Placing Cams straight in

Well done! I'd call that a "POMP"--- PEace of Mind Placement!

they gotta be firm....theyre holding the spring tension on that camalot. LOVE IT

Greg-Az wrote:David, You bring up a good point with looking at the directions of the BD website so I did. What I found was that the cams with unequal lobes, though to be fair they are really unqual, earn a dangerous marking while the illustration that shows the placement I am talking about earns a cautionary warning. You really have to look at the link below to figure out what I am talking about. blackdiamondequipment.com/u… In regards to the hard and fast rules 3 and 4 dont seem too hard or fast. 3) Place bomber gear. 4) When you have to place bad gear (happens), know that it is bad. I would agree with Rule number 1) Gear failure can result in injury or death. But I think if your trusting your life to one piece of gear you have already skrewed up. And rule two is beyond me other than the whole gravity thing but I am getting off track. Take a look at BD website it says a lot about cam placement. Jon Long's book only really talks about bomber and shitty placements not the in between that we are talking about in this forum. Anchors are another story because you have lots of time to place gear and be choosey with your site.

Hi Greg:

(some thread drift here, sorry)

I guess what I was getting at with my comments is that the vast majority of placements should be really, really solid. To me the "in between" placements you mention almost don't exist: if I attempt to make a placement and I can't get it to the point where it's bomber, I usually take the piece back out unless I'm desperate, because I don't want to waste the piece on a suspect placement. I also tend to think, "If I was smarter, I would have seen that I couldn't get bomber pro there without wasting the energy trying to place it and failing."

In other words, it's either bomber or shitty, and there's no in between. I'd be interested to hear if other folks agree with that assertion.

In the specific case of the straight in cam placement being discussed here, though, a lot of experienced folks seem to be saying that it's not a matter of "in between" at all: it's lethal!

One thing I try to do often is ask the people I'm climbing with how they thought I did with the gear on a given lead. I want people to feel very comfortable telling me that I screwed something up. FWIW they often say that about my climbing, but they don't say it about my placements.

The other thing I do is really test the piece, try hard to get it to come out, and make sure it's seated in the best spot. Typically takes 2-3 seconds, and sometimes yields some surprising information. This is hardly front-page news, but a lot of new leaders don't do it.

I remember one instance in which I have fallen on a straight out placement, a yellow alien in a granite crack, one of the first free pitches of the Salathe wall (2nd maybe, it had two parallel cracks). I remember placing it horizontally since there was not any other better placement, or I was not able to find them. The cam inspired confidence to me since Aliens have a really flexible stem and I thought there was no way it could come out of granite. When I fell, that piece caught my fall, but as soon as I got back to it I noticed with horror that the cam had turned 90 degrees and two lobes were at that point outside of the crack. I was lucky since the next piece that I had confidence in was about 10 feet down.

Since then, I have tried to avoid horizontal placements unless there were absolutely no other option.

Daryl Allan wrote:and in case you're wondering if cams can catch on just one lobe pair

Actually, even just one lobe can catch a major fall. It'll cam in there like a tricam. I bootied a piece in which that obviously happened.

Probably not that common, though.

Greg-Az,

Sounds like you've been climbing on sketchy placements, and I'll bet the strait in cam isn't the only thing you're doing that is sketchy.

The best thing you could do is seek out some competent instruction. Try a guide for a day and they'll show you how to place gear.

Conor Byrne wrote:not an engineer or scientist as well but the topic reminded me of reading something from BD about their C3 cams a while back. fwiw Alpine Exposure C3 Review

That's thought provoking info.

I recently climbed with someone who SHUNNED my TCUs because the U-wires "sucked" and put torque on the lobes, instead preferring his friend zeros (which I have a set of but took off my rack because I trust the TCUs more). Yea, this guy was more opinionated than me which was previously thought impossible.

So anyone here think a zero is stronger/weaker than a similar sized TCU? I also have the old BD .1 and .2 FCU I sometimes take out of cold storage for scary sandstone placements.

PS: I did place the 2nd to smallest zero on lead once and took a tiny fall on it. Never placed it since, though. I'm considering a #1 ballnut as a replacement.

Elijah Flenner wrote: I don't see what you are talking about. I see pictures of cams that have one or more lobes not cammed at all, and those get dangerous markings; as they should. I don't see any of unequal but cammed lobes at all. All lobes should be within the proper range.

My understanding is that the most ideal cam placement is when the rotation of all lobes contact the rock at the same point in their expansion range (like in a perfectly parallel sided crack) and at 10% to 50% of that expansion range. If not within that range, choose a larger cam for the most effective holding power. I believe this is from John Long.

Clarification if needed - that is to say, that if one lobe is at 50% of it's full expansion range when making contact with the rock, each of the other lobes for the most ideal placement should also be at 50% of its expansion range. Strive for this ideal.

Daniel Parkerson wrote:What about climbs, especially slabby/vertical granite, that have mainly shallow horizontal cracks that TCU's naturally seem to fit perfectly? Most of the time, placing in these cracks has the stem pointing straight out. I've always felt pretty good about said placements mainly because horizontal cracks like these are the reason I bought TCU's. Would you say that tricams would be a safer bet? Thanks

With horizontal cracks (like Looking Glass eyebrows or at the Gunks) all the cam lobes should be engaged. Also, you are often able to place the cam so that "enough" of the stem is still be oriented toward the direction of fall--outward in this case because the base of the crack keeps the stem oriented that way. (FYI, this is why the "gunks tie-off" was used with rigid stem friends. Otherwise, the end of the stem could extend beyond the lower edge of the crack resulting in failure or damage of the stem during a fall.)

If the horizontal crack is so shallow that the lower edge of the crack is near the cam's axle, I would want to find an alternative--either use a tricam or find a different placement.