Have spring loaded camming devices replaced nuts?

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Messages 1 - 51 of total 51 in this topic

zip

Trad climber

pacific beach, ca

Topic Author's Original Post - Dec 17, 2017 - 03:12pm PT

I just got back from three great days in Joshua Tree.
Most of it was solo climbing, but I did hook up with a couple of partners.
We were using my rack, and flopping leads.
Neither of the partners ever placed a nut.
I have old school BD Camalots, and Aliens for my SLCD selection.
Several of the placements of the cams were kind of placed like nuts.
Above a constriction in the crack, and in full umbrella mode.
I believe the BD units will hold a fall like that, but don't believe the Aliens will.
I have always preferred a bomber nut over a cam. Cams can move around. Once you set the nut, it doesn't generally move around.
I know a couple of local guides who don't place nuts with their clients.
I would imagine this is to make it easier for the client to remove it, and guides don't usually fall.
I have an assortment of smaller brass nuts too. One of the partners didn't even know what a RP was.
Maybe with all these new SLCDs that come in really small sizes now, nuts are antiquated.

Batrock

Trad climber

Burbank

Dec 17, 2017 - 03:29pm PT

I would rather my partners place cams only because some of the guys I climb with over set their nuts and I end up having to waste time trying to unweld a nut when a cam would have been easier to place and remove. I do think nut craft is becoming a lost art but I don't believe in placing nuts just to show what a badass old school trad climber you are.

climber

Dec 17, 2017 - 03:31pm PT

Wow...

looks easy from here

climber

Ben Lomond, CA

Dec 17, 2017 - 03:41pm PT

My offset Wallnuts are both my and my cousin's favorite pro. We're 36 and 29, respectively.

Trad climber

Calgary

Dec 17, 2017 - 04:57pm PT

I won't part with my nuts.

Mark Force

Trad climber

Ashland, Oregon

Dec 17, 2017 - 05:59pm PT

Good one, Cosmic!

Cams are cool...

...but a good cam will never be as bomber as a good nut.

thebravecowboy

climber

The Good Places

Dec 17, 2017 - 06:01pm PT

yeah I see my tradlings scoff off the nuts for the cams all the time. I am secretly waiting for that expando or that hangerless top anchor, for to revel in the right proper crustiness of me age. And I'm only a third of a damn century.

Don Paul

Mountain climber

Denver CO

Dec 17, 2017 - 08:42pm PT

Try some aid climbing on lowe balls or whatever slider nuts. They come right out. Although, I couldn't swear that a tiny RP would hold a real fall, either.

drljefe

climber

El Presidio San Augustin del Tucson

Dec 17, 2017 - 09:49pm PT

Spring loaded camming devices have been replaced by....

cams.

Mark Force

Trad climber

Ashland, Oregon

Dec 17, 2017 - 10:07pm PT

Try some aid climbing on lowe balls or whatever slider nuts. They come right out. Although, I couldn't swear that a tiny RP would hold a real fall, either.

Aiding definitely gets you clear about placing gear that sticks!

climber

Dec 17, 2017 - 10:22pm PT

It all depends on the nature of the crack (super parallel vs. constrictions / locks). When the latter, nuts rule and are fast.

I once led church bowl tree with just a single biner of nuts. coulda dropped a truck onto any of the placements.

But, then, when aiding the upper dihedrals of the muir, I just had 0.5 and 0.75 camalots attached to each aider and just leap frogged 50' at a time.

Gear. It's all good. Now, let's talk hexes!

D.

Mark Force

Trad climber

Ashland, Oregon

Dec 17, 2017 - 10:58pm PT

That’s cool about the Muir. That’s a dream route for me.

Hexes are awesome! There’s something about the craft of climbing on passive gear.

rgold

Trad climber

Poughkeepsie, NY

Dec 17, 2017 - 11:03pm PT

Nuts for tapered placements, cams for parallel-sided placements.

The rock will dictate whether you can do without one type of gear altogether.

climber

Dec 18, 2017 - 02:01am PT

Thank You, rgold..,.

It’s about reading the rock...

‘Must stay intimate with the stone!

donini

Trad climber

Ouray, Colorado

Dec 18, 2017 - 02:47am PT

The title sounds like a troll. Of course cams have replaced nuts although nuts still have a place. I never use them in places like IC but I always carry a small selection on multi pitch in areas like the Black Canyon. On new routes I bring more for possible rap anchors.

