UKC

As you do, I sometimes get sucked down a youtube or Instagram hole and end up watching various American AMGA guides teaching variations of the quad anchor and various other, what seem to me, overcomplicated techniques. Having never used a quad, maybe I'm missing something amazing, but I can never understand what seems to be a bit of an obsession. Am I missing something? Or are they putting out content for the sake of content? The other day I also saw a demonstration of how you can put a locking carabiner into a belay the wrong way round. I was just kind of bewildered that someone would navel gaze to such an extent that they could convince them self that it matters in anyway shape or form other than really obvious failure modes, like crossloading...

I personally find quad anchors very easy to tie and very useful when I am worried about marginal placements and need to focus on equalisation. They are also very easy to pre-tie which is very useful if you have a bolted anchor I find.

Realistically I would be fine without them but they are just another useful anchor to have.

I guess its down to personal preference at the end of the day. 

Yeah I guess it is a tool in the box, it's just that in 30 years of climbing I've never felt I even needed an equalised anchor. In addition to which if a point of your anchor fails, surely a fixed leg (if you've built your anchor correctly) is going to load your dodgy gear less than a sliding equalised anchor of any nature? I mean I kind of get it if you're guiding and want to be able to move around the stance a bit more easily? But belays are just one thing as I indicated... just seems like a lot of people making their lives more complex? 

Agreed, I think a problem I have with the Instagram/Youtube demonstrations is that for a beginner I believe it is far more important to learn how anchors work mechanically and how to build a solid anchor in any scenario. A quad is definitely a good tool to learn but I have found it far more useful to be taught proper solid anchors first. 

This is obviously a generalisation of the videos but I agree with your overall point. There are definitely times where I have used a quad when it would've been much quicker and easier to just build a normal anchor.

Surely it's just that they have become a slave to the algorithm, they have to post x number of reels etc a day/week (no idea what the real number are) in order to maintain maximum engaging and build followers etc.

All a bit depressing, though some interesting bits do crop up from time to time. The fact that I learnt to climb with double ropes, build belays with rope and belay from my harness means I ignore most of it, though a direct belay on multipitch routes is nice as I can eat/drink/gets some images for my grid etc with minimal stess.

I suppose what I'm equally surprised about is the comments section, sometimes people getting really het up about stuff. On the one I just watched, there were several comments about "why would you do this when it weakens the sling", which of course isn't incorrect, it's just so far down the list of things you should be worried about as to make it almost irrelevant. I mean try climbing without ever tieing a know in your rope for example... you're not going to last long...

Exactly this. Knowledge is power apart from when you don't know what that power can do 🤣

It's really not the quad I'm particularly singling out... personally I feel that I am stupid, and therefore Im likely to mess things up and so I am better off keeping things simple and easy to check rather than worrying about infinitesimally small risks...

The comments on climbing social media posts are driven by the same drivers as ALL comments on ALL social media, a mixture of boredom, passing the time, entertainment by criticizing, attempting to show knowledge/superiority, trying to be involved in something about which you are passionate but don't do enough of because you are struck in a soul sucking job just trying to get by etc....

Wow - that's some depressing you know what right there 🤣

I actually really enjoy my job but this project is currently pretty full on......

This is all true, but I think climbers, and professionals in particular, can be more prone to willy waving than your average instagrammer. It's a depressingly common theme to see people arguing about marginally different ways of doing things which are all reasonably safe, providing you don't do something really stupid like take a running jump off a ledge with loads of slack out.

It's not like we don't get the same kind of "kinda correct but not really relevant" comments on technical discussions here as well. I suspect it's worse on Instagram mostly because you have more people commenting and less shared context to tie them together.

