I'm very new to trad, i've done 15 leads, I've finally started testing my pieces while on lead with takes and bounce tests and so far its all holding. Was planning on taking a lead fall on a piece (found a route that has bolts and a good crack thought that would be a good testing place, back up placement with bolt... thoughts welcome to this approach)

... of course I'm always interested in other similarly experienced opinions and views

Instead of training yourself to minimize your fear, you should be training yourself to live with it and manage it. This is a much longer process, and more uncomfortable, so it's kind of out of fashion these days. But it's really not complex, and people have been doing it a long time. The technique is as follows: Work your way up through the grades, placing lots of good gear. And when the opportunity arises, follow more experienced trad leaders. Eventually, you will gain an appropriate level of confidence, know what you can do, and how to do it, and will start pushing your limits. Then falls will start happening, and if you're doing things right, they'll be happening in appropriate circumstances (right gear, right terrain, etc).

Rather than training yourself to deal with fear, train yourself to recognize fear that's driven by actual risk and fear that is not. Differentiating the two will help minimize the irrational fear while your rational fears keep you safe.

One component of actual risk is how much you can trust your pieces. That's why I don't get why many in this thread frown on safe practice falls. Of course you can get overconfident, but that's your problem that you drew the wrong conclusions from your experiment.

Eliminate fear of falling. Fear of falling is a natural instinct. It should remain for
good reason where the fall is genuinely dangerous due to poor gear or other
hazards that make a ground fall possible. But most of us are crippled by a fear
of falling per se, even though many falling situations are very safe. Taking safe
falls because you have pushed yourself to your physical limit is essential if you
want to reach anywhere near your potential. This irrational fear of safe falls
only exists because of unfamiliarity. You must break the cycle by practising
safe falls regularly. Don’t shirk form this – there is no other way! Start off on
bolts, with progressively bigger falls and then progress to trad climbs where
the gear is unquestionable and backed up. You’ll need to do it often, not as a
once off. The mind needs to be constantly reminded that safe falls are safe to
avoid slipping back into a cycle of fear.

from how to climb hard trad by dave macleod ...

Eliminate fear of falling. Fear of falling is a natural instinct. It should remain for
good reason where the fall is genuinely dangerous due to poor gear or other
hazards that make a ground fall possible. But most of us are crippled by a fear
of falling per se, even though many falling situations are very safe. Taking safe
falls because you have pushed yourself to your physical limit is essential if you
want to reach anywhere near your potential. This irrational fear of safe falls
only exists because of unfamiliarity. You must break the cycle by practising
safe falls regularly. Don’t shirk form this – there is no other way! Start off on
bolts, with progressively bigger falls and then progress to trad climbs where
the gear is unquestionable and backed up. You’ll need to do it often, not as a
once off. The mind needs to be constantly reminded that safe falls are safe to
avoid slipping back into a cycle of fear.

from how to climb hard trad by dave macleod ...

[..] This irrational fear of safe falls only exists because of unfamiliarity. You must break the cycle by practising safe falls regularly. Don’t shirk form this – there is no other way! [..] from how to climb hard trad by dave macleod ...

You will, of course, notice that the title of his book is not "Advice for new trad leaders"

One component of actual risk is how much you can trust your pieces. That's why I don't get why many in this thread frown on safe practice falls. Of course you can get overconfident, but that's your problem that you drew the wrong conclusions from your experiment.

It bothers me when new leaders tell me they try not to think about falling when they're leading. It's important to ALWAYS think about falling.

Maybe it's the engineer in me, but I've never found it very difficult to assess the quality of a placement. To those that it doesn't come natural to, practice with someone experienced and have them review your placements. Really, the physics is simple.

The most unpredictable factor in the strength of a placement is the rock quality. Still, experience and careful assessment will tell you a lot about that too.

