet points above, I have gained in overall confidence that were I to sustain a leader fall, I hope it will be with a TriCam as the top link in my chain, as a well-placed one is IME highly unlikely to begin opening the zipper of catastrophe, and a reasonably set one that is guarded by a fully-extended 120cm draw with a rope-end clove stands a pretty good chance as well.

Where have you gone ~ oh so strong one'?

Healyje wrote: Have to say I have carried tricams since the late nineties. I might still if I lived somewhere different than the PNW where they might still be relevant, but cams and a double set of HB allow offset nuts pretty much covers what you run into out here.

I wish it was a clearer picture, but...

 Customized (Filed down) Pink & Red Tri-Cams helped to open up the horizontally tiered overhangs in the gunks

Quicker than a screw, and just as bomber :D

Jeff Lowe stacked tricams, so can you.

Luke Lozier wrote: A hopefully helpful suggestion for TriCam aspirants, wonderers, doubters: when climbing a relatively easy multi-pitch, place a fair number of "extra" TriCams and then have a competent follower grade your placements, ideally with accompanying photos as they clean.  Based upon my own experiences, you might proceed as follows:

• initially place them "by-the-book", to the best of your understanding, within ideal spots (e.g. horizontal with plenty of pockets and rugosities) and connect them optimally to your lead rope (i.e. extended alpine draws to  prevent undesirable stresses on the TriCam) in order to free them of being yanked around in directions other than that of an anticipated fall that would fully activate your circuit
• get good enough that your follower can find no suspect placements upon cleaning
• proceed from here to make bomber placements that are hobbled by short draws that place a great number of insults upon the TriCam and see how they do
• proceed from here to make less-than-bomber, or even tenuous, placements that are helped by extended alpine draws, especially 120cm nylon with a clove on the rope end and free wire-gate biner at the TriCam end and see how they do

An even better way to put it all on your shoulders is to do this during a day of rope soloing in which you're climbing a route that's a bit more chill, maybe only a few pitches, and the climbing conditions are beautiful. In this manner, you can be your own worst critic, learn from doing and keep any uh-oh moments to yourself while also making notes about the type of placements that surprised you, especially if they seemed like they would be just fine when you were on your way up, yet once you rapped down to clean and get ready to TR-solo your way back up to the anchor, you find a placement that had wiggled its way completely out or had become a "donkey on the edge" and ready to blow were it called upon to save you.

I've been placing TriCams, from 0.75/pink to 5/orange-stamped-riveted-beast, extensively in Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area for the past several years and find them to have limitless possibilities within the Aztec Sandstone.  Recently, leading the first pitch of Olive Oil (5.7-PG, 4-5p, Rose Tower), I used a pink TriCam together with a BD x4 "Alien Killer" to render the first pitch, and hence the entire climb, 5.7-G instead of -PG.  My lead climbing ethic was most informed by guide Marc Chauvin back in 2009 when he taught me that the first rule of lead climbing is do NOT fall.  While I've treated myself to a good number of sphincter-tightening, sewing machine moments while leading, I've thus far been fortunate in being 100% compliant with that blunt-yet-sublime "Chauvin-ism" yet whenever I've scrutinized my TriCam placements during exercises like those of the four bullet points above, I have gained in overall confidence that were I to sustain a leader fall, I hope it will be with a TriCam as the top link in my chain, as a well-placed one is IME highly unlikely to begin opening the zipper of catastrophe, and a reasonably set one that is guarded by a fully-extended 120cm draw with a rope-end clove stands a pretty good chance as well.

Curious, why the clove hitch on the rope-end biner? To prevent cross/gate loading?

My free climbing rack (started in 1992) was stolen two years ago in Yosemite (along with some other gear). I do still have three 30 year old Tricams (pink, red, brown) but they've reached retirement age due to sling degradation (some with duct tape as sling stiffener; I used to tape strips of milk jug plastic to the slings to provide some backbone). 

Tricams have always intrigued me. Their biggest downside is inept partners whose mechanical aptitude is challenged in placing or removing them and partners who because of that - or for other reasons - are averse/biased against them.

I respect Tricams' ability to produce reliably bomber placements (the Gunks is my local area so there's a traditional history of Tricam usage and a deserved respect, but I mostly climb out West), their capacity to protect certain unique rock features that nothing else can, as contributing to a sleeker, more compact, lighter weight, and less expensive rack esp. when needing to double up or triple up on cams, how placing them from good stances or as part of a belay anchor permits me to conserve my rapid deploy cams for the more urgent, demanding, or even desperate placements on the pitch, and finally I like how they challenge me to think inventively to place ... part of the mentally stimulating and satisfying mechanical aptitude component of trad climbing. 

Typically I'd carry pink/red/brown (sometimes blue). I'm getting a new rack together (weird to buy a ton of cams and biners all at once) and I need to buy a set of black/pink/red/brown/(possibly blue). I'll check out the Evos. The black I've never used and am eager to try. 

If anyone has a set for cheap let me know.

They fit where nothing else will!  Usually carry four, often place at least one.  They can take the place of larger nuts if you are a weight weenie.  Great for anchors where you have more time and may be low on gear.