RRC Archives

you were aborted in 1969?

In my meaningless opinion - you could likely go with just tricams at the Gunks which is mostly horizontal cracks. But at the red nothing works better than cams. Fork over the money, you will be happy you did....

passive works fine. on some stuff though, you'll just be running it out. especially on some of the easier stuff.

I'm with OW on this. Anything can be done on all passive. I started climbing trad in the Red on passive only without incident. However, now that I have a full rack of cams I rarely place nuts outside of building anchors. A lot of time I forget that I'm carrying them. Cams are just sooo much faster to place.

Started out with a set of nuts and hexes in the gorge. They can be some of the best and some of the scariest placements in the Red. I carry all cams in the Red anymore unless I know there's a great nut placement. Everything will go all cams in the Red much faster and easier. In most other climbing areas it's a set of nuts and set of cams with some doubles of the heavily used size cams.

I guess I'll chip in and say that having a mixed rack is the way to go if you plan on travelling and climbing in a range of places.

That said, in some locales a set of stoppers is just about useless. In Vedauwoo, WY for example, it is tough to find passive placements in the big offwidths (tough to find anything now that I think about it).

In indian creek, same thing: stoppers don't really help too much in super parallel splitter cracks. Finally, the type of rock can affect the kind of protection one might want to use.

The way the force is distributed in a cam is different than the wedge effect of a stopper, therefore (perhaps) cams are better in soft rock.

Nonethless, I rarely do trad climbs without carrying a set of stoppers (except in Indian Creek). I am still pretty new here, so I can't really comment with any (read:none) authority about the red.

You definitely want to have a mixed rack of passive and active gear. Active gear is so much more versatile. It's often pretty difficult to protect a crack with parallel sides like Indian Creek or lots of places in the Red. The most useful active gear in my opinion is TCU's and Camelot's. Save your money and gets these you won't regret it.

climbboy wrote:The way the force is distributed in a cam is different than the wedge effect of a stopper, therefore (perhaps) cams are better in soft rock.

Really, I am confused about this. Don't cams put more pressure on a smaller area, especially when you have thinner lobes. This could potentialy break the rock that the placement is in. This is the very reason Metolius makes the fat cam, right.

So, with that in mind, I would tend to think stoppers and other passives create pressure on a wider surface, and there for is better for soft rock.

Secondly, I prefer placing passive gear. If I am 15 feet above the last piece on a runout, I would much rather see that 12 BD stopper below me. Not to say cams don't have there place, and I do use them often, I just find more security in passive gear.

Thanks for all the help. I went ahead and started buying cams this weekend. #'s 1 & 2 BD(all I could afford right now). I intend to Buy more when I get the funds. I'm also going to get the set of tricams on deema slings soon. I got a b-day comming up so hopefully I'll get a good chunck to get the rest. Got to buy a house first though. I'll be taking donations from here ) Oct 2nd mark your calendars. Thanks again

I like to repeat routes i have done a bunch all passive just to make it more interesting. I also do routes well below my limit all passive to train for long routes out west. since, out there, i often find myself at the end of a 200' pitch with only a few stoppers left and no bolt anchors.