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Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
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I started climbing before nuts, I remember vividly having second thoughts about trusting something I didn't wail on with a hammer.
But it made me look closer at the actual placements. I also grew to love not being attached to a hammer. In the nuts only era I learned a lot working with original, symmetrical hexes and then appreciated the asymmetry of the later, tapered and asymmetric hexcentrics. Titons, cam locks and large tricams set me thinking more about angular cramming beyond just slotting. I went through the same thing with the ever changing lineage of wired nuts, and their various shapes and curves. But that nuts only phase taught me more about placements than I've learned before or since.
I resisted friends when they first came out; too expensive to have a comprehensive set, and I didn't like that they could move in what I knew to be bombproof nut placements.
Then came long cracks in the valley, Devils Tower and especially Indian Creek. The advantages of fast placing cams were obvious. I had hexes on my rack the first time I lead supercrack, but never after that.
These days I live in Moab and summer in Vedauwoo. I can go months / hundreds of pitches without placing a nut. I rarely carry them in the sandstone desert unless I have beta otherwise
But, I always carry them in Vedauwoo and pretty much any granite/ igneous crag.
I think the thing is to use the best tool for the job, and that varies with the media. But these days I lean more toward cams. I used to own over a hundred nuts and a handful of cams. After a couple of major robberies, I lost most of them. I've replaced them as needed, but these days I have a couple sets of wires and over a hundred camming devices.
But it would be too limiting to move exclusively to cams on all gear routes.
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Greg Barnes
climber
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First time I climbed with someone bringing only cams (no stoppers at all on his rack), he was a really strong climber and it boggled my mind he'd lead hard thin cracks with no small stoppers. But he lead quick, no futzing around with wires!
Well-placed cams are typically quicker for a follower to clean, and I've moved to avoiding stoppers to save time cleaning. Also now I'm typically clipping large stoppers on the back of the harness - or sometimes not bringing them at all (gasp!). Micro stoppers and small stoppers always come. I've also cut way back on bringing larger cams, I'll double up small/medium stuff but typically only bring a single #1,2,3 camalot for "bigger" stuff…or even ditch the 3.
Really depends on the rock.
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tradmanclimbs
Ice climber
Pomfert VT
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It all depends on where you are. INMOP the only thing that will have a real chance in an iced up crack is a pin that's hammered in hard enough to break out all the ice.
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cotuclimber
Trad climber
Bishop, CA
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Depends on the objective. If you are going to Indian creek and are staying away from difficult cracks where small nuts can protect your ass, you may not need any. When on a long climb or a bigwall, usually nuts help a lot, unless you are on some climb like the serenity sons or the Rostrum, where you can plug in cams at will and get by without quadriple set of smaller cams. Depends on the skill level and personal preferance. Nuts have their place. When I don't need them on a climb, I bring them as leaver gear in case of an emergency.
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Batrock
Trad climber
Burbank
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I don't think anyone is going to head out and do any serious aiding and leave their nuts at home, I bring multiple sets of brass off sets on a wall. I think the original post is talking more about a day of cragging or a day in the mountains. I spent the day climbing cracks in Joshua Tree yesterday and never placed a nut, I racked a set of HB off sets but they stayed on the back of my harness all day. It was easier and faster to plug in a cam. I could have fiddled around getting a nut placement but what's the point?
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AP
Trad climber
Calgary
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Just got back from J Tree. Love those medium to big nuts!
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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The move from nuts/cams to just cams doesn't make sense for lots of routes.
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aspendougy
Trad climber
Los Angeles, CA
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I recall in the late 60's when people started to use nuts more, but were still using pitons, there was a nice pin called a "long dong" to help in removing the nuts. At that time, we mostly still carried a hammer, so you could reach in and gently tap the nut by placing the sharp end of the long dong next to the nut, and tapping to get it loose, if it was a really solid placement, and the leader yanked hard on it. Of course, any long piece of metal, even a 6-8 inch piece of rebar would do.
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Batrock
Trad climber
Burbank
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That's called a nut tool.
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phylp
Trad climber
Upland, CA
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In general, I place a lot more cams than nuts these days. I'm mostly doing long easy routes, and I carry the nuts because, frankly, on that kind of route the weight of a set of nuts is trivial and it's nice to have them when you want them. Recently I did a long pitch, about 180 feet, and almost every placement was a bomber nut.
