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General Climbing Discussion

Topic Date User

Whats a normal rack / How much gear do you take? 25-Aug-2003 At 9:48:27 AM Mike

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On 23/08/2003 A5iswhereitsat wrote:
>How much of each type of pro do you take?

I also get accused of carrying the kitchen sink up routes. The car drops down on it's suspension when my pack goes in and no one ever wants to swap loads on approaches. :-)

But what I actually take up a climb depends greatly on the height, terrian and grade of the pitch. I start with 2.5 sets of nuts, four biggest hexes, 1.5 sets of cams, including doubles of micros, 18 draws of varying lengths, additional slings, and lockers, cordlettes, etc. Then start removing stuff I think I'll not need. The first to go is "big bertha", the number 4.5 camalot. If I'm fairly sure there are no wide cracks the 3.5 and 4 also stay behind. If the pitch is short, I'll halve the nuts, leave one set of micro cams, cut back on short draws and take only the two biggest hexes. Conversely, on say a 45m pitch of scary hard onsighting, I'll take it all, and place most of it, arriving at the belay with maybe two cams and four nuts left, probably having doubled placements before tricky bits or to dog. Then I sit and listen to Kent curse my wall nuts as he tries to clean them. :-)