UKC

Planning my first trip to Subluminal and wondering if it’s worth bringing my cams, given what I’ve heard about their questionable holding power on the limestone there. I’ll mostly be climbing the Severes, maybe Freda (VS 5a) if they go well. Am I better off just bringing hexes (in addition to doubles of nuts)? Do Totems work well there (I don’t have any yet, but I’m curious)? 

Take cams - totems are pretty good on lime.

Its been a while since I climbed at Swanage, but generally I found medium to large nuts and hexes the most useful gear, I rarely used cams (but took them just in case!)

Nothing wrong with cams at Swanage, its not the hard shiny limestone of some other venues. 

No harm in bringing them, although the majority of placements will be wires/hexes.

Watcha doing going to Swanage? Go to Pembroke! It's like Swanage but approximately 2 billion times better!

Did you enjoy Cornwall btw? Brilliant place.

Haha I know, I know! But we have a place to stay in Dorset for the holiday weekend. Cornwall is still to come — mid-September. Pembroke remains high on the list, but probably not till the drier months... 

Yes! I always place cams at Swanage; those diddy metolius ones seem to go in lots of places (not sure what they’re like compared to the totems). 

To be fair though, I probably use cams way too much and ignore big nuts and hexes so I might not be the greatest advisor...
 

Do they work better in loose, muddy limestone?

Pembroke really is not 2 million times better than Swanage. It's a lot more immediately accessible (I don't mean geographically), and bigger, but the best Swanage routes are as good.

To the OP: of course you should take cams. A friend of mine thoughtfully tested whether they work at Swanage by falling two-thirds of the height of the crag on to one recently. Turns out they do, fortunately.

jcm