UKH

Hi Lovely People!

I have the following Query:

I already have a set of thicker sport climbing specific quick draws, and am looking to buy a lighweight set (around 15) specifically for long (bolted) multipitch routes, as well as for some alpine uses. Also thinking about getting into trad in the future, so good to have this separate lightweight set i reckon. I already have 3 extendable alpine draws (extend to 60cm) so probably just need a couple more regular ones.

I am looking at these two as options :

• CAMP Nano 33 Express KS - 18cm - 57g
• Black Diamond Miniwire Quickdraw - 12cm - 53g

They both cost exactly the same, and weigh pretty much the same. Considering the use case being multipitch and alpine climbing, is there any reason to not just get a full rack of the longer 18cm ones?

Im thinking they would likely reduce rope drag on long pitches, and be more versatile.

Is there any scenario where having a mixed rack with shorter and longer ones would be beneficial? Would the 4g difference justify getting some shorter ones?

Thanks!

In reply to Tobstar:

12cm draws are too short to be of much use for anything. If you need to clip short because of a ledge or something, just clip a krab to the bolt. 

More likely to have weird stuff going on like them unclipping the rope with short draws. More drag with short draws. More chance of lifting gear out with short draws.

No reason for 12cm draws to exist - get the longer ones.  

In reply to Tobstar:

4g isn't really that much to worry about, and for trad 18cm is miles better than 12cm.

The CAMP Nanos really are quite small to handle, and there's an argument to be made that larger gated krabs are easier to use and much easier to fix ropes to (not everyone uses screwgates for every anchor point, especially going light). I've found WC astros or similar (DMM alpha trad?) perfect for long trad pitches.

In reply to Jon Read:

Thanks for the tipp!

I've heard that they can be slightly more fiddly to handle, but the DMM alpha trad are currently twice as expensive as the CAMP Nanos, and if I'm buying 10+ that really adds up so I'm inclined to go for the cheaper (and lighter) option on this, even if its a bit less comfortable. 

In reply to Jon Read:

Aren't they actually about an inch and a half better?

I don't hugely disagree that for all round 18 - 20 cms quickdraws are fine, but I think Paul is over egging his pudding saying there is no reason for 12 cm draws to even exist. I've been climbing for over 30 years and don't think I've ever managed to get a draw to unclip - I know people who have, including a quickdraw with a medium length dogbone on it! - but I've never managed it despite always having a few shorter QDs on my rack at all time. Sport or trad I always seem to reach for a short QD for those first few bits of gear as you leave the ground! 

To the OP - I just remembered that I reviewed the CAMP Nanos when they first came out, but was a bit shocked to see that 2008 so 16 years ago! https://www.ukclimbing.com/gear/climbing/quickdraws/how_light_is_right_dmm_... I've still got most of them now, although I also prefer bigger krabs, particularly for use when wearing gloves, so they mainly get used for clipping things to my harness and so on, rather than as my main rack krabs.

In reply to Tobstar:

All my trad draws are DMM 18cm or 25cm. 

In reply to Jon Read:

plus one for WC astro, mostly blue (20cm) with a few green (15cm) and the reds (12cm) converted to sling draws. I find the miniwire's fidly and harder to quickly differentiate gear end from rope end (maybe other color schemes are available)

In reply to Tobstar:

Have you thought about alpine draws? I swear by them for trad and especially alpine (believe it or not).

I also hate the feel of the black diamond mini wire, they have a strange spongey gate action that is hard to clip with

gIn reply to PaulJepson:

If 10 to 12cm dogbones are too short or of no use... you're doing it wrong (even in case of bolted multipitch). Heck, if you have a few alpine draws, they'll just fine for trad as well (be it multipitch or single pitch... full trad, plaisir routes in the alps, granite cragging in the nordics, on limestone in italy/dolomites or spain... or granite in around Cham or artic Norway).

That being said the ~18cm ones aren't much of a hassle than the 10-12cm ones. So I would actually suggest getting the light ones that feel nicer to clip. The super light ones, tend to be crap to clip (on fixed gear or clip the rope on). I have used a tad heavier version of the Camp Nano (from a few years back), and it's shit to clip... Same goes for DMM Phantom. Might have other smaller ones (something from BD and IIRC from Metolius)... they've all been shite, and have been downgraded from draws or cams to accessory biners (might still have two that I use with 120cm slings... so you can carry them across shoulders under the extented 60cm long alpine draws... but I very rarely use 'em... more often than not, they are use to sling icicles or small trees in winter climbs... or trees on trad climbs, all of these tend to be easy cases to clip... as in can use both hands). So instead I would aim for a lightweigh set that is actually nice and good to use. I recall my trad draws having possible Camp Photon Wires. Which are "full" sized biners, just light ones. And they come with 11 or 18cm dynaama slings (like the Nanos). And weight is 71g for the 18cm QD. The Nano is certainly lighter at 55g... but being able to clip them when pumped is far nicer than saving ~100g (for 6 draws)...

