UKC

Hello

I understand that sometimes you might need to extend the rope away from the protection but often (on a straight and vertical crack for instance) I can't see the benefit of keeping distance between the rope and the nut that was placed.

So in these cases why use a QuickDraw at all? Surely it's just as efficient to simply clip a carabiner into the wire and the rope straight into it?

Am I missing something?

In reply to MikeMarcus:


Rope drag. The quickdraw is used to reduce it, mainly to stop it lifting the wire out, or causing the cam to walk.

In reply to 1poundSOCKS:

So is it something one never does. Or something one does talking the potential risks into account?

In reply to MikeMarcus:
when you're climbing past the placed gear on lead there's a good chance that your harness where you're tied on could be a foot or two to one side of the gear, or out away from the wall. This could be enough to pull out directional gear.
I end up doing it every so often because I often don't take enough quick draws, and I've definitely had to be careful climbing past them so as not to pull them out.

In reply to MikeMarcus:


It's done frequently when running out of gear! The other posters are correct though - usually, the increased risk of lifting the gear outweighs any benefit of saving gear or a marginally shorter fall.

In reply to Neil Adams:
generally agree with you but once in a blue moon arranging a shorter fall can be useful, the first runner or above a ledge, rare

In reply to MikeMarcus:

If a route has a tricky start with a low first piece of gear where a groundfall is a real possibility, albeit it a short one, I often use a single crab as it could reduce the fall by a foot or two, otherewise the fall reduction probably isn't worth it for reasons of drag or gear lifting out.

In reply to John Kelly

Agreed

In reply to MikeMarcus:

Extending gear with draws or even longer slings is very useful for preventing gear below you from being dislodged by the rope movement. It also helps with reducing rope drag, which is even more of an issue if you are using a single rope.

In reply to MikeMarcus:

There's also the 'wear and tear' issue - most climbers will have a 'rope' end of the quickdraw and a 'gear' end - the carabiner that's regularly clipped to nuts (or especially to bolts on sport climbs) is likely to develop scratches and burrs that could damage the rope.

In reply to MikeMarcus:

Quick draws are he norm because:

It reduces the risk of lifting the gear out

Reduces the risk of accidental unclipping, particularly on bolts. I've always assumed that's why Dawes uses a screw gate on the Quarryman in Stone Monkey

Reduced rope drag

Its probably as quick, if not quicker, to use a quick draw. I think you'd have to invert crab once you'd clipped the wire

In reply to MikeMarcus:



If you don't it's going to pull out when the rope is loaded.

If you carry DMM gear with extendable slings (e.g. hexes and cams) you can avoid using a quickdraw on these pieces and just keep a crab on each of them.


Individual crabs are also easy to drop when you are in a tricky situation, quickdraws have a nice big sling to hold

Nope, using a single clip is more fiddly, often you place the wire above you to give maximum protection and then reach up to clip the draw. Now the rope is easy to clip.


Yes, as above.

I always use longer draws for trad, save the short ones for sports.

In reply to MikeMarcus:

When wired nuts first appeared we didn't always extend them and would quite often just clip in with a krab but we soon discovered that the nut would have a greater tendency to lift out. At first we solved this by just threading a sling through the wire and then using a krab to clip the rope. I was always a little uncomfortable about doing this but back then the wires were a lot thicker and I never heard of one cutting through a sling but I was still a little dubious. We were also inhibited because gear, particularly karabiners were a lot heavier so we didn't want to carry as many as we can today. We were also more wary about falling off.

Al

In reply to MikeMarcus:

What everybody else said - on the subject of unclipping, I used to be dubious about this until a couple of winters ago when an Italian buddy decided he couldn't be bothered to clip with an extender whist climbing. Obviously he was clipping a screw. He moved up a move and one rope unclipped. I wondered whether to say something. In the meantime he moved up again and as he did so the second of his double ropes unclipped. I then told him which gave him a proper full on wobble whilst he put in another screw, a good 20-30 feet above his last gear... not big or clever.