There is an often unrecognized Essential Truth: climbing a route with passive gear is inherently more rewarding than using cams.

Hexes work best on inward flaring cracks. Cams would be insecure.

... Sure, hexes are cheap and light, but they're less versatile.

Sorry, Larry, but the less "thought, planning, and ingenuity, and mental control" I need to be safe, the better. I prefer to spend my energy on climbing, not fiddling with gear.

A recent thread asks who uses hexes. Unasked is the question, why? So, here is why I use them:

There is an often unrecognized Essential Truth: climbing a route with passive gear is inherently more rewarding than using cams. It requires greater thought, planning, ingenuity, and mental control. Here is a useful exercise those living in an area with limited climbing options-- each time you are repeating a route, cut a few cams from your rack and you will feel like it is a brand new experience.

There is also a safety benefit to the use of hexes that makes them an excellent complement to a cam rack. Certain placements strongly favor hexes. In an irregular crack, the hex can be perfect where the cam is shaky. In placements involving thin flakes, you can often place good passive gear in a fashion that avoids the strongly multiplied outward forces associated with a cam. In sub-optimal, low-friction conditions, such as wet, icy, or soft rock, the hex may offer the most secure placement. When placements are shallow (e.g. using face features such as Red Rock's varnished plates) the hex will sometimes nestle into a spot where the cam cannot fit.


I normally climb with both hexes and cams. Sometimes I will climb with no cams, but I never climb with no hexes.


My thoughts on a hex rack: Don't get wires on anything that can take 7mm perlon or bigger. Sling them long: most of mine are about 18 inches. It seems like currently available slung hexes are way too short, probably intended for clipping with a quickdraw-- not for me. I also don't go for the "tricky" features; curves and tapered ends seem like no benefit to me. Given that cams are so common these days, there does not seem to be any motivation to modify the hex to (maybe) stick in some unfriendly placement. If the crack is parallel, you're probably going to put in a cam. The hexes are for use in placements that are "natural" for them.

Here is a useful exercise those living in an area with limited climbing options-- each time you are repeating a route, cut a few cams from your rack and you will feel like it is a brand new experience.

especially with a little "encouragement" from a hammer

Hex with hammer encouragement=piton.

but I don't disagree with you.

Hexes are less versatile. Opinion here. Don't work in parallel sided cracks. You need a constriction.

Cams are fast.

Hexes are less versatile. Opinion here. Don't work in parallel sided cracks. You need a constriction.

Sure, hexes are cheap and light, but they're less versatile.

Hi Larry I'd chime in with the why-nots but you already know those reasons and last time I volunteered this info I was personally flamed for it.

Enjoy your hexes mate!

DMT

ps. I too feel the call of the nut bro, (to your first point). Sometimes the nut's the nut and sometimes the nut's a nutter.

... I free solo cracks harder than you'll probably ever climb.

Should I start a poll among you happy hex proponents as to your hardest trad redpoint? I'm guessing the mean to fall somewhere in the 5.8 range. Maybe an outlier up to 10b.

I bring up grades because I think it's important for the people that read these threads to know that you don't speak for progression, the cutting edge, or the advancement of crack climbing. You speak for a bunch of dinks messing around with obsolete gear.

Should I start a poll among you happy hex proponents as to your hardest trad redpoint? I'm guessing the mean to fall somewhere in the 5.8 range. Maybe an outlier up to 10b.

I bring up grades because I think it's important for the people that read these threads to know that you don't speak for progression, the cutting edge, or the advancement of crack climbing.

Because when i'm climbing on quartzite cams walk like crazy and in some cases if pulled the right way will slide right out.

angry:

My highest personal number was old-school trad 11b, on wires, cams, and even a hex. On-sight. (not your "redpoint" poorer style).

It was my highest number. But it was not my hardest climb by any stretch.

If you are really that great

try a trip to Germany, England, or even New England, and do a 1970's 5.11, using unwired stoppers and hexes for pro, and EB's on your feet. Match the first ascensionist's gear.

