UKC

Hi beautiful people!

I am looking for a set of quickdraws that can work for trad and sport climbing. I was thinking medium size (?). Discouts or nice price will be appreciated. Any suggestions/ recommendations/ guidance will be great!!

Thanks

No particular recommendation, but a comment that trad draws arguably need to be light and typically use wiregates.  Sport draws are heavier and more robust, but too heavy to carry for trad alongside a big rack.   However, trad draws really work anywhere, though might suffer durability issues if you are projecting every day of the week.  I used my trad draws for sport for years...🙂

Most of my draws are 18cm DMM Alpha Trad and work for me for both sport and trad. I have some chunky sport draws and lighter trad ones but tend to just use the Alphas for everything most of the time. 

I'd start with decent trad quickdraws with wiregates as sport draws are a bit of a luxury.  If you want to keep prices nice, buy packs of 5 or 6, and buy once, don't buy cheap then replace them later.  Just looking at some deals on the Outside website for packs of 6 that seem good value to me

Yes go for at least 15cm length, but longer is better (I use a mix of 20 and 25cm draws) for trad. Stiff extenders only really work well for sport, so you want long and floppy for trad (or your nuts get pulled out).

As others have said, the attributes for sport and trad draws are a bit different, so any set you get for both tasks will be sub-optimal. Just to break this down as I see it:

Sport:

You want something comfortable to grab hold of and pull, generally they are short, weight is usually less important than durability because you will be ragging them against bolts a lot but only carrying a limited amount of weight on your harness. Normally they are relatively rigid for various reasons, including allowing them to remain hanging properly when you pull the rope down and leave them on the route for the next try. There are a number of companies that make cheap sets of sport draws.

Trad:

You want something lightweight because a full trad rack is quite a mass to have on your harness, you take either a range of QD lengths or extendable quickdraws (2 carabiners with a tripled over sling between them) because your gear placements will probably not be in a straight line. The draw not being rigid is desirable as it means it is less likely to push/pull a nut or hex out of its placement. Trad draws tend to be more expensive, particularly when you want to go light or buy separate slings to make extendable ones.

So overall it's worth thinking about what attributes are most important to you when you are climbing and whether you climb trad more often or sport more often.