Placing a cam with the lobes in a vertical alignment is not a good idea.

Depending on two lobes of a cam to hold a fall is a bad idea.

Weighting down the sling thinking that this will keep the piece in place is interesting, but I sure would not bet on that working.

ONE person mentioned tensioned opposition (but they didn't explain it well or call it that), that would be your best bet unless you had some fancy-dan offset cams (made for flairs) Even so, if you sling a cam short you may have troubel with cam walking.

Another idea would be to try some tri-cams, but still, opposition is the best way to hold a piece in that want to lift but is otherwise sound for a downard pull.

Look around the forums for threads on tensioned opposition.

The longer sling is a good idea, but if you already know the piece may lift, oppose it AND use a long sling.

I've done it many times, and it works very well when tensioned opposition is not available.

Brutus

Are you saying you have used all three of these methods or just the weighted sling idea? How many times have you fallen on gear held in by a weight on the sling?

YOu could also have tried to place another nut at a lower placement and slung the two nuts together under tension. That way the load bearing nut wouldn't move around and dislodge itself when you climbed above it.

i've never fallen on one, but i've had nuts stay in place and give me the confidence to send when i've weighted them in place. it works very very well for some situations.

my favorite is to use my approach shoes to weight down the nut. i usually keep them on the back of my harness for the walk off, so if i get a nut in a bomber spot that upword pull could easily dislodge i'll clip my shoes to the nut, and then also clip a long sling to the nut.

its a good easy way to get some extra security out of a nut, and it also suckers your second into bringing up your approach shoes for you. if i remeber correctly i think its even illistrated in the two most recent editions of FOTH.

you should try it man.

edit: i should also add, its a hell of allot easier to do than tensioned oposition, and doesn't consume usefull gear if you use something like your shoes.

NO thanks, I won't be trying this bizzare idea.

Some good info on this thread. I have to jump in on the comment above tho. Weighting a nut to hold it in place may not be foolproof, but it's far from bizarre. In any event, whether or not its a common technique has nothing to do with how effective it is.

Question to you: what is your concern with this setup holding a fall? I understand that the extra weight may not hold the nut in place, and that's part of the risk calculation. However, assuming it does, and that the nut is bomber for a downward pull, I don't see how an extra pound or pound.5 hanging off the nut is going to affect anything.

in the event of a fall, a nut that might not hold you is a better bet than nothing, which certainly will not hold you...


hosh.

Your post seems to suggest "oh well, it ain't great but it's better than nothing" which is a dangerous attitude.

of course, trickery and skill play a large part, but alot of that comes from experience.

NO thanks, I won't be trying this bizzare idea.

Not a bizzare idea. Pretty well accepted actually. I think it might even be in freedom of the hills or some other such "climbing textbook." There are many tools in the arsenal. I don't think anyone's suggesting that this technique replace "tensioned opposition."

I may have also tried a cam, either a smaller one deep in or a larger one further out- but a cam may not work depending on how flared the crack is.

Look, why don;t you try some esperiments before you go with your book endorsed BIZARRE trick?

Not one person has claimed to have fallen on such a placement. If you want to debate the usefulness of weighted pieces staying in under rope drag or wiggle, then maybe you should have some experice with pulled placements and solid ones, hmmm?

Well accepted, gee, at one time it was well accepted that the earth was flat, that in climbing you had to have three points on all the time, and in computing that the country would need about three, total.

That's pretty simplistic. And doesn't seem to consider that where one person plugs a nut that might stay in and hold a fall, another person can with a bit of thinking and trickery can get a bomber piece.

Your post seems to suggest "oh well, it ain't great but it's better than nothing" which is a dangerous attitude.

Weighting a sling to help prevent a piece from walking is one of the oldest tricks in the books. (it has been advocated in numerous instructional guides.)

Perhaps you can provide an example of yourself using this stupid idea with success, having fallen on such a placement without pulling the gear?

YOU must know that the plain vanilla bowline was once thought a good knot for rescue, and was advocated for this purpose, until it was discovered that the bowline can fail in certain circumstances. Of course, these days, nobody advocates the plain old bowline, because now they are wiser.

