Why to most climbers carry more stoppers on their racks than hexes?

Yea I was thinking of buying some small hex's to supplement my BD stoppers. Because it seems to me there are times where a small hex could double as a stopper yet a stopper couldn't really double as a small hex.

I think the fued is actually hex vs. SLCD, rather than hex vs. stopper. Hexes are more a passive cam than chock, so you're kinda comparing chickens and sheep. Sure, they're both barnyard animals...

Hexes have been steadily declining in use, because SLCDs are easier to learn to place well and are more forgiving in slightly off-sized cracks. Besides, a rack of cams is way sexier than a rack of cowbells.

What the hell's with me and farm animals?!

Anyway, if you think hexes are cool, check out tricams.

when did hexes get harder to place? tcu are some of the hardest peices of gear to place you have to make sure those bugers don't shift on you. hexes are as straight forward as nuts for the most part; unless you mean there easer to plug and go then i will give you that. 4 cams are really nice plug and go peice for the most part as long as you place them right , but that goes for any peice of gear.

Of course it depends on the placement but small wired hexes can be a bit of a pain in a fair amount of placements in vertical cracks because the wire is ofset to help them cam but that can make them sticky trying to get them into a good position because the side of the crack is forcing the wire to cam them before you want (there are a couple of tricks that help in some situations but they require an even better eye and an extra step or two). If they aren't wired they're hard to get into position because it's hard to fit your finger and thumb so you can manipulate them easily where you want them to go. Though the advent of stiff high strength cord has helped a bit for a reasonable amount of placements. I forgot I probably did most of my cursing of them in the 80's (pre high strength cord) but even when small hexes have a stiff cord wired stoppers are more often easier to place well. By the time they're the size you can get your finger and thumb into the crack easily they're generally relatively easy to place wired or not but you're out of stopper territory then.

Small cams can be a pain in well featured rock and beautiful in cracks with relatively unfeatured sides. There are cracks that are even enough that as long as you pick the right size you don't have to worry about much else (I'm not advocating plugging them in and not checking) and the there are pocked cracks from hell where you have to be very precise about where each lobe is sitting. I like tricams when things get bumpy find a spot for the nose and 9 places out of ten with proper handling the rails take care of themselves. As long as you are profiecient with the pro the "best" rack is a "local" rack.

even though you wrote a betifull peice i still have to say cams are harder for the novice climber to place i have seen enough of my friends make the mistake of pluging and going just to have the cams come out before i even get there just because when they set it it was good.... there passive gear nuts hexes tricams seem always bomber. and yes i have climbed on a mixed form of pro taking rock and i know sometimes cams are better in some placements, but as for someone not familure at all with gear they always seem to know a nut is in a good placement compared to cams, and to get some one to relize a cam needs a directional sometimes is almost impossible for them (compared to directional nuts)to comperhend unless they have followed you up something were you have done it before not many of these placements out there i am sure but i have come across one.

Probably my bad for the misunderstanding. Had a weird few weeks, basically I was trying to disuade people from buying small hex instead of an extra set of stoppers and explian why people had fewer hexes than stoppers (not many carry the small ones). I thought you were arguing that small hexes were easy to place using my definition (get in position). If you replace the word place in what you just wrote with evaluate or place properly I agree with pretty much everything you just said. Think we just were using different meaning of the same word. Small hexes aren't that hard to evaluate they can just be a pain getting them where you want in a position you want. I use the phrase harder to place strickly to talk about the physical act of getting the piece where it needs to go. I use harder to evaluate, find etc. placements for everything else. Do we agree or am I still missing something.