Another poster mentions an unreferenced "BD study" that claims 1 in 10 "good" placements fail. In 9 years of climbing (mostly gear protected) and probably 2-3 dozen lead falls, probably about the same number of hangs on gear, countless anchors, and even a little simple/basic aid, I've NEVER had a placement fail under load in any of those situations.

That BD study worries me, the conclusions that it draws is poor science. Pieces don't fail with a random probability. The physics and engineering of climbing gear is well known and understood. A good piece in good rock won't fail.

The reference to the BD study is wrong on two accounts. First, the study was done by the developer of Metolius cams. Second, he observed a 1 in 20 failure rate for cams judged to be good, but he did make placements in all types of rock and in various conditions, including wet conditions. The color-coding of Metolius cams to help inexperienced people with placements was one of the outcomes of this study.

I wouldn't ascribe much significance to the 1 in 20 number, although it is nice to have something to wave around when people speak about bombproof cam placements.

What is significant is that someone with enormous expertise finds, on experimenting, that he cannot always predict that a cam placement is good.

My advice is to keep your aid climbing and your free climbing separate.

[..]when I took up aid climbing, it changed my free climbing perspective significantly. Seeing how my placements worked under load exposed much of my unfounded fear during free climbing. Placements that I previously believed were "dicey" were shown to be bomber[..]

I don't agree with anybody who says fear is inherently good. It's an instinctual reaction that impairs logical thought, and hence—my opinion here—it is antithetical to safe climbing.

Strictly speaking, this is good advice. However, when I took up aid climbing, it changed my free climbing perspective significantly. Seeing how my placements worked under load exposed much of my unfounded fear during free climbing. Placements that I previously believed were "dicey" were shown to be bomber. My appreciation and trust of a good nut placement, for example, which I really learned during aid climbing, has enabled me to truly *free* climb through situations where I was previously bound by fear. It is no longer a question of whether the placement will hold. It is all about whether I can hold on. In other words, aid climbing has educated me on what the actual boundaries of safety are, reducing the grey zone and expanding my view of what I am capable of.

For me at least, aid climbing upped my free climbing abilities by at least one full grade. For this reason, I believe that aid is a fast track for improving one's trad free climbing ability, and so I recommend it to everyone.

Fear itself does not impair logical thought. Panic impairs logical thought. Fear places emphasis on survival rather than other goals without it focus on other goals may distract somebody from what matters.

Fear keeps us alive out there.

Does anybody here have a copy of this study or know where one can be obtained? These statistics are useless if we can't evaluate how they were produced. Jay

1. No matter how good a placement looks, you can never be sure it will hold.
During my tests, about one in twenty good-looking placements pulled out when loaded. The challenge is to figure out why the cam pulled, and what could have been done to prevent this from happening.

To understand why cams fail, we classify pullouts into six basic categories:

Lubricants (water, dirt, dust, moss, ice)
Poor rock quality
Cam movement (walking, misaligned)
Poor placement
Cam design
Poor maintenance
Lubricants
Anything that gets between the aluminum cam lobe and the solid rock wall can act as a lubricant reducing the friction. Water is an obvious lubricant as is dirt or fine dust. A dirty seeping crack with a thin layer of moss can cause an otherwise good placement to consistently pull out.

Poor rock quality
There are three categories of rock to avoid: soft, smooth, and weak:

Soft rock tends to crush under the load of a fall. The crushed particles act as a lubricant causing the cam to slip. After this type of failure, the cam lobes will often be coated with a thin film of pulverized rock.
Smooth or polished rock will not allow the cams to grip. Smooth stone can be found in water polished cracks as well as glacier polished stone. It is very unnerving to watch a cam consistently pull out of a super smooth crack that would otherwise be a perfect placement.
Weak or fractured rock will break, causing the cam to loose traction. When a cam pulls out of seemingly solid stone, I often find a small piece of fractured rock near one of the cam lobes. Occasionally a larger chunk of stone gets blown out of the crack due to an existing fracture or weakness in the rock.

