UKC

I’m learning to lead climb (after a couple of years indoor bouldering and outdoor seconding) and would like some advice on cams.

I currently second up to VS level (HVS on a good day) and that’s the level I (eventually) want to get to with leading as well. I already have a set of DMM nuts size 1-11 and torque nuts 1-4, but no cams. They're expensive kit and I want to get the best value.

So, given the above:

• if you had to get rid of all your cams but ONE, which size would you keep? What's the one you reach for more than any other?
• if you could have only three cams, would you invest in a set of three (e.g. the DMM 2,3,4 set) ... or would you double up on the one you always find yourself reaching for?

1) Yellow totem.  Somehow always gets me out of trouble.  If you prefer DMM then small grey is about the same size.

2) Three different ones, definitely.  The overlap between adjacent sizes means you don't really need to double up - except for very particular routes which follow cracklines that don't vary.  

Thinking about it, if I could only take three cams, I'd probably have yellow totem, and red and yellow DMM Dragons.  The fact that there's quite a gap between the small one and the two bigger ones offends my OCD but I think they'd be my most frequently placed ones.

With friends, 1.5, 2 and 3.  The 1.5 seemed to get placed more than the others but the 3 was invaluable in wider cracks.

Not sure what torque nuts are but a few medium to large hexcentrics sometimes worked where nothing else would.  Yes, they clank like cowbells but they're worth their place in your rack.

T.

Red (hand jam size) is my favourite. 3 best are green, red and yellow. (Camelot/dragon colours).

Not much to contribute that hasn't already been said, but green to yellow will see you fine up to VS on grit (looks like that's what most of your trad is so far?). Getting a decent bit of mileage at VS with those 3 will help you decide what extra sizes you'd find helpful when you decide to push up into HVS. Doubling up will most likely be a waste of money, especially on grit, much better to have a range, especially since you essentially have doubles for those sizes in hexes

I'm not sure I use one single cam more than any others - if I do, it's probably my red C4. The three I use the most are Black Diamond purple, green, and red C4s. As Jamie said, doubling up is normally uneccessary in the UK (especially if you've got hexes).

Although Totems are great, I generally regard them as somewhat specialist gear - and most people I know who have them think they are most worthwhile in the smallest sizes (which I think are the least valuable when starting to build a rack). They're also about £20 more expensive per cam than, for example, BD C4s.

Some places do deals on sets of cams, where buying seven can effectively get you one or two cams for free. I'd definitely recommend this if you can, and I've never regretted doing it.

For a few years I managed with only a friend 1.5 and 2.5 (that's purple and red Dragon) and hexes for larger stuff. 

The 2,3,4 set looks good

Yep, been said but get a bigish one, medium one, little one. Something like 3.5, 2 and 0.5 in old money, or a half size either way, would be my pick.

Agreed.  I have the three smallest Totems (black-blue-yellow), and then Dragons up from there.

John is on the money here. If you get a fourth, I find the big blue really handy in large grit breaks……

Cheers all for advice. I think the DMM 2,3,4 Dragons (green, red, yellow) sound like the best starting point. Then maybe at a later date I'll go up or down the scale, depending on the kinds of situations I've found myself in.

Black totem is the best thing on my rack, it mek me feul soo gud !

Though, of course, once you have a perfect (red cam) hand jam you no longer need to place protection as it's impossible to fall off...

Almost agree, though I find I use the purple one more than the yellow.

You must have very small hands! Gold is standard (men's) hands.

What rock type do you climb on most?

the larger sizes (gold and above) are great on grit, but I tend to use the smaller ones on the igneous rock types

Yes, Red is standard (pixie) hands.

Not so much small as quite flat, spatula-like (but still with fingers of course). Red is nice and snug, gold is a bit baggy/cupped.

An interesting set of a questions - though I'm not entirely sure they're the ones that'll most help you in your purchasing decisions.

My favourite cam is probably the purple (1 in DMM or 0.5 in C4s). But, it's probably partly because of irrational sentimental reasons and partly because I climb mostly on volcanic rock, which often runs to narrow cracks.

The questions I'd be asking are:
- what are the good deals?
- what type of rock features do I climb?
- what do I need most to supplement my other gear?

I wonder if purple, green, red might work best if you can find it, simply because the torque nuts don't go down to the size of the purple and because bigger hex placements are often more straight-forward than smaller ones. Also, if you're climbing grit, there'll be places where a purple cam would go that a nut won't, e.g. parallel horizontal breaks. But, you might not find those three in a deal!

