UKC

Just about to order some gear to give me a complete rack of my own - is there anything obvious missing? Would you recommend some of the passive pro for cams? This is what I'll end up with:

Full set of walnuts
3-8 wc nuts
Set of torque nuts
Set of dmm offsets
Set of micro walnuts
Half a dozen slings 60-240cm
Dozen qd 18cm
Belay device, prussiks, nut key
Variety of hms and smaller screw gates
Torque nuts individually racked, the rest racked across prob 3-4 krabs

Thanks for any advice

In reply to mcanuda:

I don't even know what torque nuts are - if you're starting out, you don't need fancy nuts of all different shapes. A set of wires (with doubles in the middle sizes maybe) and few cams is what you need.

In reply to Jon Stewart:
Cheers Jon,

I think I've got doubles in the middle sizes with the wild country nuts. The torque nuts seemed quite versatile and good to have as I want to do some winter stuff.

Worth looking at the torque nuts on dmm's website or here: http://www.ukclimbing.com/gear/review.php?id=2112

In reply to mcanuda:

Looks good. Torque nuts are DMM's brilliant take on hexes, keep them. I'd lose the micros until you're doing routes that need them, maybe? Maybe save towards a cam

Only thing is your quickdraws look short for trad. Personally I use half about 30 cm, and half 60 cm "slingdraws."

In reply to mcanuda:
Oh right, they're hexes. Not a fan: totally unnecessary if you have cams (which fit a million more placements), horrible to remove on second, and then there's the stupid jangly noise they make, the icing on the cake of their shitness.

Edit: btw I don't go winter climbing and I climb on grit a lot.

In reply to mcanuda:

This set would probably be a good bet:
http://www.dicksclimbing.com/products/dmm-protection-set
I'm not sure what kind of grades you're leading, however if it's VS or below you will likely not get a great deal of use out of micro nuts and would be better off putting the money toward a cam. Offsets are amazing on rhyolite and they roughly fill in as duplicates of the mid sized wallnuts when you're climbing long pitches which take a lot of gear so you would not need the Wild Country nuts. I would definitely recommend having your torque nuts racked individually as that way you can save on quickdraws. Sling wise I would suggest 2 120cm and 1 240 cm sling, 60cm slings are useful for making up sling draws, a good deal on slings can be found here:
http://www.v12outdoor.com/product.php/4432/dmm-11mm-sling-pack-deal
With regards quick draws I'd suggest stripping at least 3 draws down to make up sling draws using the above 60cm slings (it's usually to cheaper to buy a quick draw rather than 2 krabs), assuming that you then want a total of 12 draws I would suggest 4 25cm draws and the rest 18cm. This way you have plenty of options with regards length of your quick draws and should not have issues with drag on most routes if your ropework is any good.
Screwgate wise a DMM Boa or similar sized screwgate is useful for equalising anchors as you can fit 3 clove hitches on comfortably.
For Jon, Torque Nuts are DMM's version of hexes.

In reply to Jon Stewart:

What? Sacrilege. The gentle bonging of two giant hexes bumping in to each other is one of the most evocative and beautiful sounds there is. Like the thwack of leather on willow on a warm summers day, the gentle cow-belling of huge hexes as you are liberally doused in spindrift is just beautiful.

To recycle the old Steve Ashton line about hexes is even better

b

In reply to mcanuda:
Cams instead of micro,s , torque, and offsets ( which look like a third set to me)
http://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/t.php?n=620637

In reply to mcanuda:

I think you should slow down with the purchases. Unless you are leading HVS in which case why the hell aren't cams on your list!? One of the joys of trad is the slow development of your rack to suit your climbing aims and the more you buy in the early days the more you will discard in due course.

For your early leads a full set wires of 1-11 is essential. Torque nuts are great for winter but slow to place and by the time you are leading VS you'll wish you had bought cams instead. For a second set of wires get the 5 DMM alloy AND 3 largest brass offsets (Wallnut equivalent 1-3) UNLESS you mostly climb on grit in which case the WC superlight offsets give you more placement flexibility.

I'd echo what others have said about extendable QDs (slingdraws).

Let the micros wait until you're climbing HVS and then get a combination of smaller brass offsets and other micros (BD swedges are great)

And start saving for cams!! V12 do DMM Dragons in good value sets of 3+.

In reply to mcanuda:

Thanks for all the replies. Some useful advice there. I will look again at cams and see if I can sort something there. I had seen the deals on V12's website - certainly some good value there.