Cam movement
Cams will move from the motion of a passing climber, rope action and impact from a fall. This movement can lead to pullout failures, as the cam is no longer positioned to hold a fall. To prevent this, place the cam so it has room to move and still remain in a good camming position. A long sling will reduce unwanted movement and allow you to fall on the next piece without putting any outward tension on the lower cam. Cam pullout failures commonly occur with a sharp outward or sideways pull rather than the downward pull you had intended.

Poor placement
Wide flares, bottoming cracks and irregular rock features make it difficult to get solid cam placements. Help optimize the security of a placement by maximizing cam-to-rock contact. Place good gear before and after difficult-to-protect sections. In my tests, I have occasionally been surprised by a bad looking placements that hold when drop tested. Most of the time however, if a cam looks bad, it will pull out.

Cam Design
The brand of cam makes a difference. Metolius cams are made with holding power as the primary design criteria. The main variables are cam angle, aluminum alloy, surface contact area, and cam alignment.

Cam angle
The cam angle we use is 13.25 degrees. This sacrifices range, but increases outward force, making the cams harder to pull out.

Aluminum alloy
Our aluminum alloy is 7075 for small and midrange cams and 6061 for larger sizes. The 7075 is stronger, maintaining cam shape under load in the small sizes. This is less of an issue in the large cams, so we switch to the lighter weight, less expensive, 6061.

Surface contact area
Surface contact area is important. More surface area will create more friction increasing the cam’s security. Also, more surface area spreads the load more, improving holding power in soft or weak stone. Our Fat Cams were designed with this in mind.

Cam alignment
Maximize holding power by lining up the cam lobes with the direction of pull. The original Friends did this by using a rigid stem. The Metolius cam’s relatively stiff “U” shaped body aligns the cam lobes with the direction of pull.

Poor maintenance
Like all technical equipment, cams require maintenance. This includes cleaning, lubrication, replacing old or worn slings and repairing frayed trigger wires. Be sure to retire worn out cams.


2. Place two good cams at critical spots
Because one in 20 cams pull, reduce cam pullout by putting in a second good piece. This gives you a 99.75% chance that one placements will hold. Equalize them if possible.

3. Place the cam in as fully retracted a position as possible without getting it stuck. This is the green zone on our Range Finder system.
Tight placements help to guard against the following types of pullout:

Pullout due to cam movement
Rope movement shifts cams. Long slings help, but you can increase security by placing the largest cam possible. If the cam moves to a wider crack section it will still have good contact with all four cams.

Pullout due to poor rock quality
If the rock on one side of the crack fails the cam lobes on that side will begin to slip. A cam with a tight placement (green zone) has a better chance of holding. If the rock on both sides of the crack fails, the lobes dig into the rock. The tighter the placement, the more the cam can expand before failure.

Pullout due to lubrication
When the cam pulls because of wet or dirty conditions it will move through several inches of crack before failure. If only one side of the crack is wet or dirty, the cam lobes on the wet side will tend to slip first. If the cam is in an open position the cams on the dry side will tip out and the placement will fail. In a tight placement the cams on the dry side will not tip out, greatly increasing the chance the placement will hold. I’ve observed a tight cam placement jamming just below the original placement.

In another thread, a poster asked this question:


It's an important topic worth discussing, so rather than burying it on page 4 of a thread about something else, I'm responding here.

Ecade - I know you're working on aid climbing too. My advice is to keep your aid climbing and your free climbing separate. There are a number of reasons I hope you'll consider this.

1 - When trad climbing, the objective is to climb cleanly from bottom to top, placing gear as you go. This is a mindset that requires a great deal of focus, and a number of techniques that are specific to the discipline, as opposed to what you might do when sport climbing. These are habits of mind that need to be trained, just like physical techniques. Get in the habit of falling and weighting pieces, and you're creating the wrong mindset.

