Can you rate my gear?

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 Ale152 21 May 2023

I only just recently started trad climbing (after many years of bouldering and sport). I really like recording it on videos so that I can reflect on what I did and how I placed my gear, but I'd also love to get feedback from different and more experienced people.

What do you think of my gear placements? The climb was Suspense (HVS 5a)

youtube.com/watch?v=pYRakCQCQeo&

Thank you

16
 PaulJepson 21 May 2023
In reply to Ale152:

It's very shiny. 10/10.

2
 Michael Gordon 21 May 2023
In reply to Ale152:

You really need an experienced second to give you their thoughts; can't say with much certainty from a video.

 TobyA 21 May 2023
In reply to Ale152:

You could just directly beg for people to subscribe to your youtube channel like normal(-ish) people. You do comment "I'll take that as much as a bolt" in the vid so it already seems like you have lots of confidence in your placements already.

 henwardian 21 May 2023
In reply to Ale152:

What Michael Gordon said - review by video is not the best way to judge your gear placing. Having said that:

Generally I'd say your gear looks very good for a beginner trad climber and I'd probably be fairly happy with leading on your placements. But a few things I would note are:

- Don't lark's foot the slings - just put the sling through the thread and clip both sides of the loop to the carabiner. Threading the sling through itself makes it weaker (perhaps not weaker enough to matter, but why take the chance?).

- Personally I'd probably be putting the red cam where your green one was and the yellow cam where you red one was - your cams are a bit too undercammed for my liking.

- It's strange for me to see so much wear and tear on the rock in those nut placements, I don't see that kind of thing much where I am. But where I have seen that before, I've found that the inside of the placement doesn't give much friction and even with the nut perfectly seated, it seems wont to rattle around in the placement. Not a lot you can do about this but it is something to be aware of.

- Once or twice you are jerking on the nut with one hand while poking it with a finger of your other hand - if jerking with one hand, it's best to keep the other hand firmly on a good hold because if the nut suddenly pops out you don't want to risk pinging off.

- Looks like you extend some of the lower pieces a bit more than I would. Hard to tell from a first person video though.

- If this was my first HVS, I'd definitely be placing a few more pieces of gear. While it's hard to be certain from your video, it does look like you leave a fair bit of space between some of the placements and when you reach a good place for gear, you only place one piece. If you were to fall, you'd be going a very long way and if one piece of gear ripped, you'd maybe be being carried out. I don't know what situ threads are like where you are but in places I climb I regard their strength and integrity with suspicion (rotating them a little to check the part you can't see in the hole is a good idea). I think this is the most important point really; it certainly looks like the route is physically very easy for you but if you start to get to a stage where taking a fall is a real possibility, more placements is the way to go.

2
 Moacs 21 May 2023
In reply to Ale152:

Nah, not going to drive your view count because you were disingenuous about it

2
 gethin_allen 21 May 2023
In reply to Ale152:

When did you climb this route? Just wondering as it's bird banned at the moment.

1
 CantClimbTom 21 May 2023
In reply to Ale152:

I gave an upvote purely for the clank of the hexes, nearly downvoted when I saw a  cam placed (joking!) Deserves 2 upvotes in my opinion but could only do it once.

I hope you continue to climb many more routes like that and enjoy them at least as much as you did on Suspense

Post edited at 18:54
1
 midgen 21 May 2023
In reply to TobyA:

> You could just directly beg for people to subscribe to your youtube channel like normal(-ish) people. You do comment "I'll take that as much as a bolt" in the vid so it already seems like you have lots of confidence in your placements already.

To be fair to OP, he posted this video on Reddit originally and got called out....the top voted comment was :

"my friend... a lot of that gear you placed was BAD. good on you for getting out there and getting after it, but this video was pretty hard to watch."

So fair enough asking for a second opinion. Although it's easier to just not ask Reddit for a first opinion on anything, it's usually wrong.

 McHeath 22 May 2023
In reply to Ale152:

Same as henwardian - don´t lark´s foot the threads, pull the sling through and clip both ends.