So on here you mostly have commenters with a significant interest in climbing and at least some contact with UK climbing habits. On Instagram you might get a roped access technician who's never climbed but can see that the anchor being shown wouldn't meet their professional standards and doesn't recognise the context difference. Or a European thinking that something American climbers habitually do is weird because it's not common in Europe or just doesn't make sense in the very different context (and vice versa). Or someone with no connection to ropework at all, but because Instagram's algorithm has them pegged as interested in the outdoors, they've just been shown another reel demonstrating slings breaking at lower load when knotted and now it's showing them an anchor with a knotted sling so they go "aha, I know this one". Plus the ever-present trolls who know they're wrong and are just looking for a reaction. We get those here but they're easier to recognise most of the time because most people have a posting history to go on.

I'm quite partial to this account.

https://instagram.com/daleremsberg?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

He posts all kinds of different systems, but with a lot of recognition that they're just different tools with different strengths and weaknesses, rather than ever trying to present them as "the hot new thing" or "the only anchor you'll ever need". Interesting examples and discussions.

Confession,  I had to look up quad anchor to remind myself what it was.

Regarding the running jump, a satisfactory belay should withstand that easily as long as dynamic  rope  is involved not slings. I would be more concerned about the rope cutting on the belay ledge edge or hitting something on the way down.

I'm a US climber with 66 years experience and I've never used a quad, nor have most of the people I climb with (who are mostly younger than me).  When climbing with people of roughly similar ability and swapping leads, I tie in with the rope.  If I'm in a situation in which I'm going to do all the leading or if we are leading in blocks (something I do rarely), then some kind of anchor slingage is more efficient than the rope anchor, but I've always tied something with fixed arms rather than any of the sliding options.

The quad was invented by John Long for one of his books on anchors, after testing showed that the usual sliding-X wasn't all that good at distributing loads. (Unfortunately, he used a flawed testing protocol to assert that if one piece fails the extension involved doesn't impose a significantly higher load on the remaining piece---higher than if fixed-are rigging was used.  Subsequent testing contradicts this.)  I think the US guiding community embraced the quad as a fast and simple method for multipitch free routes with bolted belays where there is no switching of leads. But if you look at shots of belay stances on big walls, e.g. in Yosemite, you'll see that big wall climbers, for the most part, are not using quads for their more complicated anchors. 

The quad can be carried pre-tied and slapped on a pair of bolts in a matter of seconds.  (Ironically, modern bolts simply do not require any kind of equalization.) If you have a party of three and are belaying with a guide plaquette, then the quad provides a comfortable amount of room for three people anchored plus the plaquette.  A pre-tied quad is easily removed by a novice second with perhaps less chance of dropping something or leaving something behind.  But if the anchor has been weighted and the second is expected to untie the quad knots, then it quickly becomes an efficiency destroyer. The quad can be adapted to three-piece anchors, but that builds in an unequal load distribution, so one does have to wonder what the point is in that case.

All in all, it is hard to see any real benefit for climbers who aren't guides or are not functioning as guides. American guides seem to like it, and perhaps they have reasons I've overlooked, but I don't see any particularly compelling reason to have it as a "tool in the toolbox" either, except perhaps pretied for long multiptich routes with bolted belays.

scarily accurate in my case unfortunately lately

[Old man shouting at the wind]. I've been following a friend of mine upping her skills to become an instructor. I don't recognise a decent proportion of what's going on (but then again I probably couldn't escape the system in a real epic). Belaying in the UK on outcrops and regular multi-pitch doesn't have to be that complicated. Confession: it took me a long time before I started using clove hitches. That one was worth learning

Just out of curiosity, what did you use before clove hitches? 

Figure of 8 plus faffing to get the right length.

Interesting, thanks - so just tie one on a bight and clip it to the masterpoint? Or I guess clip multiple of them back to your harness if anchors were out of reach? 

UKC has had it's own share of equally messy , complex threads discussing the minutae of belays, quads, strength of equalised masterpints and so on... 

Perhaps this one will go the same way

Perhaps its that trend of getting things wrong (or over-complicated) on purpose to spark more comments, views and thus followers.

I once saw something (probably on instagram) about a lady who instead of straight up asking her followers about their view on a certain subject, she would put up a post and then use a fake profile to vehemently argue the opposite, to which her followers would then profusely state their opinion on it. Without the fake profile she rarely got any worthwhile or meaningful comments. A self-trolling. 

