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rwedgee
Ice climber
canyon country,CA
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Le Bruce, the link cam is still in one piece in the picture, correct(?) In the photo it looks like all the lobes are attached but one has a crack. So the piece pulled is what your saying ? Could you elaborate a little. Glad you're ok.
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Josh Higgins
Trad climber
San Diego
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I've ripped a textbook cam placement, broken a brand new 0.5 C4 in a small fall, and had the occasional mank piece blow, but for the most part the gear I've placed has held. I've fallen a good amount of small gear, down to 00 TCUs and small offset nuts, but I try to apply redundancy requirements to my lead gear. You should see me before a crux I have to run it out on. Sometimes I'll put 3 in. Sometimes it's tough, though. Some amazing routes are inherently dangerous and if you're onsighting at your limit it can get dangerous and scary quickly.
Edit: Link cams breaking shouldn't be so much of a surprise. When they first came out it was obvious that strange torques could easily occur and there were just too many moving parts. People criticised them from the beginning and I for one have refused to ever climb on them. I haven't been keeping track, but it seems like there has been a constant trickle of reports of problems and incidents where they break on these internet forums. Those things are SCARY!
Josh
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Manimal
climber
SLT, Ca
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 9, 2010 - 10:49pm PT
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Thanks for all the input. Which pieces do you trust most? TCU's, Aliens C4's, C3's, Metolius???....other??
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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Today's gear is great- some people's utilization of said gear leads much to be desired. Gear failure is almost always attributable to human error.
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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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Jun 10, 2010 - 09:40am PT
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i got ambitious last year and took a couple PCGI guide courses. spent lots of time on the physics of climb protection, forces, camming. i've climbed more than 30 years, hardly any aid or big wall, lots of free trad and sport.
frank sanders, who runs the devil's tower guide service, was a fellow student. a veteran of 29 el cap ascents, he made an insightful comment: "i never learned to trust my gear until i started putting my weight on it."
which may be part of your problem, manimal, and mine as well. i have that good mechanical sense. i'm a pretty good carpenter off the rock. i know when things are solid. still, the business of camming is a theoretical physics lesson to me. the damn things pull out, and it has to do with a brief, intimate moment of shock against that particular surface of the rock. yea, cams are great, but there's nothing like a hex or stopper solidly nested behind happy granite. when i feel confident about a placement, i climb on, but i very rarely fall, having developed a good sense of where my edge is. perhaps i've stopped growing as a climber.
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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Jun 10, 2010 - 09:52am PT
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If you don't have implicit trust in gear and faith in your ability to place it, you should be clipping bolts or climbing in a gym.
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tradmanclimbs
Ice climber
Pomfert VT
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Jun 10, 2010 - 10:14am PT
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Le bruce. The green cam with the crack by the hinge. Is that a link cam? If so and after hearing of others failing folks need to be absolutly nuts to fall on those things!
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Brokedownclimber
Trad climber
Douglas, WY
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Jun 10, 2010 - 10:36am PT
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I'll second what Cragman said above:
"I'd rather fall on a stopper than anything else!"
I've has several falls onto stoppers where their failure would have had catastrophic consequenses (death or permanently maimed?), but NOTHING beats a good stopper placement! I've only fallen onto cams a couple of times, and PLACEMENT is everything!
Suggestion: put ego aside and climb with an "old timer" who has been around and done lots of routes; observe how they place gear. Always back up any questionable placements, even with another questionable placement!
I've survived 52 years of Trad climbing this way.
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cowpoke
climber
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Jun 10, 2010 - 10:38am PT
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a recent exchange:
Chiloe (leading, mid-pitch): What the @$#%...Eric, you gotta tell the wife you need to go shopping for new gear or you're gonna die.
Me (back home): Wife, I need to go shopping for new gear or I'm gonna die.
Wife: [dismissive stare] Did you feed the dog?
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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Jun 10, 2010 - 10:54am PT
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"Well placed" and "apparently well placed" are two very different animals.
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rhyang
climber
SJC
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Jun 10, 2010 - 10:56am PT
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Last November in Jtree I was trying to lead the second pitch of Overhang Bypass and fell on a #2 BD C4 -
I'm weak, what can I say :) But it was a clean fall and I dusted myself off and tried it again. And fell again.