It depends so much on your philosophy of gearing a pitch. Just carrying cams changes your options but if that works for you, great.
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Escopeta
Trad climber
Idaho
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I would look at a cam only rack as silly
That was my thought as well. With the obvious exception of climbs/pitches where the climber knows the gear they need, why would you do this?
I cannot think of a single place I ever climbed where I would start hiking from base camp and leave the nuts (several sets) behind.
Why would someone do this?
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couchmaster
climber
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Cams are much faster. Cleaning, in particular. For long routes, my view is to leave hexes and nuts home unless you have specific beta otherwise. Even 20 min can make the difference between hiking down something like North Dome gully in the dark or getting down safely still having sunlight and having a beer at the campfire. Easy choice for those routes. For other, shorter routes, nuts can be so sweet. I still carry hexes on occasion as well, some cracks at Smith in particular:-)
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Mark Force
Trad climber
Ashland, Oregon
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^^^^Yeah. Cracks me up when I'm climbing with someone who likes to do that. Was climbing with a boating friend who is older (like me) but came to climbing in the last ten years. Was belaying below him and looking up and he has harness with 2 of those PAS systems running between his legs and clipped to the back of his harness, belay gloves, grigri, belay plate, chalk bag, a mountain of cams, a ton of nuts, a bunch of daisy chain runners, cordalettes, and quick draws and he is grunting and trying to get in a wide crack deep enough to get purchase.
Ended up wearing out and giving me the lead. I take about eight pieces on a shoulder sling hung on the outside, slither right in (as well as my relative fatness will let me) and foot stack jack up. When I look down the look on his face is sayin' "how did I make that so hard?"
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Mark Force
Trad climber
Ashland, Oregon
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Good spotting beats a pad and you don't have to haul that sh#t around.
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fear
Ice climber
hartford, ct
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Nothing beats a chick with a mattress strapped to her back though...
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Mark Force
Trad climber
Ashland, Oregon
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Gotta give you that!
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rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
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My standard rack for non-specialized face climbing is one set of nuts (plus a binerfull of brassies) and doubles of cams up to green Camalot size, then singles to blue Camalot.
This is, in truth, a massive shift for me in the direction of cam use, since I climbed for quite a few years with a rack of just nuts, starting in 1967 when Dave Craft and I made the first all-nut ascent in the Gunks on Double Crack. This climb is even more susceptible to an all-nut ascent today with the enormous improvements in nuts since 1967, but I wonder how many modern leaders use mostly cams...
Although I now lug a bunch of cams, I still use the nuts I do carry more, often much more, than many of the younger climbers I climb with, and in many cases, as I argued earlier, I end up with a better protection system because of it.
But I use whatever the situation calls for, not what some pseudo-protection philosophy says. For one thing, thin cracks are more typically an occasion for aid on granite and sandstone, but are frequent features of face climbs and require small nuts for protection. So a cams-only approach would be a commitment to solo various cruxes and maybe the entire climb.
Cams can be generally faster to place and remove, and make an enormous difference on strenuous pitches because of the ease of placement. But they can get stuck too and/or or walk back in a crack, and in that case time lost is usually far more than what is required to free a nut, and their high price means the party is more likely to work on removal for a long time rather than abandoning the piece.
In my experience, stuck cams have contributed to benightment, and nuts never have, so the usually favorable trade-off for speed sometimes has a substantial downside.
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Mark Force
Trad climber
Ashland, Oregon
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It is nice to know that piece that's stuck or you're leaving to bail or rap from is only gonna cost you ten bucks!
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MattB
Trad climber
Tucson
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I like a bunch of nuts... 15 or so minimum, I'd bring 40 if I could on long routes of nut size. Proficiently nuts take no longer to place than cams.
Mostly economic and weight considerations for me...
Totally different for "working" or redpointing, where you pare it down.
Edit: but it does piss off some partners... nuts and cams both get stuck though
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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Let's face it.....cams are faster. Nuts will always have their place and I carry a small selection on multi pitch clmbs but I opt for a cam over a nut in most cases.
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