You often see posts where there are obvious typos or are purposefully annoying (all those 'wait till the end' posts with nothing actually worth waiting for) that get more traction than much better content.

Today I learned what a quad anchor is. Thanks for that. Maybe one day I will use one... probably not though, I seem to have done just fine without for a couple of decades, still nice to know it could be done if I ever encountered a weird situation where I suddenly thought it would be necessary.

There are lots of obscure and advanced climbing things out there but for me to consider learning them I need to see a concrete example of when I might need them or a thing they can do that might get me out of trouble. So stacked nuts are obscure but actually necessary in extremis when you have no other options, so would tied-down hooks, or bluetacked slings/hooks be. I can't see a situation that would necessitate a quad anchor, it just seems like a slightly more comfortable setup on the belay.

If you go down a rabbit hole far enough, you always fine insanity at the bottom. I once found myself reading criteria of length grass had to be cut to together with the radius of such cutting to qualify for 6 pence per vole guard used in the context of a forestry grant. And you only need to watch a couple of the most basic personal finance videos on Youtube to get the algorithm to flood you with technical examinations of complex options plays.

I think this is how people end up diving head-first in conspiracy theories.

Yes, you're right, we also do a fair share of navel gazing here at UKC, but I guess the difference for me here is that it seems to be mainly qualified guides and instructors who are trying to be informative, but mostly qualifying the post with "there are probably other ways of doing this" and then spending 3-5 mins explaining something really overly complex which serves very little purpose over and above the standard method which is simple and any dullard can cope with. I don't understand it as a marketing ploy unless their aim is to make potential students think this stuff is hard and that they definitely need lessons. To my mind a better way of approaching things is to demonstrate a relatable easy method which makes you think that this person can explain stuff well...

Quad anchors were very popular when I was in Canada. People would often just have them pre-tied, and I assume they were what local instructors taught as good practice. 

Unless I'm missing something - surely the massive difference between us and N America is just simply having loads of multis with bolted anchors-? 

Conversely I only once saw someone use two opposing draws for their anchor on a SP sport route (that I remember, anyway - another European checked that the group were OK with this risky behaviour), heard complaints about the rare routes without a bolted anchor, and someone actually remarked to me, 'have you ever SEEN a British belay?'. Then again I appreciate you generally can't topnout or use a similar stance and sling a boulder etc (caveat that I never did any alpine climbing there).

I also thought the culture was generally a lot more prescriptive and risk averse than I was used to in the UK (eg new partner refusing to climb with me without a grigri), but others reported otherwise, so that could have also been that I was mostly climbing with younger, newer, urban climbers than I do back home. Interested in others' reflections on this. 

My only gripe is the way that all American videos seem to act like their Absolute Rules are gospel and not what is the appropriate behaviour for one area in the world. Then again, it is quite a big area...

are u the gy that fell off Skye

I think this is also my biggest gripe about it. So another example was that one of these guys who appears regularly in my feed posted about munter hitches and "super munters" (snigger) and then went on to say how munters have low levels of friction and that this had been tested by a fellow guide and went on to then recommend not using them on that basis, which is in direct opposition to what test engineers from the DAV and OAV (German and Austrian alpine clubs) say, and whose methodology is peer reviewed and pretty water tight. I posted this, with also some dialogue about it by Jim Titt who has done some of the most extensive testing on all belay methods saying the same thing, and the guide hasn't yet addressed it, which either means he hasn't seen it, or he doesn't have answer. But the video is still up, misinforming people. Maybe he's taking time to review the information, I don't know, but it seems to me like anybody can put anything up and people treat it like gospel.

When I've felt the need to equalise several iffy bits I've usually just used the rope to do it, let the knots and stretch sort things out for me. One exception is with a distant pair of little nuts where I'd occasionally stick a 60cm sliding-X on them to act together as a single piece then I'd run one rope up to that, the other off to something else.

jk