4
 The Norris 22 May 2023
In reply to gethin_allen:

I may be wrong as not overly familiar with the crag, but my reading of the RAD suggests that 3 adjacent routes are bird banned, but not this one.

 rerarder 22 May 2023
In reply to Ale152:

why not climb an easier route?? if you're concerned about placements?? seems obvious to me to gain confidence placing gear on a diff/v diff ??  

2
 Fellover 22 May 2023
In reply to McHeath/henwardian:

> Same as henwardian - don´t lark´s foot the threads, pull the sling through and clip both ends.

I think this is quite a common view to hold, but I'm not convinced that there's any merit to it. What's wrong with lark's footing them?

OP Ale152 22 May 2023
In reply to henwardian:

That's really good advice, thank you. I'm still very new to cam placements (only second time using them, I only had nuts and hexes before), but I'll be more careful with that.

In reply to gethin_allen:

Restrictions were on Limbo, Beginnings and What's It Called?, Suspense was not affected by it.

In reply to midgen:

Yes, I posted it on Reddit as well, but most people there are from US and they seem to have a very very different style/school of thought regarding trad. Someone even said that the rock quality is really chossy in the video!!

In reply to rerarder:

I have climbed other easier routes before, but as I try new stuff I'm always conscious that there's space for improvement in gear placement and I want to have more opinions.

 Luke90 22 May 2023
In reply to rerarder:

If he's been doing sport and bouldering for a while, the actual climbing might not be troubling him much more than a Diff would trouble a complete beginner. It's hard to judge from a video, as everyone's said, but it doesn't seem like his placements are so bad that he's asking for trouble, and he seems in control rather than sketching his way up something he's way out of his depth on. So probably an appropriate grade. My memory isn't great, but I don't recall there being very many quality easy climbs in that area anyway.

 McHeath 22 May 2023
In reply to Fellover:

Not sure whether there´s any actual physical benefit from having 4 points of contact of the sling on the bridge of the thread instead of just the 2 with a lark´s foot (distributes the force better when shock loaded? Someone should do a test!), but my main reason would be simply that it reduces the potential fall distance by the length of the sling.

2
 gethin_allen 22 May 2023
In reply to The Norris:

> I may be wrong as not overly familiar with the crag, but my reading of the RAD suggests that 3 adjacent routes are bird banned, but not this one.

Fair enough, I hadn't read it fully/correctly, just saw the "restricted access" tag when I clicked on the OP's link and saw bird ban.

2
 henwardian 22 May 2023
In reply to Fellover:

> I think this is quite a common view to hold, but I'm not convinced that there's any merit to it. What's wrong with lark's footing them?

It makes them weaker, e.g:

https://dmmwales.com/knowledge/december-2011/improvisation-lark-s-foot-or-b...

http://adriannelhams.blogspot.com/2010/11/sling-strengths.html

There are lots of sites and even videos that will give you a much better explanation than me writing a reply here (also I'm lazy).

At the most basic level, if you clip both ends, you have a doubled up the sling, so you just doubled the breaking stength. At the more advanced level you find that any knot or hitch with sling-on-sling action weakens the sling, the tighter the bends in the knot or hitch, the greater the weakening effect, so the larks foot is weaker than the sling just clipped normally with a crab at each end.

6
 Fellover 22 May 2023
In reply to McHeath:

That's a good point. The route in the video looks basically straight up, so no point unnecessarily extending.

I should have been clearer that I meant from a strength pov. Really responding to this bit that henwardian said "Threading the sling through itself makes it weaker (perhaps not weaker enough to matter, but why take the chance?).".

 Euan Todd 22 May 2023
In reply to gethin_allen:

To be honest, while the restriction applies to nesting kestrels on those three routes, I actually downclimbed from Suspension Bridge Arete yesterday as several ravens appeared quite distressed and defensive on the line of Suspense. Granted they may have been behaving differently when the OP climbed it, but I very much felt like we would be disturbing them if we pressed on. 

Obviously they're not Schedule 1 birds, but surely we shouldn't use this as carte blanche to just ignore distressed behaviour? 

On a related note, we actually saw a team on Pink wall Traverse as well - which is explicitly banned for the peregrines nesting. Signs at the bottom of the crag were clear, sadly it seems like some climbers just don't care.