FWIW, I started with three cams: DMM 2, 3, green - yellow and have never regretted it.

Lots of good advise above, so here is my 2p worth.

I think you want a small, medium and large, then fill in the gaps later.

Small - Silver (0.4)

Medium - Red (1)

Large - Yellow (2)

This is all my dad had back in the 80's and how I started when I got my own rack. Its also what I carry if I'm just taking gear to rig with, or doing something easy.

If I had to choose 1, then that would depend on where I climbed the most. Probably the Silver as its better as the routes get harder, and cracks get smaller, and fewer options. However, there are plenty of times when only the yellow will do.

I would say most importantly, get ones with extendable slings.

Maybe it's because my default trad draws are long and floppy but but I'm just not that keen on the extendable cams. Unless I'm on a totally straight up crack I'm probably going to use a QD on the cam anyway as the extended sling is a bit short to clip into directly, especially if there's any chance of it walking. And they're that bit more faffy to rack while seconding, either hanging down too far or necessitating redoubling the sling mid climb. I've got a couple but I much prefer my BD Camalots!

I've stuck with non-extendable cams for the same but also opposite reasons. As far as I am concerned my standard Camalots are already extended and I really only put a QD on them if particularly needed (how do people carry enough QD's on a long pitch to routinely extend everything?!). Further extending extendable cams routinely just seems odd to me! So, in my case, I can see the use of extendable cams, but the faff of racking them seems barely worth it for the frequency I would use the extension.

It depends so much on where you are climbing and what routes you aspire to.

What size cams does your leader place most when you second the routes? That would be a good starting point.

The answer really depends on what rock type you plan to climb most.

for general rock I think green dragon cam gets used the most. If you want only three cams and to save them for necessary placements only, you want just overlapping sizes so I would suggest dragon silver, green, gold would allow you to do the most routes reasonably safely along with your nuts and hexes. 

Id go along with this.  Certainly red and yellow, but I might have gone to a slightly smaller purple for the third.

Yes I must admit that's exactly what I thought!

Interesting. Maybe it's just my shonky ropework but I worry I'd end up with loads of drag. I do carry a lot (14-16) QDs on long pitches though so I rarely run out.

Anyone with red hands needs to get themselvrs to Indian Creek for the 5.11's; red cracks are usually 5.11 and gold 5.10 - graded for an average man. Women often find 5.11 easier than 5.10.

My nearest good rock is Peak gritstone, but I'll be making longer excursions to Pembroke and North Wales. On Pembroke limestone I noticed the leader tending to use small cams in small cracks on HS/VS. So with the numbers on this thread recommending having something small, I'm thinking if I get three it might be the dragon 1,2,3 (purple, green, red) rather than the 2,3,4 set. (Annoyingly that works out at an extra tenner, but I doubt I'll worry about that when I'm putting gear in)

Thanks again to everyone who bothered to reply - really helpful.

Go on, push the boat out and get 1,2,3,4. You know you want to🙂.

Having said that, I think my "thank god" cam is probably the small blue one.

1,2,3 is what I would go for. (I couldn't see that set when I searched)

Yes, they don't sell those three as a set, hence the extra tenner.

OK, so I've bought a DMM Dragon purple cam today. I'll see how that works out alongside hexes and nuts, then red or green next ...

Just to derail things completely, if you're going there and doing that you might consider doubling up on wires 3,4,5. Pembs and North Wales eat those by the spoonful at those grades.

Best value - get some more nuts /hexs and get the hang of them first.

I climbed for 30 years or so before biting the bullet and getting some cams..... 

Being more of a punter theses days that just enjoys a pleasant evenings pottering on rock - I still reach for the walnuts and hexs first. Though I've taken a liking to my new tricams

On sea cliffs I will generally extend my extendable cam slings, and then add a quick draw or a sling draw too.

I've never got to the top of a climb and wished I'd extended things less, but the opposite isn't uncommon.

I'd agree. Cams are great, but having a large selection of wires covers most scenarios well.

I have a double set of wallnuts, plus a set of offsets... on a long sea cliff line you can easily end up placing three of the same size in one route, never mind building an abseil anchor at the top and a belay anchor at the bottom. and unlike cams, there's very little penalty in carrying multiple sets up the line with you.

If you're planning on using a quickdraw and extending the cam's sling, you can leave the cam's racking carabiner clipped to both strands, clip the quickdraw carabiner to the bar tacked strand, and extend. You can then redouble the sling just by pulling on the racking carabiner.