2 - As a new leader, some of the gear you think is bomber probably isn't. This is true for *all* trad leaders, but more so for the n00b.

3 - The place to practice bouncing on gear is 1 - On the ground, where you'll fall six inches if the piece blows, or 2 - On an aid climb, where you'll fall six feet in overhanging terrain. On a free climb, where the gear is placed much less frequently than an aid climb, and there is usually much more to hit (all those lovely free-climbing holds and ledges) a fall can be much more dangerous.

4 - There is a trend these days born of the fear than is inherent in trad climbing. I'll see if I can explain it. It goes something like this:
- Leading trad is scary.
- Fear is uncomfortable.
- People don't like being uncomfortable.
- Therefore, people look for techniques to minimize or eliminate the fear.
- New leaders are told to practice falling to gain trust in their gear.
- This does a nice job in minimizing or eliminating the fear of falling on gear.

This is the wrong approach. The whole point of it is wrong. The fear one feels trad climbing is entirely appropriate. Gear fails, and falls have consequences. Not every time, or even most times, but eventually. And some people get unlucky, and that first real fall is the last one they take. Don't test your luck, and don't train yourself to feel that testing your luck is a good thing. An old saying in trad climbing is that you've got to fill up your bag of tricks before your bag of luck runs out.

Instead of training yourself to minimize your fear, you should be training yourself to live with it and manage it. This is a much longer process, and more uncomfortable, so it's kind of out of fashion these days. But it's really not complex, and people have been doing it a long time. The technique is as follows: Work your way up through the grades, placing lots of good gear. And when the opportunity arises, follow more experienced trad leaders. Eventually, you will gain an appropriate level of confidence, know what you can do, and how to do it, and will start pushing your limits. Then falls will start happening, and if you're doing things right, they'll be happening in appropriate circumstances (right gear, right terrain, etc).

Of course you will do what seems best to you, but I hope you'll consider the above.

Cheers!

GO

Howdy,


This labour day I went to Montagne D'Argent with some friends, they have strong granite like rock with nice sexy cracks :)

I climbed a 5.8 hand-finger crack, I climb harder sport lines but have limited, especially by comparison, crack climbing experience. This crack just seemed to be a crack in the earth, some what of a rarity in Ontario.

Anyways, 6' up, there was a small bulge, and the crack was slightly overhung, so I placed below it, pulling the bulge, I fell. my #2 cam held, i tried again, I fell. I treid again, I fell, I tried again, I pulled! I found a stance, I placed a #4 master cam and moved up the line. came to a good stance and solid #5 walnut, I placed. I moved a foot past, I fell. Tried again, fell, rest a minute, tried again, made it.

Was a 3 star at Paroi Du lac, couldn't find it on this site, have to review in my guidebook, at office now.

(star ratings denote protection options, upper portion, was thinner protection but there is a big tree that overhangs at the top by the top out. And I believe you are allowed to or well otherwise I at least sling cedar, in ontario they burn you at the stake for that :)

It has a 5.9 bolted line next to it.

did you make it out to MD?

Yeah.

If you're looking for a more... traditional and reasonable crack at Montagne d'Argent, I'd suggest M & M wall -- in particular Krakabra (5.7+) and M & M (5.8).

M&M: https://www.thecrag.com/photo/213238416

I top roped both, and later led Krakabra, nice lead, much easier, great gear, and unlike my experience in the rockies, no worries regarding route finding :)
Never led M&M thoughtthat to place would be difficult and streneous, and that made me nervous, but ya, she is a crack and half, gear every cm if you are so inclined to place it and have no hand or foot holds. I had planned on leading it, but after taking those falls I decided that it wasn't worth pushing my luck and that i'd progressed well this season, best to hold off, read and learn, they'll always be another season, well provided... :)

you going back for thanksgiving?

I think BD determined that 1/10 "good placements" will still fail. Taking unnecessary falls is up to you, but they aren't required to determine a good piece