A lovely day with perfect temps, no crowds, and lots of classic routes that I hadn’t been on yet this year. We mostly kept it easy, so no epics either. The one toughie was Never Never Land, which Scotty led. It was on my list of 10s I could lead, but now that I’ve been on it again, I’m removing it. The moves up to the first pin are scary-hard. The move at the bolt is just hard. Then the moves above the bolt to the next pin are scary-hard again. Right now I’m not up for that kind of thin climbing on lead. I didn’t even particularly enjoy it on TR.

Due to a recent discussion on gunks.com about how old the pins are on Thin Slabs Direct, I was glad to have the opportunity to climb it. I still clipped all 3 pins. Why not? But since we were discussing it, I monkeyed around with backing them up and all three can be backed up either directly next to or near the pin. I think I used red, green, and blue Aliens. It certainly makes the route a lot harder and I don’t normally carry the blue Alien on routes under 5.9, but it’s doable.

FWIW, I still think the pins are likely to hold the small fall they’d be catching and if I hadn’t been in research mode, I’d have just clipped them and gone. The only way I’d fall there is if I pumped myself out hanging around placing gear. It seems safer to move on. Ideally, to me, all three would be replaced with one good one in the middle.

I spent some time thinking about why I rack multiple cams to a biner, since this is Steve’s major complaint about my rack and Scotty’s cams were mostly individually racked. The obvious reason is that it’s how I learned to lead, and once something is ingrained it becomes “right” even though it’s really just familiar. But there are more subtle reasons.

First, I like having multiple chances at having grabbed the right biner. Even all these years down the road I still frequently choose the wrong cam on my first guess. But the right cam is almost always on the same biner, so there’s no major delay in correcting the mistake. However, I recognize the possibility that if there were more of a penalty for guessing wrong the first time then I might learn to be more accurate. On the other hand, some people who single rack their cams don’t place the best gear and I wonder how much that has to do with settling.

Second, I don’t like having too many biners on the same loop of my gear sling. It’s like a crowded closet–you can’t see what’s in there and you can’t flip through to find out. Four biners per loop is about my max. If I individually racked my cams I’d end up with as many as 9 biners on the same loop (by some people’s standards, I carry way too many cams).

Third, I like predictability. Some placements must be extended. Even if you like the idea of clipping the rope to the piece with only a single biner as an intermediary, there are going to be times when you need a runner. Since there’s already a biner on the cam, you only need one biner on the sling. But few people who individually rack their cams also individually rack their nuts, so some slings need two biners. The result is a mishmash of over-the-shoulder slings, extra biners, and tripled slings that requires too much thought for me. I have a system that works.

Most importantly, I hate over-the-shoulder slings. It seems to me that if you can wrest a sling over your head then the stance is so good you don’t need protection. Not to mention the issue of needing to use a specific hand to perform this maneuver. In short, if someone came up with a good way to carry a sling with only a single biner that didn’t require contortion or gymnastics for removal, I might consider racking my cams one to a biner. But probably not.

Strictly/Shockley’s linkup (P1 Strictly: Scotty, linkup & P3 Shockley’s: Dawn)
Sente/Thin Slabs Direct linkup (Sente: Scotty, linkup & TSD: Dawn)
Never Never Land, 5.10 (Scotty)
Absurdland, 5.9 (Dawn)
Frog’s Head, 5.6 (P1: Scotty, P2: Dawn)