1
 Fellover 22 May 2023
In reply to henwardian:

I know it makes them weaker (sorry, should have been clearer on that to save you from getting the links etc.), I just don't think it matters.

I'm not aware of any climbing accidents in which the strength loss of a sling weakened by larksfooting it was a relevant factor. If there are examples I'd be interested to know.

The strength loss from larks footing around a thread is really unlikely to be more than 50% (it's a much more friendly radius than larks footing another sling or a wire). Which at 11kN is happily in the ballpark wires and cams. Even if it is the worst case scenario of larksfooting around a #1 walnut wire the DMM rests show >7kN, which is more than enough for 99.9% of climbing situations (including those shown in the video).

 henwardian 22 May 2023
In reply to Fellover:

I don't want to get into debating relative kN ratings too much as I think this is getting increasingly far away from the basic feedback the op was looking for.

I agree that making larks foots in the scenario that the OP was using them is unlikely to result in them being the point of failure. But the bottom line for me is that it's just as easy to clip both ends of the sling and, everything else being equal, I'd rather use the stronger method. In more general terms, making best practice your standard practice means that you are overall less likely to have something bad happen, climbing accidents mostly happen as a culmination of several substandard/bad decisions, none of which would have caused the accident on it's own.

3
 gethin_allen 22 May 2023
In reply to Euan Todd:

Well done for down climbing, I'm always amazed by how hard down climbing is compared to normal climbing, and it's always annoying to start a climb and then give up. I went to Gardoms Edge to dodge the sun on the hottest day of last year only to find every route I have the ability to climb had birds nest in it.

 Fellover 22 May 2023
In reply to henwardian:

> I don't want to get into debating relative kN ratings too much as I think this is getting increasingly far away from the basic feedback the op was looking for.

The thing that made me post was that I thought the feedback you gave - don't larks foot threads because it makes the sling weaker - was not good feedback. I just got into the kN stuff to backup why I think that.

I think the feedback from McHeath - don't larks foot because it makes the sling longer for no reason - is good feedback.

I think that there are cases where larksfooting a thread is better than basket hitching, most obviously when you want to reduce drag by having a longer sling. If you've been told not to do that because it makes the sling weaker then you're just losing out for no reason.

> I agree that making larks foots in the scenario that the OP was using them is unlikely to result in them being the point of failure. But the bottom line for me is that it's just as easy to clip both ends of the sling and, everything else being equal, I'd rather use the stronger method.

Personally I'm happy to use any method that's strong enough. If all else is truly equal then I've no issue with using either method! I just think there's no reason to be put off larksfooting for strength of sling reasons in normal climbing circumstances.

> In more general terms, making best practice your standard practice means that you are overall less likely to have something bad happen, climbing accidents mostly happen as a culmination of several substandard/bad decisions, none of which would have caused the accident on it's own.

In my view basket hitching a thread as a piece of gear while leading is not better practice than larksfooting the same thread, at least not for strength of sling reasons. Maybe if you were making a rescue anchor and wanted a 10:1 safety ratio (or whatever other scenario where the strength actually matters) but for 99% of normal climbing scenarios I feel that saying a larksfoot is bad/worse practice because it weakens the sling is just scaremongering.

Edit to add. Sorry if this comes across as overly critical, I have a bit of bee in my bonnet about climbers being overly concerned with using the strongest possible option, when other options are strong enough. I thought your other feedback was good, especially the bit about over extending some of the lower pieces.

Post edited at 13:45
1
 PaulJepson 22 May 2023
In reply to Fellover:

A basket hitch is stronger though, no? I may be wrong and hopefully someone with a physics brain will chime in if so, but with a basket hitch you are weighting a double-up sling, where a girth hitch is just a single sling (we're talking masses of force here, so not really relevant but it'd be a shame to hammer someone for saying one is stronger than the other when they might actually be right). Also, I'm sure on the how-not-to-highline vids they tested girth hitches and they always broke in the knot; implying that they are weaker there. I'll usually basket hitch rather than girth if I can, as I don't like the idea of it cinching tight in the event of a fall.  

