Using Alpine Draws for sport and trad.

As the title says, I occasionally use my alpine draws for sport routes (reduce rope drag on some wandering routes)

So my question is, does clipping the bolt biner of the alpine draw (or quickdraw I guess!) into the sling of the cam pose any problem on the webbing?

I understand the obvious risk of running the rope through the bolt end of the draws, but does the limited movement of the webbing through the bolt end biner make this such a minimal issue. I've always inspected my gear (and I'm rather new to the trad world) But I wanted to see what the community thought.

The other option I've considered is clipping the sling into the racking biner instead of clipping the bolt biner into the sling and leaving it tripled if it's okay.

What do y'all think? or am I gunna DIE?

I´ve been climbing trad for 45 years and sport for 25 and I haven´t even got an alpine draw- am I going to die?

Nah, it's all good. I use mine as well, although I tend to wait until the others are gone.

You can skip the webbing and clip right into the thumb loop. I think OP and DMM are the only current generation of cams without a thumb loop.

I think the bolt biner only poses a risk to the rope because the rope slides through the biner while weighted. It is dynamic loaded movement, rather than static loading on the cam's webbing.

Plus, you use the same alpine draw for clipping cams and clipping the wire on a nut. The nut's wire could have similar marring affects as the bolt, and I've never heard of this posing an issue.

It's fine. I would wager a lot of people do this or something similar. I mean when you clip the odd bolt or fixed pin on a trad route you use the same draws, right?

Steve Minn wrote:You can skip the webbing and clip right into the thumb loop.

Jim Titt wrote:I´ve been climbing trad for 45 years and sport for 25 and I haven´t even got an alpine draw- am I going to die?

Of course clipping metal to mental poses more of a risk, I always look mine over after clipping carabiners to bolts incase sharp edges develop.

Eric Engberg wrote: The OP is probably talking about slings or runners. Honestly kids these days think everything is sport centric and adjust the lingo accordingly. With their cute little sport runners with the dogbones and bent/wire gates....

I'm curious what kind of slings you use then, Jim Titt? You only use quickdraws, and have for 45 years? ;-)

As mentioned above, an alpine draw is just a sling and two biners.

I carry a racking biner on my cams: I supposed if I was paranoid about gouged biners on my alpine draws, I could clip the racking biner instead of the alpine draw biner.

But I don't, because I'm not really worried about it.

I have some biners I've aid climbed overhung, practice bolt ladders on: they are really gouged on the bolt end. Even those I'm not too paranoid about clippling them to cam webbing.

But I don't project a route or toprope with my rope through said biners, obviously. No need to needlessly wear the rope out.

I have all alpine draws pretty much because I really only put money towards trad gear, since I do that more it's not a huge problem for me, if your sport climbing almost just as much then idk, worth it too buy some QuickDraws. I also have Frankendraws that I use for sport, random biners and dogbones hanging around

It's going to matter a lot more if you fall on the draws. You aren't going to chew up the carabiner if you don't fall on it; it just gently clinks around on the bolt as the rope moves.

If you fall on the draws clipped into bolts a lot, I'd inspect them. If you don't fall much, I wouldn't even think about it.