I also took a small fall four years ago in the North Cascades on a Wild Country Zero (probably #5 or 6) .. slipped on some lichen I think. Nothing big.
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Brokedownclimber
Trad climber
Douglas, WY
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Jun 10, 2010 - 11:16am PT
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Locker--
I don't question your motive, but I DO question you "taste!"
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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Jun 10, 2010 - 11:20am PT
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Locker says, "it's what's for dinner." Eat, eat, eat, doesn't anyone _ _ _ _ anymore?
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perswig
climber
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Jun 10, 2010 - 11:50am PT
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Cowpoke brings up the tangential thread of sketching your way up some climb at your lead limit using your partner's anemic rack of 6 random stoppers (two of which are already down at the belay), two titons, and a 'set' of Romanian knock-off cams. Serious confidence buzz-kill.
Dale
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Brokedownclimber
Trad climber
Douglas, WY
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Jun 10, 2010 - 12:21pm PT
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Donini--
GAAAK!
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Fritz
Trad climber
Hagerman, ID
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Jun 10, 2010 - 12:24pm PT
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Donini: When did you start using cams?
Friends became widely available in 1978. When I was climbing with you in the early 1980's: you did not trust them, based on Yosemite experiences. As I recall, you flat-out refused to use the ones I had.
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ryanb
climber
Seattle, WA
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Jun 10, 2010 - 12:55pm PT
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I trust gear until it fails. I've seen a few gear failures, some of which involved gear placed by new leaders and some of which involved small gear placed (with redundancy) by experienced leaders.
I've also been belaying when a carabiner (one of the high end bd sport carabiners) on a bolt failed. We think it got caught between the bolt and hanger and levered in a weird way) resulting in a 50 foot fall.
I've taken falls (many of them short...I like to sew things up) on most size cams down to a 00 metolius, smiley's stoppers, and black diamond and metolius micro nuts. In decreasing order of trustworthiness I would say it goes key hole nut placements (the kind that resist a hard downward and outward jerk test) followed by .75-2 camalots in parallel slots followed by bigger or smaller cams followed by more marginal cam and nut placements followed by really small gear (tiny nuts and cams).
I'm defenetlly not as bold as I could be (the carabiner failure really shook me up) but i'll still try some stuff that might have mandatory runouts etc... Dave Macleod's ebook on hard trad has some really good stuff on the mind set to approach this kind of thing with. He says that we tend to focus on going for it but that we need to remember that you always have options other then going for it when the gear is bad. These include down climbing, jumping off, fighting to get more/better gear, traversing sideways onto another route and convincing passer byes to drop you a rope.
I think the link cam design is too flawed for typical use and won't climb on them.
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Flashy P
climber
Sparks, NV
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Jun 10, 2010 - 01:17pm PT
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I completely trust my gear, it os very easy to stay positive about it even on runouts when t he last clip is at knee level. The wood they use at the comping gyms is way dabb-ly- do! It is so strong,. and painted over with sticky rubber, there are big washers behind the bolts too. The quick draws are replaced once a week and the longer 30 foot ropes are replaced every day on the hard routes like the purple route at my gym whicj is undoable and probably 5.17a . If I stay positive, dedicate myself, train hard and eat enough creatine smoothies maybe I will someday pink point it. I may need to smoke more cigarettes too, I just started the smoking regimin and I've already lost 3 pounds! I try to get in at leadt 15 a day, I can even smoke while I'm pumping pullups on the campus board. remeber everyone, if you aren't falling you aren't at your limit, which means ytou aren't trying hard enough which means you need to train and stay more positive, even on the scary runouts and sketchy week old runners!
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Ricardo Cabeza
climber
All Over.
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Jun 10, 2010 - 01:25pm PT
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Which pieces do you trust most? TCU's, Aliens C4's, C3's, Metolius???
Honestly, I trust a bomber passive placement over cams, though I'm usually lazy and just plug in a cam and go.
Oh wait, can I change my answer to 'a slung chockstone or horn'?
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