For people saying the OP should climb an easier route to practice gear, that's not necessarily the best thing to do in Avon Gorge as there aren't many (any?) easier routes with as much gear as on the un-quarried buttresses, which have nothing easier than VS on them. If they climb sport in the 7s then something like Suspense would be ideal as you can almost lead it on threads alone. You'd struggle to hurt yourself on it even if everything you placed other than slings was garbage.  

 Fellover 22 May 2023
In reply to PaulJepson:

> A basket hitch is stronger though, no? I may be wrong and hopefully someone with a physics brain will chime in if so, but with a basket hitch you are weighting a double-up sling, where a girth hitch is just a single sling (we're talking masses of force here, so not really relevant but it'd be a shame to hammer someone for saying one is stronger than the other when they might actually be right).

A basket hitch is definitely stronger, yep. I just think it's not really relevant, given that a larksfoot is strong enough. A bit like a 6 piece trad anchor is more redundant/stronger than a 3 piece trad anchor (assuming equally good pieces!), but 3 pieces is fine.

> Also, I'm sure on the how-not-to-highline vids they tested girth hitches and they always broke in the knot; implying that they are weaker there.

I'm sure they did. Anything that's knotted pretty much always breaks in the knot.

> I'll usually basket hitch rather than girth if I can, as I don't like the idea of it cinching tight in the event of a fall.

Fair. I think I normally basket hitch as well. I'm just saying that a larksfooted sling is more than strong enough for normal climbing circumstances, so if you want to use one you shouldn't be put off by the idea that the sling has been weakened, because it will still be good enough.

Post edited at 14:53
1
 gimmer 22 May 2023
In reply to Ale152:

Thanks for posting, I enjoyed watching your video.  I lived in Bristol for 15 years and climbed that route many times so I know it well!  The routes on Suspension Bridge Buttress sector mostly have good gear placements which is a relief after you've climbed at the rest of Avon.

You looked to place a good number of runners which is good.  I don't know how well the wires were seated but you seemed to place them in the obvious worn slots so they're probably as good as you'd get.  A few people have called you out about larks footing slings - yes they are right that the sling is weakened doing this, but my guess is that the crystalline seam would snap long before the sling!

With the in-situ slings that you clipped you should either back them up or put your own sling in.  You don't know how long that tat has been rotting away in the sunshine.  Same goes for any pegs you clip at Avon, back them up if you can, some of the angle pegs look fine on the outside but can be rusted right though behind the eye.

Stay safe & enjoy your climbing down there, it's a fantastic spot! 


 

 Luke90 22 May 2023
In reply to PaulJepson:

A basket hitch is indeed stronger. But both are strong enough that their relative strength just doesn't matter. Even in the DMM example of hitching slings to the wire on a nut, which is a more extreme scenario and not very relevant to a thread, the weakest result would still hold a very severe fall. The difference in the case of hitching a sling to a nut is happening close enough to potential failure that I'd definitely choose a basket hitch in that scenario, but for a thread I think both are so adequately strong that the strength difference is irrelevant.

There are other reasons to favour one or the other. I generally use the basket hitch because to me it feels marginally quicker to place and remove. I'd certainly choose it if I was close enough to the ground for a few centimetres difference in fall to be relevant. But if I specifically wanted extra extension, or thought one section of the thread was stronger and wanted to hold the sling there, or wanted to hold the sling away from a sharp edge, I'd quite happily use the girth hitch without worrying about its lower strength.

But as both are adequately strong, it's probably not the most relevant thing for a beginner to worry about.

 PaulJepson 22 May 2023
In reply to Luke90:

Do you have a link to DMMs testing of the hitching through wire cables? I've looked for that sort of thing before and am very interested! Always seems like a good solution if a krab is loaded over an edge but I've always bottled it on the grounds that I have no idea if it would hold. 

Would be great if there was some concrete data on whether the nuts with rubber sheaths (like the old brassies) are better in this respect and whether fat nylon slings or cord are better in this instance. I expect so, as I've seen Black Diamonds Camalot testing and the reason they use a doubled-up nylon sling on their thumb-loops was because the thin slings were kinking the cable, which was in turn cutting the sling. 

