I have all my cams racked with their own individual carabiners. I carry a handful of draws and a few alpine draws. If i want to extend the piece, I 1) place the piece, 2) clip the alpine draw to the sling, 3) extend and clip the sling leaving the original carabiner still on the cam sling. From rock to rope it goes rock-cam-sling-biner,biner-runner-biner-rope (hope that makes sense)

I end up with two carabiners on the cam sling and one clipped into the rope. is this bad for the biners? should i bother taking the original cam biner off and re-racking it?

what are other solutions and how do some of you do it?

thanks,
Crit

I have all my cams racked with their own individual carabiners. I carry a handful of draws and a few alpine draws. If i want to extend the piece, I 1) place the piece, 2) clip the alpine draw to the sling, 3) extend and clip the sling leaving the original carabiner still on the cam sling. From rock to rope it goes rock-cam-sling-biner,biner-runner-biner-rope (hope that makes sense)

I end up with two carabiners on the cam sling and one clipped into the rope. is this bad for the biners? should i bother taking the original cam biner off and re-racking it?

what are other solutions and how do some of you do it?

thanks,
Crit

I have all my cams racked with their own individual carabiners. I carry a handful of draws and a few alpine draws. If i want to extend the piece, I 1) place the piece, 2) clip the alpine draw to the sling, 3) extend and clip the sling leaving the original carabiner still on the cam sling. From rock to rope it goes rock-cam-sling-biner,biner-runner-biner-rope (hope that makes sense)

I end up with two carabiners on the cam sling and one clipped into the rope. is this bad for the biners? should i bother taking the original cam biner off and re-racking it?

what are other solutions and how do some of you do it?

thanks,
Crit

Take'em off... you never know when you'll need a spare biner.

That will likely slow things down if you're swapping leads.

It's a pain in the ass when reracking in general.

I have all my cams racked with their own individual carabiners. I carry a handful of draws and a few alpine draws. If i want to extend the piece, I 1) place the piece, 2) clip the alpine draw to the sling, 3) extend and clip the sling leaving the original carabiner still on the cam sling. From rock to rope it goes rock-cam-sling-biner,biner-runner-biner-rope (hope that makes sense)

I end up with two carabiners on the cam sling and one clipped into the rope. is this bad for the biners? should i bother taking the original cam biner off and re-racking it?

what are other solutions and how do some of you do it?

thanks,
Crit

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Most often I do it the same. Its not biner to biner on the cam though, its two biners side by side on the cam sling, one attached to the runner, the other just hanging there.

You ask if this is bad for the 2nd biner.... and some are laughing at you.

Well... it CAN cause issues. In certain placements the orientation of the biners could emplace the racking biner below the runner biner so that if you fell on it lever action could snap the runner biner like a twig.

That's one concern. For questionable placements and those near an edge, make sure the racking biner is on top and out of the way.

Also, in tight confines, like the narrow back of a wide crack? The two biners can get into a dance of death in there where they are cross clipped and all sorts of what have yous.

If you start watching for potential 'lever-situations' you will start to notice them more and more. I reckon the racking biner gets removed about 5% of the time in my placements, for one reason or another.

Its a valid concern bro.

DMT

Interesting. Had never thought of that. I never remove the racking biner from the cam slings. I have never needed an extra neutrino and it would cause a lot of wasted time in reracking. But I will now start looking for potential levering situations caused by the extra biner, if I can hold on long enough to look.

Yes but that involves removing and reversing the biner.

On a multipitch I will carry 4 single and 2 double slings over my shoulder with a single biner on each. When I need to extend a cam, I'll just clip one of these into the biner on the cam. I also carry trad draws on my harness for clipping nuts, etc.

I rack my gear on my harness, If you use a sling this probably won't work.

I don't disagree with Dingus that the extra biner floppy around could cause a problem, but I'm not generally going to be that worried about.

The biggest issue I see with your setup is the time it takes and using three biners for one placement. Although I realize you don't have to extend every placement.

I have had longer slings sewn on my cams so I don't have to extend them that much. They dangle lower on harner/gear sling but I the tradeoff is worth it.

I also don't understand why so many climbers shorten their slings only to extend them again. I typically carry the full length slings over my shoulder. So it is remove and clip and remove and put over shoulder. This is faster than remove from harness, extend, clip, unclip, shorten, place on harness.

For alpine situations where weight is critical, I carry rabbit runners (a single piece of webbing with small loops sewn in each end). I clip the ends together with one biner and carry it as a loop around my neck. To exend the cam, you unclip the rabbit runner, clip one end to the biner on the cam and the other end (that had the binner holding the loop together) gets clipped to the rope. This is a slow process, but gives a very long sling using only two biners. But in alpine situations it saves weight (rabbit runner and one biner is light), you typically don't make many placements, you typically have good stances, and you often need long extensions to avoid rope drag on wandering terrain.

I also don't understand why so many climbers shorten their slings only to extend them again. I typically carry the full length slings over my shoulder.