How often do you drop gear?

Once.  My partner and I were sitting atop the Devil's Doorway at Devil's Lake, after a day of climbing, enjoying a beer, and re-racking gear.  A locking biner slipped out of my hands and we watched as it bounced into the crack in the top of the formation that goes all the way down it making up the off-width route on one side of it.  We listened as it bounced around like a plinko chip inside the formation to never be seen again...or so we thought.  The next spring when climbing the off-width on the same formation, something was glimmering way deep back in the crack, it was the dropped biner!  We were able to recover it using a long stick, and it has been the biner I use to secure my camera bag ever since.

This thread is bad juju. I dropped a draw this weekend while ice climbing. Most amazingly the gate landed perfectly on the gear and draw 20 feet below and clipped itself in. What luck. Saved my partner from chasing it. But when he gets to it, what does he do? fumbles it and watches it go down the next pitch plus. Then while cleaning the next pitch I thought a screw was clipped into my  harness but was not. I damn near dropped that screw. I later stair mastered back up the first pitch and found the draw. 

Try Cam wrote: I dropped a deuce once. 

Booty

i so far have only once dropped a piece of gear from just being too damned fidgety.

Ive had a few draws and a cam come off my harness from god knows what.

once while i was in an offwidth/squeeze, i broke a gear loop on my harness and rained down a few pieces on my friends... i guess the lesson there was to use gear slings anytime some challenging squeezes are anticipated...

Any dropped gear suspected of having micro fractures  can be shipped to me . My office has an environmentaly friendly aluminum recycling program that I can use  

After 15 years of regular weekend warrioring, I’d guess I’ve settled into about once every other year.

In 15years I have never dropped gear.  I have had gear come unclipped though. I have had a carabiner unclip from the back of my harness when I leaned back on my first multipitch trad climb.  This was way back when I clipped carabiners gate in.
I almost dropped a set of nuts once but caught it between my chest and the rock.  So I guess I dropped it but caught it.
I have had nuts unclip from a wiregate oval several times while picking out a particular nut, but I dont think I have lost any.  Turned out the other nuts were heavy enough to open the gate when oriented gate up with the bulk of the nuts on the gate.  I now use a solid gate oval.
I have had a shoe unclip off my harness in a chimney before I started using a locker.  
And I have had a hex come unclipped somehow and fall.  My partner saw it, I didnt notice.  

I have had 2 partners drop my #4 cam.  One was a newbie follower.  Cam was retrieved from a crack 10ft below her.  The other was a new leader who just topped out and somehow dropped the cam while trying to place it near the lip.

I had one partner drop a #2 cam, but I watched it happen and actually think she didnt clip it to her gear sling properly since it dropped while she was cleaning another cam.
I’ve had 3 partners drop their belay device.  All 3 after telling them the way they are handling the device by separating it from the krab that they will eventually drop it (and showing them a better way to prevent it).  One dropped it 5 minutes after telling him.  The other was his partner who I was climbing with a few weeks later and I told the story too not long before she did the same thing.  The third was recent with a new follower who I just warned on the previous pitch.  Luckily hers only fell a couple feet down and got stuck in the dihedral.  She didnt learn her leson since she still handles it the same way.
I have had a couple drop krabs off a shoulder sling because they needlessly separated them while cleaning.  And I had a partner drop my camera (which actually had a leash) off the second pitch of Snake Dike.  

Isaiah Foulks wrote:once while i was in an offwidth/squeeze, i broke a gear loop on my harness and rained down a few pieces on my friends... i guess the lesson there was to use gear slings anytime some challenging squeezes are anticipated...

Or use a harness with rated gear loops

i so far have only once dropped a piece of gear from just being too damned fidgety.

Ive had a few draws and a cam come off my harness from god knows what.

That could be a whole thread by itself: how to deal with gear when leading a squeee chimney (I.e., when your squeezed so much you can feel your tie in knot pressing into your abdomin).

rockklimber wrote:

Or use a harness with rated gear loops

Or tie in on a bowline on a coil, or use a swami. Real estate is precious. 

Bill Lawry wrote: That could be a whole thread by itself: how to deal with gear when leading a squeee chimney (I.e., when your squeezed so much you can feel your tie in knot pressing into your abdomin).

Read: feel your knot pressing into your penis

Bill Lawry wrote: That could be a whole thread by itself: how to deal with gear when leading a squeee chimney (I.e., when your squeezed so much you can feel your tie in knot pressing into your abdomin).

For a squeeze chimney tie in with a long loop so that the tie-in knot can be moved away from the body.

rob.calm 

Not more often than I find dropped gear!

Then there was that wedding ring.  

I fumbled my ATC after the first of many raps after climbing Royal Arches.

One party rapping below ... I called out "rock!" as the ATC took a couple bounces. A guy at the next rap station below looks up and in a split second catches the ATC one-handed in mid-air. Saved me from having to do a ton of biner brake raps the rest of the way down.

Thanks, guy whose name I forget.

Jared M wrote: I fumbled my ATC after the first of many raps after climbing Royal Arches.

One party rapping below ... I called out "rock!" as the ATC took a couple bounces. A guy at the next rap station below looks up and in a split second catches the ATC one-handed in mid-air. Saved me from having to do a ton of biner brake raps the rest of the way down.

Thanks, guy whose name I forget.

Wow! That’s impressive!

dropped a nut and nut tool on nut cracker

Danny Herrera wrote: dropped a nut and nut tool on nut cracker

But of course - death always comes in threes.

Yur gonna die!!   ;)

Jared M wrote: I fumbled my ATC after the first of many raps after climbing Royal Arches.

One party rapping below ... I called out "rock!" as the ATC took a couple bounces. A guy at the next rap station below looks up and in a split second catches the ATC one-handed in mid-air. Saved me from having to do a ton of biner brake raps the rest of the way down.

Thanks, guy whose name I forget.

Dude, that was me!!!  I think it was 98 or 99.

Except it hit me in the face, and I didn't catch it, and I bled all over the place until my shirt was a sticky mess.....because when someone yells, my first instinct was to look up   

My mentality towards climbing is like golf.  If I end up with more balls than I started with, it's a good day.