UKC

After a seven year lay off I am back into climbing, and after a good winter down the wall looking forward to getting back out in the Peak.

Looking through my rack, nothing is newer that 10 years old and most is considerably older...    So I am going treat myself to lots of new shiny things, so recommendations please.    

What are best cams, nuts, quickdraws, slings, krabs etc.     I also have plans for some big alpine rock routes this summer and a windy trip to Scotland last weekend as refreshed my passion for ice so looking for light all purpose light gear.

Thanks in advance

Nuts are much the same as they were 10 years ago but slightly lighter.  Rocks, Wallnuts and Offsets are very good.  BD stoppers are similar to Rocks but go down to smaller sizes.

Dyneema has largely taken over from nylon for slings.  Very light and strong but they don't stretch at all so you need to be careful about shock loading.

Lots of good cams around - they have proliferated since some key patents ran out about a decade ago.  I haven't bought any for a couple of years so I'm not going to try and guess which are best.

Personally, I would favour a set of Dragon cams from 00 to 5. I use mine constantly and the extendable sling means they rarely need a quickdraw. Since cams go in so beautifully on grit and the routes are so short, that means I only need to carry a tiny number of quickdraws on most routes. Sometimes just a couple.

Having said that, there are loads of good options in cams these days and most of them tick a lot of the same boxes. I know from experience that the Dragons are good but I can't say that I've really compared them to other modern options by personal experience.

I've got a full set of BD Camalots but if I was buying today I would be looking closely at Totems.  DMM Phantom krabs and QD's are very light but if you have big hands you could find them a little on the small side but I love them.  Nuts are nuts and there is not a great deal of difference so it comes down to personal choice. With slings dyneema is the way to go and you can get some very thin ones these days that make good "alpine draws".  If you haven't heard of that, they are 60cm slings that you double up to make a 60cm extender or a shorter QD. Invaluable for trad especially.

Al

Blimey there is some fancy kit these days, ultralight Camelot’s, superlight rocks, magnetron krabs, 19g krabs!

This could be fun

I second the DMM offsets and totem cam recommendations. 

Totem aliens for the small cams

Ultralight camalots up to 4

Dmm Wallnuts and offsets and RP's

Dmm phantom carrabiners and QD's

use 60cm 8mm slings for some alpine draws

In terms of nuts and and hexes I don't think you can wrong buying a DMM protection pack https://www.v12outdoor.com/dmm-nut-set-3-wallnut-1-11-alloy-7-11-torque-1-4... and a set of Wild Country's Superlight offsets for some doubles and to use as a lighter set of nuts on alpine routes and harder scrambling, https://www.dicksclimbing.com/products/wild-country-offset-rocks-set-5-10?v... 

I've got a mix of various DMM carabiners, ideally I'd just have phantoms, shadows, sentinels and a couple of boas. The phantoms are superlight, the sentinels really light for how many clove hitches you can get on them and boas are useful since there so big! 

Dyneema slings are the way to go, look out for various sling pack deals to get the best value for money. 

You can get superlight quickdraws, but they're useless if you can't use them whilst wearing gloves. I use DMM spectres because they're really good value for money, but the new chimera's might be worth a look. Definitely make a few slingdraws as Gridnorth described, I don't ever climb without mine.

Cams, I don't think anyone set is best. Aliens/Totem basics are best in the small sizes. Just avoid the now discounted Alien Evolutions, the Alien Revolutions are much better! Totem cams are best in the small to medium sizes (blue to red) and then personally I like DMM dragons in the larger sizes (green to silver).

One item that never leaves my harness is a dmm phantom with two prusics and a trango piranha knife, weighs nothing but really useful if you ever need to replace tat! 

I'm a big fan of Totems too - I have a set from blue to red, and then Dragons from gold to silver. I used to have a second rack of 3/4CUs but recently sold them, and I think as a grit climber mostly I'm going to overlap the Totems and Dragons  - so buy an orange Totem and a red Dragon, and then if I feel the need for a full second set of cams I'll probably get a set of Dragons.

I replaced all my wiregate krabs with DMM Chimeras last year, really like the clean nose design on them, though they are a bit small (not found it a major issue personally, but can be fiddly especially when wearing big gloves in winter). I'd still get the same if I was making the choice again.

