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i assumed that every piece of gear i place should have a sling attached between the piece and my rope. then i watched beth climb the 14c trad line on the new dosage. she didn't use a single sling. not one. when i mentioned it to another experienced trad climber, he said he very rarely uses slings.

so for all you really experienced trad climbers: do you use slings? all the time? some of the time? never? what are your thoughts on this?

route dictates the gear, I can do it without slings and not have rope drag I tend not to use them.

passive gear usually calls for more slinging consideration than active but as ReachHigh stated the route dictates the usage- passive gear involves slinging to prevent pro from from being dislodged after moving beyond it. ie an upward force could dislodge your efforts to naturally protect your downward forces-situational awareness

Also gear may get jiggled less and walk less if it's on a longer sling. So if I can't find (i.e. am too chicken to move up to find) a placement that's less prone to walking, I'll use a sling.

I wouldn't consider myself 'really experienced' but word to the above. If I can get away with it then skip the slings, it's just more fiddling around. I extend when I can anticipate problems but its usually not necessary. That would be lots of slings.

nuts=slings
cams, depends on line. if its all straight in line, (rock wars, 1st part of roadside) then no slings unless im just tired of hauling them.

rope drag dictates.

Harder routes tend to be more direct than the moderate routes. I think that is why you'll often see people climbing hard trad with few to no slings. Moderates tend to wander all over the place.

there are 3 things I try to accomplish with slings
- reduce rope drag
- make sure the passive gear doesn't pull out when I climb past it
- make sure cams don't walk.

when you go past your piece the biner clipped to the rope will slide up and down as the leader climbs, if the sling is short, then any passive gear that is not bomber will fall out. If the route is a dead vertical straight line, then this effect won't be soo bad, but the more the route wanders the worse it gets.

For cams they don't typically fall out, but they will walk, and walking can cause the piece to go somewhere where you will not be able to get it out, or worse, move to a position where it can fully open up and become unstable.

Unless I'm doing a direct 1 pitch line where I can see there is no wandering, I bring LOTS of slings with me when I climb, and not just quick draws. I've topped out on too many wandering routes with 80 pounds of rope drag for me to ever forget the long slings. Slings really don't weight much, there isn't much reason to leave them behind.

ya sling your nuts

shamis, you forgot your fourth reason when slinging...

4) make sure sling loop is large enough for a foothold.

I don't know what it's called but I take my sling, attach to biners to it, pass one biner through the other and then clip the sling again. It shortens it to the length of a regular draw. If I need it to be longer, I just open the biner and release 2 of the 3 loops of the sling.