Just for clarity I have some of this already - I'm not buying everything in one go

What sizes of cam would be best to start with? (It would be dmm dragon or demon prob).

Cheers

In reply to mcanuda:
My first cams (just over a year ago) were dragons 2, 3 and 4 (green, red, yellow) - it's a decent selection. I'm happy with those for mountain routes. If I were primarily climbing on gritstone outcrops I might consider 1, 2, 3. (I now own no. 1 as well.)

They supplement the torque nuts nicely, i.e. there's always the blue torque nut for massive cracks.

In reply to mcanuda:

I pretty much exclusively climb on grit and I found all I needed was one set of nuts and size 1-4 cams. This did me fine leading upto VS. Absolutely no need to get sucked into buying more. Might be different for other rock types but for grit the above would be fine.

In reply to ralphio:

But for Lake District you need at least 3 red offsets per pitch

In reply to BnB:


Fully agree with the 3 largest brass offsets - they have been my bomber placements when nothing else would work, many times. Just make sure you tell your second how to clean them (hard yanking wrecks them quickly, precise nut-keying is best). I have placed them a few times on grit too, but not as often as on other rock types.

For connecting to anchors, a Dmm Boa is highly recommended, or a Petzl William (I think those are the equivalent ones) - they are bigger than standard HMS and more friendly for this purpose.

Some people might not agree, but I find a mixture of nylon and dyneema slings is good. The 8mm dyneema ones are great for rigging and threading tiny holes, and I often prefer the 16mm nylon ones for slinging flakes - as they feel like they won't "roll over the top" as much. Also the nylon ones are a bit better for cowstails, as they don't snap as easily as dyneema when shock-loaded.

In reply to mcanuda:

Do make sure you have 2 or 3 hexes of different sizes. Even if u don't use them on the route itself they come in so handy so often when setting up belay at the top after a lead!

In reply to mcanuda:

Seconding what other people have already said:
Longer quickdraws if you haven't already bought them (25cm over 18cm, I have about 50/50 plus slingdraws)
Don't worry too much about micro gear until you have some cams.

What kinds of rock do you climb on? If you climb on granite, bigger cams are good; on limestone I am told smaller cams are good. I don't do grit but I'm told the cam/nut balance is more in favour of cams (whereas I could quite happily climb easy stuff on Cornish granite without cams if I had to although Haytor would be distinctly less fun). If you are climbing on culm/Baggy Point sandstone then smaller nuts are good but offsets are a bit naff :P

In reply to SenzuBean:


Your statement is true but if you are shockloading any kind of sling you are doing it wrong! (and you will never snap a sling by falling on it until you would probably be dead anyway...)

In reply to mcanuda:

Where will you mostly be climbing?

Looks reasonable to me but personally I'd get a few hand sized cams ahead of the Offsets (which are brilliant) and the Torques if it's for Grit. If it's for Limestone the Torquenuts and extra nuts are a better bet than cams. If it's for Volcanics (Lakes & Wales) the Offsets are worth their weight in gold. I'd also get very few screwgates, maybe one HMS for your belay plate plus one or two smaller pearshapes. Ditch the 240 sling in favor of a handful of 60s to make slingdraws, learn to tie a bowline/clovehitch and the rope is much more versatile than a 240. A couple of 120s are useful for spikes/flakes in the mountains.

jk

In reply to andrewmcleod:


Well to put my statements in context, the cowstail is to protect you while you faff on a ledge - if you slipped/tripped (not necessarily into free space, but enough to make the sling taut), then you would hope that it would hold you. Maybe most people don't consider this type of fall a shock-load? As far as I'm concerned if there's no rope, then it's a shock load.
But yes - never fall onto a sling!

In reply to mcanuda:

It does depend a bit where you climb. When I climbed mostly in the Lower Wye i did not not need cams and I needed doubles of Nuts 1-5 for definite.

If climbing trad and not on pretty much straight up climbs what is your rope situation? I have a couple of 50m Halves (which I will replace with sixties when I need to) and a 6om single.

Cams are lovely but I did manage without due to the cost for a while using hexes and then tri-cams which I think are brilliant.

In reply to mcanuda:

Climbing could be anywhere from Wye Valley, to Peak District to Lake District or North Wales, although I'm off to the Cairngorms next month for a week )

Will review the qd situ following all your comments - I had read a lot of differing reports on qd length but generally, longer seems to be the received wisdom.

I'm gonna ditch the micros for definite, just debating over the rest and working out what I can afford - the shiny shiny is calling to me though

Thanks again for all the input.