THEN tell me how you "speak for the advancement of crack climbing." You have advanced nothing. You carry your courage in your rucksack.

I think it speaks for the level of personal enjoyment that someone gets out of their climbing though. Some people are bored with popping pro with little or no challenge. Others are bored with routes that have little or no technical challenge for them. It depends which challenge you personally prefer facing and conquering, and neither is more glorious than the other in my opinion.

That is what baffles me. The perpetual 10b climber. Or 12q. It don't matter. The climber who gives himself an arbitrary ceiling and will not even attempt to surpass it. They get so dialed at whatever grade they climb that they are bored.

I think it's because some people are afraid of reaching their potential. By staying at a "respectable" level (say solid 5.10), they still have the safe cocoon of knowing they could climb harder, but don't have to. If they pushed it an maxed out at 11b, game over. They've lost the "what's my potential aspect of climbing."

Nevermind that everyone can surpass a given plateau. But you see what I'm getting at.

Others might be a afraid of the mental commitments to climbing harder. Less security, falling more, etc. I was in that category myself for a while. It's a journey. Maybe the folks you speak of will eventually get bored enough to try something harder. You can always get better.

Angry, so would you call climbing a sport or not?

You still didn't address why you will use old school crampons and not hexes ;-). You are using a double standard here.

PT

I agree with the point that Dingus wants to make.

Hexes are stupid. Other than a potential bail piece in the middle of nowhere, I don't see ever using one again.

Should I start a poll among you happy hex proponents as to your hardest trad redpoint? I'm guessing the mean to fall somewhere in the 5.8 range. Maybe an outlier up to 10b.

I bring up grades because I think it's important for the people that read these threads to know that you don't speak for progression, the cutting edge, or the advancement of crack climbing. You speak for a bunch of dinks messing around with obsolete gear.

Flame me. Just know that I free solo cracks harder than you'll probably ever climb.

Bitchez!!

Hexes are stupid.

Hexes are stupid. Other than a potential bail piece in the middle of nowhere, I don't see ever using one again.

Should I start a poll among you happy hex proponents as to your hardest trad redpoint? I'm guessing the mean to fall somewhere in the 5.8 range. Maybe an outlier up to 10b.

I bring up grades because I think it's important for the people that read these threads to know that you don't speak for progression, the cutting edge, or the advancement of crack climbing. You speak for a bunch of dinks messing around with obsolete gear.

Flame me. Just know that I free solo cracks harder than you'll probably ever climb.

Bitchez!!

There is an often unrecognized Essential Truth

climbing a route with passive gear is inherently more rewarding than using cams.

There is also a safety benefit to the use of hexes that makes them an excellent complement to a cam rack. Certain placements strongly favor hexes. In an irregular crack, the hex can be perfect where the cam is shaky. In placements involving thin flakes, you can often place good passive gear in a fashion that avoids the strongly multiplied outward forces associated with a cam. In sub-optimal, low-friction conditions, such as wet, icy, or soft rock, the hex may offer the most secure placement. When placements are shallow (e.g. using face features such as Red Rock's varnished plates) the hex will sometimes nestle into a spot where the cam cannot fit.

I normally climb with both hexes and cams. Sometimes I will climb with no cams, but I never climb with no hexes.

This notion - that the sole measure of success in climbing is to climb ever harder routes? I have come to understand the total BULLSHIT this line of thinking represents.

Who tells us this? Why the folks who push ever harder. In part it is a competitive statement. Pushing ever harder may be about new ground and personal achievement.... and it may be naked lust for competition, or most likely both.

Yes I'm old and I was never any good to begin with. I gotta tell ya... to the scared boy who first backed his quivering ass over a cliff at Underground City at age 13.... to pretty much ANY route I ever did in CA? MAJOR ACHIEVEMENT for old Mr Milktoast. I done good.