If you're building a new rack, one note of warning: I carefully colour-coordinated everything but my climbing partner subsequently told me I did it wrong and should have consulted him first. It's become an on-going bone of contention. For the record, my colour system is excellent, but now I have to frequently explain/justify it.

Last week I was in Llanberis for the first time in many years and spent an hour looking in the shops.

One shop, I think it was called V12 or something like that, had a whole wall, not part of a wall but a whole wall, full of nothing but different types of karabiners.

I could have spent hours looking, touching, opening and closing gates,,screwing and unscrewing, twisting and pulling, comparing weights, colours, sizes and prices.

Talk about spoilt for choice!  

And then there were the boots, slings, belay devices, etc, etc.

Good luck in the search for your new gear  

For cams, I'd go Totems in all the sizes they do, then either Camalots, Dragons or possibly even the new WC Friends in the bigger sizes.

DMM brass offsets for micros and Wallnuts and Offsets for bigger sizes.

Forget about hexes for grit.

Totem cams 

BD - C4 and C3

Phantom biners 

Beal 6mm 60cm slings

A few comments, some echoing what others have said, some mentioning a few other options.

There's pretty much nothing much to choose between Black Diamond Camalots (and Ultralights/X4s), DMM Dragons and the latest Wild Country cams. They all now use the same double axle design and have basically the same sizes in the same colours. Go with any of them and you can't really go too far wrong. Also, lots of other climbers will be perfectly happy using your rack as they'll be used to the fairly standard colour coding of the sizes.

It's certainly worth having a play with the Totem cams. Their design certainly has advantages in some less than ideal placements. Some climbers are totally convinced by them, although it's still a minority.

When it comes to wires, the "majority verdict" is very much going with DMM Wallnuts and DMM Alloy Offsets. Unless you have a very particular favoured rock type or strong preferences, that's the obvious starting point.

For wiregate carabiners and quickdraws the first option worth looking at and then comparing everything else against is the DMM Spectre 2. It's still a great krab and crazy good value for money. Wild Country Heliums are a better full-size option but are literally twice the price. DMM Phantom, DMM Alpha Trad, DMM Chimera and Petzl Ange are all great but again cost significantly more. Also plenty of other lighter options like the Camp Nano and Black Diamond Neutrino but they are still a premium over the Spectre 2. What you feel is a sensible trade-off between cost and weight/performance is very much a personal decision.

For 120cm slings, the Edelrid Aramid slings are worth a look. They are pretty much indestructible and when knotted are super easy to untie. Admittedly they are not as light as the lovely Mammut Contact 8mm slings but more and more climbers I know are switching to them.

Anyway, hope that's useful.

For Winter climbing I rack all my cams and hexes on full-size DMM Spectre 2 krabs. All my quickdraws are full-size Wild Country Heliums. I find anything else too small and fiddly to use with gloves.

For rock climbing, I switch all my racking krabs to DMM Phantoms but just stick with the Helium draws as I can't justify completely separate Summer and Winter racks.

Some climbers use very lightweight (i.e. smaller) krabs in Winter but it's certainly worth considering whether you're still happy with handling them in whatever gloves you will be climbing in.

I agree with pretty much everything else you’ve written, however the Aramid slings are far from indescribable. I seems to go through about 2 a year. They are excellent from a guiding/instructing point of view, but I’m not sure they of much use to the recreational climber, unless they block lead a lot.

I like to have at least one skinny Mammut 120 for thin threads. 

They're good for threads due to their stiffness. I have a couple of 60cm ones racked as extenders and find they're a good compliment to my other 60cm slings. I wouldn't get any in 120cm though; I rack my 120cm slings around my shoulder and the aramid slings are too stiff for that, they have a habit of falling off or generally getting in the way.

Thanks all, lots of money spent .   Lots of totems, a couple of larger ultralights, superlight offsets, phantoms, a few aramid slings.   

Duuude? Seriously?

I’m pretty sure I just heard the “screech of souls” of you causing both Pandora’s box and the gates of Hell to open simultaneously. 

And I refuse to bite/get thee behind me Satan. 

May you burn in Hell damn you. 

Kind Regards,

Jonny. 

You’re welcome. I’ll be here all week (trying to cancel the Apocalypse you may have started).