Of course, if you the small, lightweight biners work for you. Kudos and yer lacky... I'm just too fumbly to cope with 'em. But  as stated, if going too light renders them un-usable when you need 'em to most... perhaps they ain't right.

In reply to TobyA:

Thanks for this reply and for linking the Review. Very interesting read.

Looking back knowing what you know now, would you just get something with a bigger carabiner right off the bat? 

Do you think the extra weight is worth the convenience of easier clipping? Consiering in my case it literally just for Multipitch, Alpine and maybe some trad.

If I assume I want a long and light quickdraw, then these would be my lightest available options:

• C.A.M.P.-Nano 22 -18cm - 56 g - 13.30 €
• Climbing Technology Fly-Weight Evo Set  - 17cm - 58g -  16 €
• DMM Phantom Quickdraw - 18cm - 67 g - 18 €
• Wild Country Astro Quickdraw - 20cm - 67 g - 15 €

Given that the Nano 22 is the lightest and by far cheapest, would you rather go for those, or spend a bit more, and get the marginally heavier CT Fly Weights, which seem to have a full size biener.

Thanks in advance

In reply to Tobstar:

I would personally value ease of clipping over weight. 2g per draw isn't enough to warrant a sacrifice in user experience. 

I would recommend having a feel of the draws in a shop before you buy them. I have bought plenty of draws online that seem great but I have ended up hating because of strange quirks in gate action, shape or size. 

In reply to Tobstar:

I've used metolius mini biners before that belong to my mate. I found them very hard to clip a rope to and I was getting very pumped while fiddling with it. After that experience I've sworn to never use them again. Much better to have full size biners and be able to clip easily. The extra weight is nothing compared to hanging on for a minute trying to get clipped in.

In reply to Tobstar:

As others have suggested, go see them in a shop if you can. I considered replacing my draws with the tiny Camp ones but on seeing them I immediately realised that wasn’t going to happen. I love a bit of weight saving but could barely clip a rope through them. Something that awkward/fiddly is t a great idea for trad where you want everything on your side for the occasional ‘in extremis’ panic clip….

FWIW I have 8 25cm draws and 8 60cm alpine draws, all on DMM Phantoms (or whatever their smallest crabs are called….)  Covers pretty much everything and I select a few of each depending on what I’m doing and what the route would require. The alpine draws work as a small quickdraw if not extended, the 25cm jobs give plenty of (literal) wiggle room for trad runners. And of course Dragon cams save you on QDs anyway in the right placements. 
 

In claissic UKC form, not answering the question you asked  You’re welcome ☺️ 

In reply to Tobstar:

What I've ended up with is using smaller lighter krabs on the gear end and bigger more clippable krabs on the rope end. You could do something like buy 3 DMM Phantom QDs and 3 Spectre QDs and just swapping around on krab from each so you end up with 6 QDs with easy to clip and hold big krabs at the bottom and smaller lighter krabs at the other end.

In reply to TobyA:

This is a good shout. I rate the Camp Nano on the gear end and Camp Photon on the rope end. Good way to save weight.

In reply to TobyA:

That grosses me out of my tiny mind.

In reply to PaulJepson:

Do you like them all colour coordinated then?

edit: On the little krab/big krab QDs, I realise I've been doing it forever - I wrote this https://lightfromthenorth.blogspot.com/2010/05/stuff-that-works-black-diamo... 14 years ago, and remember I had Hotwires at the rope end and Neutrinos on the gear end of loads of my krabs for ages. Might not favour them for sport nowadays but most of my trad draws are big/small.

In reply to Tobstar:

I really like the Camp Nano 22 for a fair few things and don't find them too small. But, they wear quickly and noticeably. They would be fine on the rope end, but personally think you'll be replacing them within a couple of years if you're weighting them whilst clipped to bolts. I tend to use them to rack cams or as a rope-end biner on an alpine draw.