Illustrated here: youtube.com/watch?v=EDvHdE-A7fw&

Hiya, pm me your address and I'll post you some tech friends I don't use much. Think I've got a 1 ,2 and 00.

Cheers Ross 

You also say you carry a triple set of nuts (I do too). As a matter of interest, how many quickdraws do you carry on a long protectable pitch near your limit? I carry 15 or so and rarely use them on my non-extendable cams (likewise I rarely put more than a quickdraw on a wire).

Hard to give any reasonable answer because you didn't include in your post where you mainly climb.

I mean if you have a thing for grit offwidths it'd be a different answer than if you said slate, or again different classic mountain routes or...

More info will get you a better answer. Based on nothing in particular I'd say red and yellow.

A better question might be which brand to start on. I went Wild Country just due to my age, but if I started over I think I'd go DMM. If you are on a budget look at Kouba -- you might have never heard of them because they normally manufacture kit for several famous big-brands, but they also sell under thier own name. https://www.koubaclimbing.com/index.php/flex-set

Seriously? that's an incredibly generous offer, but I honestly don't think I could take them off your hands for free. I'll send you a message.

Red is correct - I carry double reds more often than any other double

maybe hold off on buying some and burrow your climbing partners, if there cool with that, they may have different brands to try and sizes etc? 

For a long pitch about 14 regular draws, four sling draws and half a dozen slings.

The dmm torque nuts are colour matched to their equivalent cams, which may give you an idea which sizes would be most useful to you.

That seems about proportionate to what I carry if you are going to extend the extension on every cam. But I am surprised by the number of slings - sounds a bit cumbersome, like an American draped with slings because they havn't discovered the advantages of double ropes.

Maybe I'm just not that good at selecting great placements, but even with double ropes, on a lot of sea cliff climbs I find you're going to end up with a corner or two per rope. If you only extend the corner pieces you get significantly more sideways forces on those and the intermediate placements in a fall. The more you extend, the less you are l likely to rip gear sideways.

I've got 7 loops on my harness, a bunch of slings on the back one alongside my belay device and prussics is not cumbersome in the slightest.... It literally would make no difference to my climbing whether I carried one or ten.

I see no real benefit in not extending everything, and lots of (sometimes unforeseen) benefits in doing so.

You potentially fall further - greater force on the runner with increased risk of failure, and greater grip factor which might impede commitment; not much difference when run out, but a long extension could make the difference between a runner being above your waist or below your knees for a hard move (this would certainly make a difference to me at least!).

Y

In most scenarios the benefits of extending will exceed the benefits of shortening the fall with regards to preventing gear ripping IMO.

When you fall longer, you increase the total kinetic energy to be absorbed, which increases the peak force, but you also change the direction of that force, which means you need to think about the force vectors.

Passive gear will often be fairly directional and if that gear is at knee to waist height with little extension, a falling force could easily be applied at 45 degrees, which would mean the horizontal component of the force would equal the vertical. Unless the gear is pretty marginal and very helpfully directional I'd far rather fall a bit further and have a large vertical component of force pulling the gear into its placement against a much weaker horizontal force trying to pull it out.

With active pro there's a higher chance of the force direction aligning well regardless - horizontal breaks will always line up well from any height and vertical cracks are quite likely to have a cam placed off-vertical - but here I get concerned about walking. Your waist high placement scenario may be valid here, but what happens afterwards? For example I'd be much happier with a 4m fall onto a well extended cam that I was confident hasn't been pulled around, than a 3.5m fall onto a cam that had been tugged a bit while I was moving around looking for potential gear placements above it.

My personal experience of gear failure has generally been down to one of two things - poor placement or under-extended gear. I've taken some quite long falls onto well placed gear, and never had one rip unexpectedly.

That said, most of my trad climbing has been on solid rock line limestone and gneiss... Maybe if I placed a lot of gear on soft sandstone I might change my stance 😁

On Grit I might agree but on longer pitches you find that runner at 30ft that you didn't extend is pulling you off because of the drag.

I can't stand the extendable slings on cams but there are a few situations where they are really useful; if a carabiner sits over an edge, you can extend it over it; something you can't do with a fixed-length cam sling. 