There are a few places where nuts work better than cams but I usually prefer to place cams because I find it more efficent and quicker. Removing nuts can eat up valuable time. That said, I always like to have some on my rack.....they can prove to be very useful.

zip

Trad climber

pacific beach, ca

Topic Author's Reply - Dec 18, 2017 - 06:00am PT

"Nuts for tapered placements, cams for parallel-sided placements."

Yep, that's how I have always done it.

mouse from merced

Trad climber

The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.

Dec 18, 2017 - 06:12am PT

The learning curve for nuts was pretty long back when we first started using them in the "brand new decade" of the seventies.

This was primarily due to the fact that no one really knew what they were doing or committing to when they crossed the pond from Britain.

It took the brilliance of Doug Robinson to help shorten this curve for both n00bs and the old school iron-bashers.

Today, there's not nearly the confusion about cams for beginners that there was with nuts and beginners, or so it seems to me.

When I had a good nut, it FELT good. And it did take longer to set runners, too, to keep them good.

I canna blame the lads for wantin' to get on with the climbin', or it won't get done in a day, no' willit?

Nick Danger

Ice climber

Arvada, CO

Dec 18, 2017 - 06:15am PT

My rack consists primarily of stoppers, hexes, tricams, and various wired things (RPs, copperheads). I have and will use spring-loaded camming devices where nothing else fits (parallel-sided cracks), but tend to try to get by without using them. That being said, I don't climb hard stuff anymore (prolly haven't been on anything harder that 10a in well over a decade). I actually love the craft of placing passive nuts.

rgold

Trad climber

Poughkeepsie, NY

Dec 18, 2017 - 07:00am PT

Removing nuts can eat up valuable time.

It can, but stuck cams are as bad or worse, partially because one is less likely to want to give up and leave them.

Removal of nuts is perhaps more dependent on the skill of the placer, who has to be thinking about a bunch of things, just one of which is ease of removal.

In the Gunks, I almost never use just one type of pro for a pitch, but there are occasional pitches where I only use nuts and other pitches where cams I only use cams. Placements below cam size requiring small nuts are also pretty common. So all in all, heading up a randomly selected climb with just a rack of cams may not turn out very well, so I'd say cams are nowhere near "replacing" nuts here.

I find it not at all uncommon, when climbing with the younger generation (which at this point is just about everyone), to find mediocre cams placed where far better nut placements might have been used.

TWP

Trad climber

Mancos, CO & Bend, OR

Dec 18, 2017 - 08:36am PT

"I haven't place a nut for about three years now. Although, sometimes I wished I had them with me."

Moosedrool

I think that the YOUNG WHPPERSNAPPER MOOSEDROOL - in the above-quoted passage - pretty well gives me all the material I need to launch into a vitriolic diatribe AGAINST all things that have gone wrong in the RAD WORLD OF TRAD since the introduction of these new fangled "what-she-ma-call-its" that go by the silly name of "spring loaded camming devices."

For starters his admission - "sometimes I wished I had them with me" - totally explains why these upstarts don't know how to use hexes and stoppers - to wit: they've never tried using them! They prefer COMMITTED IGNORANCE to commitment to learning "new" tricks - even if those new tricks would be, in fact, OUR old tricks.

Their pedestal of ignorance, however, does nothing to deter the upstarts from denouncing the practitioners of the "old" crafts of hex/nutting as "over the hill", hindbound and recalcitrant. And thus worth ignoring.

Second, these noobs have only been in the game but a few years - yet they dare to speak ill, with snotty disdain, to their olders and betters - like those of us who started climbing before they were even born. (I'll bet this MOOSEDROOL DUDE, whoever he is hiding behind his silly avatar - wasn't even born when I drive my first piton, for Chrissake!)

What has become of respect? Deference? Heeding the counsel of the well-worn wise ones who've paid their dues?

Now that he's heard a piece of my mind, I'LL BET THAT MOOSEDROOL WILL SHUT UP and the good old boys of Supertopo will hear no more of his insolent wisecracking.

What's more I issue a challenge to that MOOSEDROOL fellow. Let's meet up somewhere and climb somethin; I'll bring you a complimentary rack of my old hexes, stoppers and tri-cams so you can learn how to use those old devices that so far you refuse to learn how to use. I'll even offer to teach you a few lessons and give you a few tips - ALL GRATIS - just for the satisfaction of getting you to have to admit on Supertopo that YOU WAS WRONG!

mouse from merced

Trad climber

The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.