One day, in my haste to get ever better, I realized I didn't particularly enjoy ALWAYS pushing like that. In fact I came to understand I detested what for me was mindless pushing. Why are you throwing yourself at that route Dingus? Why why why I HAVE TO!

You will all eventually get old, get frail, and get worse. Angry too. Will angry or you or any of us eventually get bored and quit? Maybe. Maybe some of us will simply get too scared to continue. Maybe we get fat and start improving all over again, quien sabe?

Is GETTING BETTER always equated to ever harder routes?

Without any doubt in my mind whatsoever the answer is NO. However, by pushing one will get a lot better a lot faster that's for damn sure. And if it weren't for the pushers the sport of technical rock climbing wouldn't exist at all, so don't get me wrong.

But I think of this man
[img]http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/9/90/Fritz1.jpg[/img]
happily repeating and free soloing High E well into his 60s and climbing and loving life into his 80s.

Yes there is the PUSH. The there is the comfort of an old leather chair. Each in its own time eh? Wiessner found a way in his career to do both and I think his later years smiles are the most telling.

As to angry's 3 reasons for climbing... I found I could gain that joy of movement not only on hard sequences, problems and routes but also in comfortably cruising many pitches of moderate trad. In the high Sierra where driving blends into 4wd which morphs into hiking which becomes scrambling which eventually leads to technical rock climbing and perhaps a summit, then reversing all that.... its one continuous flow. Boring to some, enlivening to others.

There is more than one way to skin a cat and there are as many reasont to climb as there are climbers to hold them. There's room for us all in the Garden.

Cheers
DMT

... I have no qualms saying climbing isn't a sport. ... This is my personal definition, nothing formal.

WHY use hexes?


Spare us your dogma.

do you want me to tell you that in the last month I've onsighted (though I don't look down on someone's redpoint) a half dozen trad routes (and yes, I place passive gear if needed) a full number grade harder than your best?

My highest personal number was old-school trad 11b, on wires, cams, and even a hex. On-sight. (not your "redpoint" poorer style).

Then, go climb Devils Thumb in Alaska, a Fred Beckey V 5.6....and you tell me what's harder.

Apples and oranges and you know it. There's lots of hard things in this world

Brutus, got dogma thread started just for you. Feel free to contribute

I'm almost loathe to put it out there because I'm so entertained, but Angry, exactly how many notches have you added to the bottom of the bridge in this thread so far?

...
Spare us your dogma.
...

Et tu, Brutus?

the complaint of novices offends me not. But this! The most unkindest cut of all. . .

Hexes are a pain in the ass most times. Other than the fact that they make an ok hammer in the summer and a piton in the winter they would have no other real use except to identify the gumbys with the cowbells at the crags. When I first started I had a small rack of hexes and nuts, that was well over 20years ago. Now I have a huge rack of cams and nuts. I know of exactly one climb where a hex is the best placement at one of the cruxes. I still have 2 hexes and rarely carry them. Ocasionaly on long trad climbs I carry the #11 just so I have a hammer handy and annother 3" piece but I could easily do without.

in the same way,onsight climbing 5.11 in EBs, using hexes and unwired nuts, is apples.

Oranges are climbing 5.12 in sticky rubber with cams, or 5.13+ with bolts, while hangdogging.

Other trips the ratio is different depending on where you climb. Red rocks for instance eats up stoppers. Been to Seneca 9 times ad never needed to place a hex or a tricam. )]

But from your comments it seems that you are just as unwilling to play with the "new" rules of the game as those who decide climbing with hex is going backward.

HELLO SOMETIMES I LIKE TO CLIMB HARD BUT I'M NOT VERY GOOD AT IT AND I HAVE HEXES BUT NEVER USE THEM CUZ I AM THE CAMHEAD AND BESIDES ALL YOU PEOPLE WHO LIKE HEXES ARE JUST PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE I'VE CLIMBED FIVE ELEVEN ON JUST PASSIVE AND FIVE EIGHT ON JUST ACTIVE SO WHAT AND ANGRY IS MOSTLY TALK BUT NOT AS MUCH AS DINGUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Et tu, Brutus?