I climb up to HVS on grit and find the following sizes (in Black Diamond/DMM) most useful, with the most placed at the top:

Purple

Yellow

Red

Green

Blue

Totems are worth the extra price tag if the crack is at all flared, shallow, or offset. They also fit narrow pockets, though getting a set of tri-cams black->red will do that too. Totems are also amazing for non-vertical cracks. If I was climbing something where the gear obviously came in the form of horizontal breaks, I'd go with totems over other cams. They are so flexible in that direction, it's like they're made of fabric. 

Saying that, I don't think you can beat BD camalots for sub-extreme grit. You can just punch them into cracks better than any other cams. 

It is quite possible that I should do more extending of runners than I do at the moment. I wonder whether my mindset is a generational thing. When I started climbing and worked up through the grades in the early '80's, the norm for me and my partners was to just double krab wires; extenders (I don't think the term quickdraw existed then) of which we carried a small number were only added when particularly needed. Nowadays a quickdraw automatically goes on every wire and every cam has an extender built in, so I suppose I think of every runner as being extended by default with any further extension only in exceptional circumstances, whereas you may not think of a standard cam or a wire with a short quickdraw as extended at all.

frankly I am aghast at how many people are willing to offer advice without even bothering to find out what rock you areclimbing on. When I'm climbing multipitch at swanage I might place 0 cam's,  when I'm leading multipitch or granite I might place all of my cams and all of my partners cams! The size of the cam needed is intimately related to the type of rock too. So, as the few sensible people have commented above, go ask someone who is leading on the same rock that you want to climb. They are the only people who are likely to give a useful answer. 

OP said they are closest to peak grit but will make occasional trip to pembroke/north wales. 

...or maybe we've looked at their recently logged climbs, spotted that they have been on easy classics at both Windgather and Pembroke recently, and concluded that they need to build a rack to cover as many eventualities as possible?

Maybe people have read the thread where the OP says what he wants the cams for, as well as looking at their logbook, and made a considered suggestion in line with that?

Or she

True, my unconscious bias shining through!

Frankly I am aghast that you haven't read the thread properly?

The one size I would keep would depend a lot on what my local crag and rock type were.

The wrong one.

Like, literally every time.

Yes, I'd buy a set of 3 in middle sizes and then save up for more as I could afford them. Definitely not take 3 of the same size.

Depending on the route, I could be starting off, even a trad single pitch, with 20 cams or more. The questions you are asking all seem to suggest that you will only ever get 1 or 3 cams in your climbing career, what is more realistic is to buy a couple of mid-sized cams to start with and then buy other sizes as you have available funds.

It's also quite possible that your ropework and great placement is sufficiently better than mine to reduce the need for extension somewhat 😉

Quite possibly - I imagine the "leader doesn't fall" mindset would have a lot to do with it.

I came from sport climbing to trad, and my mentor - who had been trad climbing a long time - didn't extend so much. However he also didn't take falls on gear - as soon as I started to take falls I noticed that insufficiently extended gear had a habit of coming out. The main culprit was runners that were no longer the top piece getting taken out sideways - which is obviously less of a problem if the top piece holds but potentially disastrous if it fails. 

I distinctly remember the lightbulb moment when a "bomber" red offset on Test Case at St Govans came out (the gear above it held) in this scenario. I subsequently used the route for falling practice with a suitable extension on that same piece and it never failed again.

Pretty much, yeah - if the route is straight up I'll still default to a draw on every piece unless I feel I'm going to run short, and as soon as there's going to be a bend in the rope I'll be looking for further extension - ideally a long sling at the apex piece and a medium sling draw on the two pieces above and below to soften the bend as much as possible.

Not that I'll always do that of course - as with all things in trad the need will be balanced against all the other priorities and/or my ability to completely mis-read where I will be placing future gear under the stress of the sharp end 😁

Hi Mutt - yes I probably should have specified the rock type in the original post: I did do so further down the thread (which you might have missed?) & got a number of specific suggestions based on that. It is a range though - I don't have local rock in here in East Anglia, am going to be climbing Peak grit, Pembroke limestone, and Wales rhyolite, climbing easy leads first, with a view to improving up to my current seconding level (VS) ... so it was a multi-purpose rack on a limited budget I was after.

Thanks to everyone who replied ... I didn't expect to get such an amount of advice which has covered not only the merits of different sizes, but a whole load of other stuff about how to use them. (Also the suggestion that doubling on some nuts might be more cost-effective).

Mostly - thanks to Ross who made the out-of-the-blue offer to send on some cams he doesn't use. He didn't want payment, so I've sent a donation to Tayside MRT in lieu. Cheers again - What a brilliant community