insitu gear.

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 mutt 02 Nov 2020

How many bits of insitu gear, wires abandoned or cams inverted, does it take to reduce the grade of a trad route? I'm thinking of Ximenies with at least one cam in the lower crux move, or Tudor Rose with 5 insitu wires in the traverse over the cave. (Cleaning up is difficult in these cases, I tried to ab off the top of Ximenies but it overhangs by quite a few meters and there are two loose overhangs  on the way down.)

 GrahamD 02 Nov 2020
In reply to mutt:

The difficulties on Ximines are not to do with placing the gear ! It will always be tough E2.

 PaulJepson 02 Nov 2020
In reply to mutt:

If the cam is old and in the way of a good placement/hold it can often make things harder and more dangerous. Is that one still stuck in The Sloth?

 Michael Hood 02 Nov 2020
In reply to PaulJepson:

Only seen it but it looked to me that it was right in the place where you'd want to place the crucial jam if that's your preferred method.

 Michael Gordon 03 Nov 2020
In reply to mutt:

It can definitely make quite a big difference at times. I remember the first steep bit of Fallout Corner (Winter) (VI 7) as basically being a clip-up, taking away the need to hang on while you try and place nuts.

 henwardian 06 Nov 2020
In reply to mutt:

in the "it depends" camp, here is some food for thought:

- just because it's stuck, doesn't mean it's actually a bomber placement.

- Cams last a while but the wires on nuts rust away pretty quickly and if you've never found a nut that looked "a bit rusty", try bending it around or bouncing on it and you'll likely find it snaps with little encouragement as the corrosion is much deeper than it looks.

- what if it's a bad piece where you want to place a good piece? What if it's stuck in a crucial jam location?

- What if it's in a dubious or expanding flake? Do you clip it or not?

- If you can't see whether it's any good, do you end up putting your own piece in anyway and the only result is that you spent more time getting pumped trying to evaluate the situ piece?

- Is it aiding if you end up partially pulling on it because that's just how your hand fits in a crack?

- At what point should situ threads be replaced, does it change the grade if you just replaced a bunch of old terrifying, frayed threads with brand new shiny ones?

- If there is a position for a thread, how awkward should the placing be before you can legitimately put in a situ thread? Or can any thread just be left as a situ piece?

- What kinds of situ gear can a well-meaning climber clean out? It's probably fine to fish out old nuts (I once managed to find 5 nuts in the same placement and remove 4 of them while climbing a classic) but should you be removing a thread? Presumably you shouldn't be removing a piton?

..... in short, the answer to your question is an unending good old British Ethics debate

OP mutt 06 Nov 2020
In reply to henwardian:

and another consideration.

- is the insitu nut on route? I think not for quite a few case and they can easily mislead one into following the line that the originator failed on and had to lower off.

reading your list makes me think then that the grade doesn't change. it may feel easier to clip up a route but the insitu is often a bit crap/off-route/corroded. They are defo an eye-sore though and should be removed if at all possible. Perhaps the BMC should regularly address this in crag cleanup sessions.

2
 ipfreely 07 Nov 2020
In reply to PaulJepson:

Yes the big blue cam is still there, the sling was still in good order as far as a visual imspection can tell.

 Michael Gordon 07 Nov 2020
In reply to henwardian:

I agree with the above, but if it's multiple bits of in-situ up, say, a steep crack, one could quite easily clip all of them and decide that one is bound to be bomber rather than hanging on to place multiple bits. Or you could have bomber gear you've placed below, but clipping an in-situ piece as you go into the crux could give a lot of psychological encouragement.  

 henwardian 08 Nov 2020
In reply to mutt:

Yeah, the off-route thing is something I didn't specifically consider but that is another thing.

Cleaning situ gear would probably be desirable on popular crags but rigging the ropes and abseiling to do this would be pretty time-consuming per unit rubbish removed compared to litter picking on the ground.

 LucaC 08 Nov 2020
In reply to mutt:

I remember clipping the stuck fried on Ximenies five years ago and thinking it was a bit of a rubbish runner. I doubt it's improved since then! 

I'm not sure it changes the grade any more so than if you happen to have the right size hands for a given crack/brand new shoes for tiny slate edges/accidentally nail the crux sequence on sight. 

OP mutt 08 Nov 2020
In reply to henwardian:

> Yeah, the off-route thing is something I didn't specifically consider but that is another thing.

> Cleaning situ gear would probably be desirable on popular crags but rigging the ropes and abseiling to do this would be pretty time-consuming per unit rubbish removed compared to litter picking on the ground.


sure would but perhaps if we all took a little more pride in the tidiness of the routes then, knowing there was insitu gear we could tidy up as we go. No abseil necessary if the equipment for removing stuck gear were available to the second. What gear might that be I wonder? a return of the hammer? Hex's used to work but the new alloy ones don't have the weight. I think I might experiment unless someone points out a flaw in my plan.

 henwardian 09 Nov 2020
In reply to mutt:

> sure would but perhaps if we all took a little more pride in the tidiness of the routes then, knowing there was insitu gear we could tidy up as we go. No abseil necessary if the equipment for removing stuck gear were available to the second. What gear might that be I wonder? a return of the hammer? Hex's used to work but the new alloy ones don't have the weight. I think I might experiment unless someone points out a flaw in my plan.

Flaw: You have to be quite careful not to start damaging the rock if you go at it with a hammer.

In my experience there are generally 2 kinds of stuck gear. The first is gear that is left behind by a lazy, incompetent or bailing team; it is easy to remove using a normal nut key, though perhaps requires hanging on the rope for a minute or two. The second is gear which is genuinely stuck and in this case it's either buried out of reach in a crack or inverted cams or nuts that move in a placement but seem impossible to wiggle out. A hammer is not likely to be needed for the first type and not likely to be much help for the second type - just my experience though...

The only time I carry a hammer is when I'm cleaning new routes and it tends to be mostly the claw end that I use.


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