Whateva! Have you ever even climbed a crack wider than 2"? Sucka.

Enjoy Ohio bitch.

That being said...
I think if you took a straw poll and compared the racks of people climbing say....5.10 and higher you will see that the vast majority of them do not climb with hexes (while doing these climbs).
I would also say that the percentage of these people climbing without hexes on harder routes is much larger than the percentage of people climbing without hexes from the overall climbing community (i.e. its not just because people mostly climb on cams).

As i've been reading this post, i've been wondering the same thing. can people actually place an active hex on an 11 or 12? if so, my jaw would drop and i would worship you.

plus i would rather lose a 12 dollar hex to a deep crack than a 70 dollar cam.

While hexes may be more commonly used by climbers at lower grades, this need not be because those climbers are stupid gumbies who don't know better. Perhaps easier routes have a greater number of placements suitable for hexes. Think blockier terrain, irregular cracks, etc. If those are the kind of routes you're ciimbing, then maybe a hex is the right tool for the job, and the real gumby is the guy who climbs those routes without hexes.

Sure, as you become a better climber and climb harder routes, you'll find hexes less useful. This is not because of an inherent inferiority of the hex, but rather its relative suitability on the routes you are climbing. But ditching the hexes for cams just because "hard climbers don't carry hexes" is classic gear wankery.

*Yes, there are exceptions. A couple have weighed in in this thread. But I said generally.

Hexes are more trustworthy then Tri cams (not TCUs) and maybe more then Aliens.

Hexes are more trustworthy then Tri cams (not TCUs) and maybe more then Aliens.

Wingardian Leveosa!

Ninjas don't carry hexes.
PT

Actually, there is a little known new design that is a combo hex and throwing star. If you strap the hex in along your leg under your ninja pants it is quiet and will not bang.

I think the point about hexes being more suited to easier terrain, and therefore that "better" climbers doing harder routes therefore tend to use cams instead, is a very good one. But another, related phenomenon is going on here. Cams are expensive, and so are to some extent restricted to more serious climbers, who are likely to climb higher grades. In other words, if you care enough to drop the money for cams, you probably care enough to train, climb, travel, etc and therefore are climbing above a strictly moderate level. Old traditionalist hex users may jump all over me for that, but see my next point:

I also think that a big rack of cams has come to represent a kind of "buy-in" point for trad climbers. Cams are expensive, so if you're just starting out, are young and/or broke, and unsure of your committment to the sport, hexes are attractive because of their price. How many threads have we all seen on this site from beginners wondering whether they can "get by" or "beef up the rack" with hexes? Buying a big rack of cams is a way of announcing to the community (and anyone walking by) that you're a "serious" climber, serious enough to drop several hundred dollars (thousands?!) on fancy gear. Even if YOU don't climb 5.whatever, owning the same gear as the people who DO implies that you are working your way towards that goal, that you've got ambition and dedication. The climbing community definitely respects committment and dedication to the climbing lifestyle, and most people get introduced to climbing in the social atmosphere of a gym or crag where respect matters. So the keen beginner who buys cams over hexes is, in some ways, just announcing his intention not to remain a beginner. Of course, people also hate fakers, hence the usual comments directed at shiny new racks of cams: "Go climbing!" "You're not using that stuff, send it to me..." and so on. Shiny racks give the lie to the whole thing. You bought the rack, but you're not backing up the image with action. So we respect the battered old rack of slung hexes because that person is obviously NOT faking, not buying into marketing, etc. So I guess the worst of all possible worlds would be a shiny new rack of hexes?

Ramble over.

The #11 hex is better than any active cam, I don't care what make, what model, period, no argument, for bludgeoning fools who step on your rope.
;Don

i suppose you could just use hexes if you like using hexes and shut the fuck up if you don't like using them

but that would be too easy