UKC

I've had a fairly unused and unloved trad rack for a while now because I have focused on sport but I am keen to get out and up my trad grade whilst ticking 3* classics. The peak is the closest area to me so will probably be focusing on grit; flying buttress, unconquerables, sloth etc but also looking to head to Pembroke with the ambition of climbing E1-E2.

Currently I have:

3 wild country friends pre-helium model sizes 1,2,3.
Dmm offsets
BD stoppers 1-13
2 rockcentrics sizes 6,8
2 medium length and 1 short slings.
3 locking crabs

I've got a 70m and 35m rope and full rack of quick draws from sport climbing. Am I good to go or am I missing anything, is it worth investing in more cams? if so what sizes/brands.

Cheers for your help.

In reply to Tru:
Great starter rack, certainly covers all the bases. For grit more cams would be nice but not necessary. As soon as you can afford it, I would start adding more cams to your rack. Depends on what you can afford. If money is no object I think Totems are the best cams around at the moment.

http://www.needlesports.com/356/products/totem-cam.aspx - but quite dear at £60 ish a cam

Or if money is tight, can probably pick up some second hand 4cu's on the for sale forum here and probably get about 3 cams for £60

For pembroke limestone, i'd go for more small to medium wires. And maybe another 120cm sling or two. Maybe get some DMM wall nuts 1-6

In reply to Tru:

assuming your climbing with an adequately equipped mate you'll need for nothing unless all your cams overlap! more useful would be a 50 or 60 m half rope a pair of these is pretty standard for Pembroke.

In reply to Tru:
What about buying up a bunch of 60cm dyneema slings so you can make extendable quickdraws with carabiners from your existing ones. I rarely climb in the UK but my (limited) impression of some of grit roues is that they require some thought with ropework to avoid drag, despite being short. Especially if you are only using a single rope. Extendable draws will help this and will ensure you have a suitable rack for many more routes in the future.

Your passive pro is quite comprehensive. You could double up on sizes 2-7 of your nuts which can be useful for longer routes, but for short grit what you have is fine,

A few more and perhaps smaller cams can really help. Whatever is going cheap is the best advice tbh. Nowadays cams are cams, if you aren't fussed about weight then any of the main brands will do. Preferably with an extendable sling.

After that, half ropes should be on your shopping list at some point.

In reply to Tru:

I rate the BD stoppers. And it's a good rack you have. I would lose the stopper #11-12-13 and double up the 6 and 10 nuts. They weight a tonne and your offsets cover them.

In reply to zimpara:

That sounds like an insightful and useful tip, cheers mate.

In reply to Tru:

In truth I doubled up 4-5-6-10 and got the gold offset(6?) And rocks 1-2-5-6. My most used nuts by a mile. Not done much on grit though.

In reply to Tru:

Not enough gear, you can never have enough gear...... :0

Enjoy your trad!

Don't forget the ropeman/prussiks, and a nut key for your second to retrieve it all after. Oh, and the ikea bag for the ropes.

In reply to Tru:

Good to go for the Peak but I would add 2 more cams Friend 0 and 0.5 or equivalent Camalot 0.3 and 0.4. For Pembroke I d get an abseil rope. Get a semistatic from a caving shop. 100m will cover you for all eventualities.

In reply to Tru:

Go try it out. It's plenty good enough for starters and you'll soon figure out what if anything you want to add.
jk

In reply to Tru:

I'd get yourself a 1.5 and 2.5 cam whenever you have the cash. Always found gritstone to be more cam reliant and you're going to find the cams you currently have are either too small or too big without the half sizes. Cracks and routes where gear is focused along horizontal breaks are probably most cam dependant. The DMM single axis cams have the same sizing as the cams you already have, are still in production, and can probably be picked up cheaply. They sell three half sizes at a discounted price, which would be worth considering.

In reply to Tru:

http://www.dicksclimbing.com/products/dmm-demon-cam-size

Good bargain on some cams £36 each for a nice bit of kit

In reply to Tru:

Half ropes

In reply to Tru:

Hi Tru,
That's a good rack to get yourself going with, but you'll need to think about a few more bits for Pembrokeshire and longer routes elsewhere...

I wrote a couple of articles a while back that hopefully are of some help...

This one talks about a basic trad rack:
http://www.climbingcompany.co.uk/trad-climbing-starter-kit/

And this one follows on to multi pitch and seacliff climbing...
http://www.climbingcompany.co.uk/multi-pitch-trad-climbing-kit/

Cheers!

Stu

In reply to Tru:

Looks like a good start to me. There isn't a 'right rack' as different people have different preferences for placements. So I'd climb a bit on what you have and see what you tend to use more of and where you think you need to augment. If you get the chance climb with other peoples racks as well and see what works best for you there.

In reply to Tru:

I really rate DMM Peenuts especially for limestone. It's usefully to have some smaller nuts. I've done plenty of climbs where they are the only things that go in.

I notice a lot of people don't bother with the larger cam sizes (DMM 5 and 6) but I have both and use them all the time, the 6 especially will go in where nothing else will and you know it is never going to slip out.

Second what other people say about more 120 slings and making up sling-draws.
I'd also get a 230 and a 480 sling, these are useful in the Peak for chucking round boulders at the top of routes for easy peasy anchors. Yes you can use your rope around a boulder but I've found in practice this causes your rope to wear out quicker.

Also plenty of screw gates, particularly if you are climbing somewhere like Pembroke and are setting up anchors for abseiling.

In reply to GrahamD:


Agreed. Also some people (like me) like to have all of the gear, because half the fun is getting some specialist gear into some specialist placement and protecting the normally unprotected. Other people like to have four nuts and a sling and run it out. Particularly when you are starting it won't hurt to have all the gear, work out what works for you, and trim down however you want. I doubt many people have failed to get up something in the UK because they brought too much gear (outside of winter/really hard things)...

In reply to andrewmcleod:


Lol, also some people love having shiny toys (me included)

In reply to springfall2008:

Yes but unlike you, most of us do NOT buy our shiny toys from anne summers.

In reply to zimpara:


Ah crap, are you saying Anne Summers kit isn't rated for climbing

In reply to springfall2008:


It comes in useful if you're trying to get up a crack.

In reply to Dell:

And for protecting said cracks.

In reply to Kemics:


Thanks for everyone's help and suggestions, even if it did quickly descend into classic climbing innuendo. I'm going to pick up a 0.5 and 3.5 demon cams and 240mm sling, thanks for the link Kemics.

I take it with this set up I should be pretty well set up to wobble up the unconquerables, flying buttress, sloth etc?

And a final question who is up for a climb, it's quite difficult trying to convince my skinny sport climbing mates to go ledge shuffling instead.

In reply to Tru:

If ledge shuffling is what you want, look at BAWs crawl !

In reply to GrahamD:

Ha! looks brilliant.