Whether you're just starting out climbing or you're putting the finishing touches to
your lead climbing rack, this chapter will aim to help you gain some of the necessary
skills and techniques of placing protection.
We'll be looking at selection of the most popular types of climbing protection available
and the uses and methods to secure safe placement.
We'll be looking at some of the most popular types of climbing protection available.
So before we talk about how protection actually works, there's a few things you need to consider
that affect all gear placements.
Firstly it's the quality of the rock, invariably it's the rock that will fail before your
piece of gear, so make sure the rock's really solid.
Secondly it's how you place or seat that piece of protection.
You don't want the gear to come out and fall.
And thirdly, it's the direction of the load or the forces on that piece of gear in a fall.
We'll talk about these in a bit more detail later.
It is essential that before you begin placing protection on a lead climb, you learn and gain
experience in the proper methods of gear placement.
There are a number of ways you can practice placing gear.
Put ground level on a traverse for example, or by placing gears if you want a lead climb
but with a top rope in place.
As an example, give yourself a score out of five for the quality of your placement and
then think about what score you'd be happy to fall on.
There's obviously no substitute for learning under the guidance of a qualified climbing
instructor.
Now just have wrapped my gear in my harness.
When you're hanging there, the last thing you want to do is fumble around looking for
it.
Make sure you know where everything is.
Pull my gears in size order and the protection I'm likely to use on the route is towards
the front and the protection I use at the top to belay is towards the back.
I also tend to split my set of nuts and my set of hexes over a couple of carabiners.
Makes life easier.
It's worth noting that in a fall, the only piece of gear that takes only a downward force
is the last piece the climber has placed.
All the other pieces of gear take an outward force, so it makes sense that all your gear
placements are multi-directional where possible.
We also need to think about when and how often to place gear.
Obviously it's necessary to place gear at regular intervals to prevent hitting the ground
so don't wait until you're too far from your last piece of protection.
It's really important to place gear on a traverse to help prevent a swing if your second
falls off.
But most importantly, place your gear as often as you feel necessary where it is safe and
comfortable to do so.
In the 1950s, climbers like Joe Brown picked up machine nuts he found alongside Snowden
Railway to protect routes on cloggy.
Today, nuts come in a range of designs and sizes from a couple of mil to five centimetres.
As a general rule, the larger the piece of gear, the stronger it is.
So I want to put the largest nut in this crack possible, but I'm obviously restricted to
which one sits best.
I'm going to try this number three.
Getting a good fit in the crack is essential to achieve a secure, tight placement, whereby
as much of the nut is in contact with the rock, here you can see where the force is
distributed in the event of a fall.
Nuts can be placed in a number of different positions like this and like this.
Notice how the shape of the nut is curved, allowing three points of contact with the
rock so the maximum amount of force can be distributed.
This allows it also to cam or pivot to create more friction.
Placing gear at the edge of a crack can cause the rock to fracture or even break, but placing
the gear too deep may be hard to place properly and extract.
That seems to work really well.
Going back to those key points, the rock's really solid.
The nut is placed really well and it will take it downward as well as an outward force.
I'm going to put an extender on.
This helps prevent me pulling the gear out as I go past, it also reduces rope drag.
There's nothing worse than going for a big move and having the rope pulling you down
because it's not running smoothly.
The beauty of hexes like nuts is that they come in a range of sizes and designs.
Because of the shape, they can be placed in a number of different positions.
They can be wedged along the wide side, the narrow side, wedged in a horizontal position
and they can also be placed so that they can actively cam when loaded.
I'm going to try this medium sized hex in here.
Seems to work well.
Remember, check the quality of the rock that it's seated really well and we'll take it
downward as well as an outward force.
Put an extender on and I'll be on my way.
In 1978 an American climber named Ray Jardine revolutionised the way we thought about climbing
equipment further.
He developed the world's first camming device, the friend.
It quickly became a favourite among the desert climbers of Utah and the big wallers of Yosemite
and is now an essential part of any rock climbers rack, wherever you climb.
These amazing pieces of engineering can be placed quickly by simply pulling the trigger
which pulls the spring loaded cams in.
Slot the device into the crack, release the trigger and the cams then force into the rock
by the springs and the harder you pull the more the cams come in a variety of sizes and
designs and some like this one have a flexible stem so they can also be placed in horizontal
cracks as well as pockets.
If the device is under camming then it is in danger of simply acting like a wedge and
they're not designed for that.
There mustn't over cam either where the cams are pulled in too far so choose your size
wisely and make sure all the cams are in contact with the rock.
This is ideal and like my other placements the rock is solid and if a cam is seated correctly
it will take a multi-directional force.
I'm going to put an extender on because cams of a tendency were not extended correctly
to walk into a crack making them difficult to retrieve and potentially walk out of the
crack altogether.
The most reliable type of protection you're likely to find is a thread or a sling around
or through a fixed solid natural feature so it's worth carrying a number of long slings.
You can also use them for threads like this behind a chalk stone all around a flake.
It's essential you check the rock you're using it's firmly fixed into place and it's
unlikely to move. Place the sling all the way around the boulder and make sure it won't
slip off.
An anchor like this, it's about as good as it gets.
Okay, it's time for my partner to climb and retrieve the gear that I've placed, hopefully
not too much trouble.
Climbing ready Joe!
Removing protection in theory should be fairly easy. It makes sense before just trying to
yank it out to take a good look at how it went in then removal should be straightforward.
You may need to give it a firm tug to dislodge it but pull too hard and you risk getting
it jammed. If that doesn't work or the placement is hard to reach then you might want to think
about using a nut key to gently ease the placement out.
Apart from learning and experimenting with placing protection before you embark on a
lead climb, make sure you're properly equipped with the right gear and have familiarised
yourself with the manufacturer's instructions, are confident in placing the gear and gain
the necessary experience in order to do so.
There is no shortcut to gaining this knowledge, get instruction from a qualified professional
climbing instructor, and get climbing outdoors, gain the experience and have fun.
