I am primarily an alpine trad climber, looking to expand my bag of tricks to deal with situations when I can't easily protect a move with my "standard" trad rack. I often explore new areas, so I am very often not on an established route. I can never quite tell what I might find on the other side of the next rock.

I have no reservations about aiding past tough spots, or using pins & etc to protect runout sections where I can't set clean pro. (happens often) I'd prefer to learn this from a mentor, the problem is, I don't know anyone else doing this kind of mixed alpine/trad/aid climbing. I'm sure I'll hook up with someone eventually, but for now at least, I'm on my own. So it is that Im turning to total strangers on the Innertube for advice. I'm gonna die, no doubt about that. Whatever.

There are no big whippers on my menu, if I can help it. I save the fancy moves for established crags and the gym; in alpine territory, I am cautiously adventurous. When I say "lead fall," it is mostly like a slip on 4th class, low-mid 5th class, less than vertical terrain. That doesn't sound impressive, it wouldn't make dramatic video, but it has the potential to be really ugly or fatal. I want to avoid falling down the entire mountain, so at least my body will be easy to recover.

I have found a fair bit of info about using pitons, and I scored (cheap!) a decent selection of angles and lost arrows from an old timer who is getting out of climbing. I need to expand this collection to cover small seams and flared cracks, which will often be dirty, wet, or slightly mossy. I'll start by adding a few knifeblades and bugaboos.

I'm climbing where not many people ever go, so I'm not too worried about chipping the rock, but I'd like to minimize the damage I do. Pins are a last resort, not the first thing I turn to. When none of my clean gear works, I'll whip out the hammer and go to work.

That brings me to tomahawks, peckers, and hooks. I understand that hooks are mainly for aiding past a tough spot, not for use as lead pro, per se. I'll figure out how to use hooks soon enough after I start using them. I don't see any big mystery there.

Tomahawks and peckers (Can my Pecker hold a lead fall? That's a question I always wanted to ask, now finally I have a good excuse.) look good, with potential for both clean and hammered sets, but I'm not finding a lot of info about the proper use and potential pitfalls of those pieces. Most of what I've found shows these pieces set in pin scars, but that's not a realistic set in my world. It's enough to pique my interest, and make me think I'm on the right track. Are they suitable for lead protection, assuming a mild fall? What are the pitfalls of this kind of pro -- in other words, how can you set it so it looks good to the inexperienced eye, but is actually not secure? Will this all be fairly obvious after I start using these pieces? Point me to books & videos, and share your anecdotes and gibberish. I will proceed cautiously until I get the hang of it, but I'd like some input from "the community."

Thanks.

I climb in the Olympic Mountains.

Thanks for all the replies. Mostly, you are confirming what I'd picked up from other sources. That's good.

I climb in the Olympic Mountains.

I'm planning to buy left and right, medium Tomahawks to start with. I like the offset bend, and the larger cable, and what look like more options to place and clean compared to the BD Pecker.

I hope this doesn't lead to some sort of aid addiction. I have enough expensive hobbies already.

(edited to pare down the length)

"There are only three sports, auto racing, mountain climbing, and bull fighting, all others being mearly games." Earnest Hemminway (or pretty close)

A couple of things.
Screamers help and 2 ,you might check; andykirkpatrick.com, he published a pamphlet alittle while back just on pins and hooks, available @ lulu.com.
Also, if you're using doubles, that'll help.

I hope your partners know first aid.
Mario

Oh man, there are some adventures to be had out there...I grew up on the peninsula and did a bit of the third class scrambles but never sacked it up enough to trust gear in that rock (mostly low quality basalt)...occasionally tempted to go back with a rack but now live close to the ample granite of the cascades ... though some of the spires and faces out there are pretty cool.

I wouldn't trust tiny gear to hold much of a fall in that rock but consider asking what other Olympic climbers use on cascadeclimbers.com or contacting OlympicMtnBoy who posts on that site and this as he does a ton of new routing out there (and elsewhere).

My standard Olympics rack, which I used for example on a traverse of the Needles earlier this year (Tyler to Martin and everything in between aside from the Sundial detour), is 4-6 cams (green alien-#2 camalot size), a half dozen nuts, and 3-4 pins (knife blades, a lost arrow, and a baby angle), plus of course lots of slings for horns, chockstones, and bushes. That will get you up most any Olympics peak unless you are trying to aid at the Elwha (not recommended) or something short.

On a hard FA in the Cascades I will sometimes carry one BD pecker and a talon hook for those emergency aid moves, but I really wouldn't trust them Olympics rock. If you can't get up it without relying on tiny direct aid you might want to wait until you can confidently free climb it, or you're putting up hardcore stuff and we should get together.

A good way to get a feel for how good (and bad) some of these placements can be is to practice some solo top-rope aiding (you aid but have yourself on top rope belay in case your piece blows). Pick a chossy cliff with no free climbing routes.

As to your original question, a pecker, especially the larger sizes can certainly hold a lead fall when places well in solid rock. Think of them as a hook that you can tap in, they need to have something to hook to, and they need to have solid rock to hook on (not crumbly basalt). The small sizes are plenty strong in the right placement although the cable can be a weak point, especially if you've missed the pecker and hit it with the hammer a couple times. They can be surprisingly strong hand placed pieces (I've done this to clean aid through stuff in Yosemite), but as mentioned above can also be crappy.

Hope that helps!