Just as, you can still find climbing dinosaurs who continue to chain biners together to extend aslimg or placement, even though it always has been and continues to be a bad idea.

Still waiting for someone to proclaim thier experience falling on weighted sling placments that held.

I would think that you're a troll, but you have a whole lot of posts, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.


The weight of shoes on a placement will NOT make a difference once you fall, so whether or not someone has fallen on it is irrelevant. This only effects how well the placement stays in place when being pulled by rope drag, etc., and many people can attest to how well it works.

blablabla

look budy, it works ok?... ...no, i've never fallen on one of these pieces

Right.

you must be as bored as i am today....

As I stated earlier, and several times, just how much rope wiggle do you think a pound or two will prevent? The answer is not very much. Your cherished method falls in the category of psychological pro, which is worthless in a fall.

And I'll bet you did the hanging directly on the piece and not on the sling that the rope runs on.

I would hope not!

Think about it this way:

An average trad draw is at least a foot long, right?

Now, in order for the rope to pull the piece out, it would have to pull the rope end of the draw up at least that distance. With average light-weight draws this is absurdly easy, and the friction of the rope in the krab is enough to hold them up.

Now, add a bit of weight (say half a pound) to the rope end of the draw. Suddenly things change quite a bit. In order to put an upwards force on the piece, the rope needs to lift this half-pound weight the length of the draw - again, about a foot. The thing is, this doesn't happen. Unless you have an extremely tight belay, what will happen is that every time you move, it'll get lifted slightly and then drop back to the bottom when your belayer gives out slack. Thus, the chances of the piece lifting out are drastically reduced.

What about in the event of a fall? Well, in order to pull out, this hypothetical piece requires a significant outward force with very little downward component. Without the weight there, that's easily the case. The draw is probably alread more or less horizontal due to rope drag, so that the first little bit of tension in the rope pulls the piece more or less directly outwards. Now, think about the weighted case. Here the draw is hanging vertically, and that first pull is onto the 1/2-pound weight. Now, in order to transmit an outwards force to the piece, that 1/2 pound weight has to swing up to bring the draw to horizontal, using only the friction of the rope through the draw. Thing is, by the time this happens, if it's likely to happen at all, you're already well below it on your 9.8 ms-2 joyride.

But what if we hang the weight directly on the piece? Hmm... not so good, I'm afraid. In this case, you've lost your mechanical advantage - rather than lifting the weight a foot or more, you only need to lift it the half-inch or less required to shift the piece out of its seat.

I hope this is a clear description. If you think it's wrong, I'm sure you'll feel free to flame away...

I would hope not!

Think about it this way:

Think about it this way:

I've just finished a penji into a new crack system. An Offwidth/Chimney that I will have to free climb.

I want to do 4 things:

1. minimize rope drag by making the rope path as straight as possible, because climbing OWs and Chimneys are bad enough without making things worse by having the rope make a huge "Z"

2. keep the piece from lifting out.

3. protect myself as early as I can without creating a lot of rope drag

4. dump any pieces I have not used to that point which I won't likely need. because this rack weighs about 30 pounds, and OWs and chimneys are bad enough without dragging 20 pounds of un-needed gear up the thing with me.

If I clip the rack onto my extension sling, the rope will make a "Z" creating impossible rope drag, negating any potential beneficial effects from the runners.

If I clip the rack directly to the piece, the rope is free to run in a straight path, while the rack holds the piece in place.

I don't use "trad draws" whatever those are. I use full "shoulder length" runners, large enough to loop over my shoulder, bandolier style. Or double-length, enough to loop over my shoulder when doubled. In this case, I used one double-length runner plus one single-length runner in series clipped to the piece, to straighten the rope path as much as possible.

Would it have held a fall? absolutely. Even a fall from 60 feet above the piece, as I neared the belay.

But still, I'd rather not fall. And I didn't.

Brutus

I ran into a flaring crack that I couldn't work out decent protection