 Luke90 22 May 2023
In reply to PaulJepson:

It's the DMM link henwardian posted further up the thread. Interesting data and the short summary is that the basket hitch is a reasonable approach if the alternative is nasty loading of a krab over an edge. Don't think it answers any of your more specific questions though. They do test a variety of sling thicknesses but there's no clear trend in the data.

OP Ale152 22 May 2023
In reply to gimmer:

That's a very good point, thanks! I did think about it and next time I'll back them up with my own slings.

 dig26 23 May 2023
In reply to Ale152:

I enjoyed watching, been a while since I’ve been to Avon so thanks.

Agree it’s hard to assess through a video but as others have said, back up in-situ gear and make sure you inspect it, place more pieces at once, avoid larksfooting slings if possible, etc.

You can tell you’ve come from a sport background as you seem to clip a single piece and move on, often running it out a bit more given your physical capabilities appear to be above HVS trad, as is often the case when people come from indoors / sport to trad. But that’s where trad climbing differs so fundamentally (at least at a beginner level) and this is the most important lesson - even if you feel physically safe and capable on a route you should always always be taking great care and attention to gear placements.

With that in mind, some of your placements made me wince a little… particularly the nut placements: try to avoid simply dragging a nut through a crack / slot blindly until it sticks (red nut about halfway through the vid), you have no idea what contact it’s made and how much surface area is well seated in the crack.

Experience comes with just placing loads of gear in loads of different rock types, but please take your time to place every piece slowly, carefully, and perfectly-fitting. Treat every piece as the bit that saves your life. In my opinion, it’s not worth pushing up the grades until you’ve got that mentality.

I appreciate it’s an edited / sped up video so maybe you were more slow and careful than it appeared, but this is just my two cents  

Good luck with your trad apprenticeship!

 Michael Hood 23 May 2023
In reply to Luke90:

> But as both are adequately strong, it's probably not the most relevant thing for a beginner to worry about.

In these days of political correctness, I think you should be saying that the OP is transitioning rather than implying that they're a beginner 😁

Good points about larks footing v basket hitching, I always thought that sling to wire Larks foot was a big no-no but it appears that it's survivable even if not ideal.

1
 meggies 23 May 2023
In reply to Ale152:

1. Personally I would have clove hitched into the sling at the anchor with the rope and not bothered with the Connect. Less clutter on the harness.

2. Also try extending the belay plate away from your harness with a sling when abseiling. This allows you to attach the prusik centrally to the belay loop (fully rated load bearing element) rather than leg loop and reduces the chance of the prusik touching the belay plate and releasing.

3. You can also use the end of the sling as a tether while you set the ab up thus negating the need for a Connect at all.

4. I see you re-directed the rope through the anchor to belay. Belaying directly in guide mode from the anchor would've worked well in this situation, and provided assisted braking.

5. Always consider the integrity of the rock when placing gear. Some of those threads were a good shape but looked pretty fragile.

 timparkin 23 May 2023
In reply to meggies:

> 4. I see you re-directed the rope through the anchor to belay. Belaying directly in guide mode from the anchor would've worked well in this situation, and provided assisted braking.

I think I mentioned this elsewhere but redirecting the rope through a carabiner on the anchor to belay also doubles the forces on the anchor. Whilst the force from a second is typically small, there is the chance of a factor 1+ if they beat the rope to the anchor (or slightly above) and then fall off.. 

 Euan Todd 23 May 2023
In reply to gethin_allen:

Thanks, yeah it reminded me how important it is to practise it every now and then! And shame about your day at Gardom's, sometimes the luck is just not there - still, better than just cracking on due to a sense of entitlement!

 rerarder 23 May 2023
In reply to Luke90:

reason for my comment was we had to rescue a lad from our local sea cliffs on an hvs, because  in his mind it only compared to a 5 at his local wall, and he could easily climb 6c,, he was well out of his depth also on a single rope which didn't help, he  thought he could easily climb at that grade on trad..  lessons learned for all though ...


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