12cm is quite short. I don't often rack many this length. 18cm is a good standard length in my view.

p.s. price wise, compare quickdraw prices with separate biner and dogbone prices. Sometimes you can get a good deal one way or the other.

In reply to TobyA:

They've got to be roughly the same size, ideally the same krab (different colour on rope end though). The thought of a little top one and a big bottom one made me sick in my mouth. How can you sleep at night, knowing that that thing is lurking in your house?

In reply to PaulJepson:

Sorry Toby, I'm with Paul on this one, whilst my head is telling me this actually a really good idea my heart is saying stop this appalling abomination, it's just somehow sickeningly wrong. 

Allthough my heads just chipped in again; you should paintent this before one of the big gear companies swoop in and nick it. I'd probably buy it if Grivel made a shiny coulor coded version. 

In reply to Tobstar:

FWIW I had some Camp Nano 22 draws but got rid of them as they were just too small.

My trad rack is currently full size Heliums on 18cm slings. Personally I'd always go for just one length of quickdraw somewhere between 15cm and 20cm as I find that works and requires less thinking or organisation when racking than having multiple options. 

However, I regularly climb with partners' lighter draws and often think about getting some myself. The ones that I'm currently really liking the look of (but I'm very surprised that no one has mentioned yet) are the Ocun Kestrels on 8mm x 15cm slings at 58g and potentially as cheap as £12 each.

Interestingly Ocun also do the Kestrel on more substantial slings and if I was predominantly climbing (relatively hard) multipitch sport they might be an option worth considering.

However, to be honest, there is not much poor gear around these days. Pretty much all the karabiner designs that I haven't really liked over the recent past (such as the Black Diamond Neutrino) have eventually been discontinued. 

In reply to Mark Stevenson:

I have a few Kestrels, as they're so light and so cheap. But, I find they feel a touch smaller and more fiddly than the Camp Nanos, so if you didn't like those I'm not sure you'll like the Kestrels, sorry. I find both a lot less fiddly than those Petzl Ange ones: that is a genuinely frustrating snap gate. Camp Nanos are easier to pop a clove on than Kestrels, too, IMO.

In reply to C Witter:

Weird. I've climbed with Kestrels on racks of at least two climbing partners and found them a bit easier to handle than the nanos.

I really didn't like clipping the Petzl Ange S the first time I used them and was catching my fingers. That said, within a day I was finding them just about tolerable although still not a design that I liked. Even my partner that day whose rack we were using wasn't entirely convinced as he'd just recently been given them by Petzl. 

In reply to Mark Stevenson:

Well, we're all different I like both, personally, and the cost seems to have been  shaved off as much as the weight!

In reply to Tobstar: Buying 15 all the same seems excessive to me. If I’m doing multi pitch sport I take my 10 sport draws plus a few alpine sling-draws. For use on Alpine multi-pitch, trad or “mountain bolted”, or UK trad, I have 4 x 12cms, 6 x 18cms, 6 x sling draws, 4 extra 39cm draws with single crabs. I will take some or all of these depending on the route. 
So in your shoes I would go for 10 x 18cms and some extra slings and crabs. Remember if you are doing trad then on some cams you might not need an extender. Also you can never have enough slings on sea cliffs!

In reply to Tobstar:

This is the combo you want, great for mountain crags

https://www.beal-planet.com/en/tapes/1487-9899-dyneema-slings-6mm.html

https://edelrid.com/eu-en/sport/carabiners-and-quickdraws/nineteen-g-st

In reply to John Kelly:

I've got I think 8 19G quickdraws but I have to admit it never crossed my mind to make alpine draws with them because they are just so small. Even with 6 mm tapes doesn't the triple tape seem too much for the narrow base of the 19G krabs to hold?

In reply to TobyA:

Alpine draw - give it a go, seems fine to me

In reply to TobyA:

Minor point - I‘ve been in a few situations where I  had, say, a poor handhold on the left and had to make a strenuous crossover with my right just to put pro in and attach the draw. With a longer draw you can then just give it a shove with the rope already in your hand to get it swinging and catch it, and clipping will be easier if it’s a longer one, which could make all the difference.

Doesn‘t come up often, but if it does, you’ll be glad of the longer draw.

In reply to McHeath:

This is absolutely right, as in different lenght QDs are really nice to have when you are redpointing that particular hard sport route. And indeed I have a range of different lenght beefy QDs when I’m working on a hard route (hard for me, casual warmup for some). But alpine multipitch sport is a completely different animal… I don’t think any sensible Team starts to work say a 300+ m multipitch sport route that is above their onsight grade (and often well below it).