Dec 18, 2017 - 08:47am PT

Yeah, #MoiAussi.
Terry's absolutely right, the parvenu MooseNoob just doesn't get it yet.

When I had a good nut, it FELT good.

TWP

Trad climber

Mancos, CO & Bend, OR

Dec 18, 2017 - 09:20am PT

Moose:

No. No. No.

Did you step up to the plate and agree to learn something?

No you did not!

Accept my offer straight up - or admit you are a coward!

You don't want to learn from your elder and better. You only propose a ridiculous test to prove your own superiority!

You are stuck in your insolent and obstinate ways!

Youthful arrogance knows no bounds.

But I will meet up to climb with you anyway. Perhaps if I choose the climb, I could even beat you at your own test of competence versus speed. Take that you swinehund!

P.S. I detect the perfidity of your offer. You want me to lead the route first, while you follow. THEN you propose you could lead it faster with cams. In other words, you want me to do an ONSIGHT, ALL FREE versus your PINKPOINT HANGDOG WITH THOSE CHEAPING CAMS!

zip

Trad climber

pacific beach, ca

Topic Author's Reply - Dec 18, 2017 - 09:28am PT

I still have Hexes, but haven’t placed one since the early eighties, which is when I got my first Friend.

mouse from merced

Trad climber

The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.

Dec 18, 2017 - 09:31am PT

Getcher hot buttered popcorn!

PeaNUTS!

Cotton CANDY-ASS n00b gonna get it handed to him!

A few years back, Ms. Sibylle Hechtel, famous female first-ascensionist of El Cap, told me she really only climbs using Stoppers for pro anymore.

Reilly

Mountain climber

The Other Monrovia- CA

Dec 18, 2017 - 09:38am PT

Who in their right mind would go on a serious climb without some small wired stoppers?
6 wired stoppers weigh, what, a pound?

Reilly

Mountain climber

The Other Monrovia- CA

Dec 18, 2017 - 10:58am PT

Well, my friend, you know I admire a man of principles.
But you can't yard on principles.

climber

Dec 18, 2017 - 11:00am PT

Let's not forget the financial angle. Learning to climb in grad school days, nuts were CHEAP. Cams (mid-90s) were STEEP. Plus, booty nuts were everywhere.

It was easy to do the math.

norm larson

climber

wilson, wyoming

Dec 18, 2017 - 11:51am PT

Everyone is different. I like doing long new routes, they don’t always go. I’ve left stoppers all over the Wind Rivers. Only once did I leave a cam retreating from lightning.
Like Reilly said why would you go on a long route without nuts.
To me nuts have always been an essential part of my rack. It's what I learned to climb with in the 70's.
Like I said above. We are all different. If you want to bail off cams I’m fine with that. Especially when I find them.

Batrock

Trad climber

Burbank

Dec 18, 2017 - 12:08pm PT

I always bring an assortment of nuts on long routes but mainly for the purpose of bailing or lining hangers bolts. For long Sierra moderates my go to are cams because i want to move fast and don't want myself or my partner picking around trying to either place a nut or retrieve a nut. I know how to place nuts, when I started climbing cams were not a thing yet, I am good at nut craft and natural anchors but I still prefer cams over nuts for ease and speed. I don't need to pound my chest and prove I'm a tradster.

johntp

Trad climber

socal

Dec 18, 2017 - 01:55pm PT

Stoppers are an essential part of the rack. I do like the small cams out there, but a well placed nut is comforting. Hexes and tri-cams are another story. Placing them is an acquired art.

edit: like batrock, I grew up pre-cam. Took me some time to feel comfortable with friends and their walking.

Slym

climber

Merced, CA

Dec 18, 2017 - 02:26pm PT

Well, my friend, you know I admire a man of principles.
But you can't yard on principles.

Quoted for posterity.

DanaB

climber

Dec 18, 2017 - 02:47pm PT

Whatever works quickly, effectively, and efficiently.

mareko

Trad climber

San Francisco

Dec 18, 2017 - 02:49pm PT

I always have a set on nuts. They're bomber and a great alternative when you don't what waste a cam on a long pitch