One other thing to Note is that quite often the bolt spacing is vastly different from singlepitch sport routes… the amount of bolts per pitch is often the same… but actual pitch lenghts tend to be a lot longer. A lot of the non extension sport routes are in the 25 to 30m range and rarely have more than 15 bolts. The pitch lenghts on modern multipitch routes are quite often in the 40 to even 60m range, yet the amount of bolts is often the same (max 15). This means that rope tends to run smoother/straighter on multipitch climbs, thus you actually have less need to have long draws. This isn’t to say that a few alpine draws not needed to help with stuff like crossing roofs, overlaps or blocks/flakes. 
 

however If the OP also plans on using the same draws on trad climbs… Yeah having a few different lenght QDs might make sense. That said the really long QDs (25cm) are a major PITA and to be honest I don’t really see a point for them. I tend to carry short (10-12cm) draws, a few mid lenght ones (15-18cm) and a few alpine draws. And to be honest the mid lenght ones I could replace with short QDs and perhaps add an extra alpine draw… might actually do this, when my dogbones needs replacing. And Yeah, I do not really have issues with lifting gear nor with rope drag. And I predomintaly climb with a single rope. And I have also climbed trad with half ropes and there have only once in the Odd 20 years had rope drag issues due to short quick draws, in that case the overlap was bigger than 120cm which happens to be the longest I carry for non belay use.

So in short, in trad and with half ropes, If you have issues with gear lifting… instead of longer QDs, I’d focus more on placing gear so that it does not lift out.

in single pitch sport and proper redpointing, different lenght QDs make absolute sense, and as part of the process you also optimise the clipping positions with correct lenght QDs. If you climb sport with an Onsight or in few goes mindset, then hope your good at route reading so you can plan/visualize the sequences and final rope line in advance and then select the right lenght QDs on the go… albeit If this is needed Depends on how well the line was bolted. I’ve climbed a bunch where there are no issues even with short QDs (which is often the ”standard” QD in continental sport). But I’ve also climbed stuff with horrible rope drag even with ample use of mid-lenght, long and alpine draws… these are the minority though, and I’d actually call them badly bolted or simply bad climbs.

and lastly bolted multipitch or plaisir routes. These are climbed mostly in onsight fashion. And also tend to have longer pitches (often in 40 to 60m range), meaning longer distances between gear/bolts, so ropeline management tends to be easier. Very rarely have I had to resort to extending the alpine draws, and these have been mostly on the plaisir routes that were in fact more like trad with bolted belays. In fact, I can’t seem to remember off hand any fully bolted multipitch climb where I needed longer draws than the short ones plus a few mid lenght ones… the only time this happened was in Spain as we linked three pitches together (involved roughly one pitch worth of simul-climbing). There would not have been any need for the longer stuff, had we pitched this properly.

In reply to HeMa:

When is a 12cm or 10cm draw better though? In what scenario would one think 'phew, glad I've got a 12cm draw on the back of my harness instead of a 16cm one'? I get when theres a low first piece of gear or a ledge but then just use a krab, or an alpine draw un-extended. I dont know why you would choose to buy 12cm draws over a set of medium length ones. 

In reply to PaulJepson:

About constantly, as the longer ones tend to get caught at the most inconvenient times. Also short draws rack more nicely (especially if you do Yosemite racking), take less space in the rucksack and are even lighter.

but it’s not like whew, glad I had the short draw… more like whew, glad I don’t have that unnecessary crap with me.

also, the op was asking about bolted multipitch. With possibly trad uses. All your answers are only for the latter, like the examples. There would not be a low bolt on a ledge (it who ever bolted it, really did a bad job).

In reply to HeMa:

But drag is an issue on bolted routes. As well as rigid draws doing weird things on bolts. The only time I'm glad to have a short draw is if my medium one rests a krab over an edge 

In reply to PaulJepson:

Tope drag is indeed an issue on wondering singlepitch sport. Less so on bolted multipitch, where the pitch lenght is up to double the singlepitch one, but amount of bolts is the same. So due to spaced bolts, rope drag generally is not a problem. And having a few alpine draws in addition to the QDs is a common practice (If not for any other reason than it makes bailing possible mid pitch, like the Texas rope trick… and the sling can also be used as makeshift prusic etc.). But rarely do you need to use ’em… mostly to cross roofs or overlaps…