Using Screamers

Apologies if this sounds like a dumb question to more experienced climbers, but I've been leading for about a year and decided to buy some Yates Screamers after reading up on them. However, the reading materials that come with them are full of test information but short on usage details, so I have two questions:

1. These things are pretty stiff, so is the rope yanking them out a serious concern as one climbs?

2. Is one end the gear end and another the rope end?

Thanks!

there probably no point in using screamers if yr using arent using a lower impact rope and/or an ATC ...

BMC Technical Conference 2006

that likely has as much or more effect ...

;)

It takes years of free climbing to really understand the use cases for screamers in that application. And while they do have a high general novelty quotient for the curiously inclined, for someone in your position I would say just stick them away and don't bother with them unless you're going to be getting into [hard] aid climbing sometime soon.

bearbreeder wrote:there probably no point in using screamers if yr using arent using a lower impact rope and/or an ATC ... that likely has as much or more effect ... ;)

A screamer MIGHT be useful anywhere either rope drag and/or the amount of rope out could impact the systems ability to take full advantage of the "softer catch" from an ATC, soft rope etc.

Thanks for the responses so far.

I'm not about to get into aid anytime soon, but my reading on various sites, including this one, has suggested that on free climbs, screamers can be a good choice with the first piece of pro and for protecting the crux and runout, especially if the last piece is sketchy. So that's why I got them.

RMS wrote:1. These things are pretty stiff, so is the rope yanking them out a serious concern as one climbs?

Are you asking if rope pull could start ripping the bar tacks? I don't think that's possible, the activation force is 1.5-2kN which (assuming a static hang) is equivalent to 340-450lbs. This means you could pop some tacks in a modest fall, but unless you are a bear of a man you probably cannot pull them apart.

RMS wrote:Thanks for the responses so far. I'm not about to get into aid anytime soon, but my reading on various sites, including this one, has suggested that on free climbs, screamers can be a good choice with the first piece of pro and for protecting the crux and runout, especially if the last piece is sketchy. So that's why I got them.

As mentioned above, it's more complicated than that. IN CERTAIN situations, Screamers help to reduce the peak forces on the top piece but they also can increase the length of the fall and may not contribute much, if anything.

You'll typically only use them if high fall forces are likely, the piece is of marginal strength (micro wire or nasty bolt) AND other factors such as low impact force ropes and belay devices cannot reduce the forces on their own.

The best thing to do FIRST is get a low impact force rope as this helps anywhere in the system, then be good at reducing rag so the entire rope is part of the system, then use a low impact force device such as an ATC to keep the forces even lower. If there are STILL issues at this point, then yes, a screamer can be useful but those instances are extremely rare (and as other pointed out, more often than not in aid climbing)

People who know with data on screamers

Patrick Shyvers wrote: Are you asking if rope pull could start ripping the bar tacks? I don't think that's possible, the activation force is 1.5-2kN which (assuming a static hang) is equivalent to 340-450lbs. This means you could pop some tacks in a modest fall, but unless you are a bear of a man you probably cannot pull them apart.

No, I'm asking if rope pull could pull the pro, and hence the screamer, out since the screamer is stiffer than most quickdraws (and, obviously, runners) that I've used.

I guess I'm looking at that screamer and thinking that unless I climb straight up from it, if I move sideways at all, I'm risking pulling it and the pro out since it doesn't seem too flexible.

RMS wrote: No, I'm asking if rope pull could pull the pro, and hence the screamer, out since the screamer is stiffer than most quickdraws (and, obviously, runners) that I've used. I guess I'm looking at that screamer and thinking that unless I climb straight up from it, if I move sideways at all, I'm risking pulling it and the pro out since it doesn't seem too flexible.

Again, there's really no situation where it's going to really be appropriate for you to use these at most established crags, on non-FAs, and where you aren't dealing with a bunch of marginal pro. You just aren't at that place yet. Give it a few years and if your [trad] climbing progresses you'll start understanding what goes where and why.

RMS, as a relatively new climber, your best bet by far is to forget about Screamers. It is pretty unclear whether they are any good at all, and even less clear whether they are good for much. It is even possible that they might be counter-productive. There may be some situations in which they might make a small difference, but you have to be in the expert range of placing and relying on questionable pro, the falls have to be short, and you have to understand whether they are likely to work in the situation you are using them in.

Meanwhile, you are right, they are stiff and so are more likely to lift nuts and walk cams. You might have to add a regular draw or long sling to the Screamer.

The real problem with Screamers is psychological: they are likely to make you treat bad gear as better than it is. Really, work on getting good pro and Screamers shouldn't be an issue in your climbing for a while. For example, far more sensible than putting a Screamer on a mission-critical piece is to get in two or more pieces of pro in the critical location.

"...work on getting good pro..."

"...get in two or more pieces of pro in the critical location..."

rgold is giving you the only real take aways you need from this thread at this point in your climbing career...

bearbreeder wrote:there probably no point in using screamers if yr using arent using a lower impact rope and/or an ATC ..

The most useful and relevant application for a screamer is on a sketchy aid pitch. On most aid pitches, the leader clips so much gear to the rope that the ATC wouldn't slip on a fall, thus the impact force differences between an ATC and GriGri would be frivolous. Plus, no one really uses an ATC on a wall anyway.

Screamers are most useful in low-energy scenarios where the fall distance and impact force are low. A screamer is going to have less of an effect on a massive whipper than it would falling with the thing at your feet. This is because the screamer removes a fixed amount of energy from the system, and that amount does not scale with the total energy involved in the fall. A long screamer removes about 700J, which may be useful if the total energy in the fall was only 1500J. But if you took a massive whipper and the total energy involved was 10,000J, then removing 700J becomes less useful.

There are also scenarios where adding a screamer can actually increase the impact force on the top piece (mostly in FF above 1.5). Anyway, I agree, the OP should not worry about screamers.

A lot of anti screamer love here.

I was taught to put screamers on old pitons (while free climbing), short ice screws, suspect pieces (whether free rock climbing, aid climbing, or ice climbing). I have seen the argument pro screamer versus anti screamer. Most of us probably do not have the expertise to opine one way or the other.

RMS - my thought is you just purchased some screamers. If you place a RP, a tiny nut or cam, or come across and old fixed pin, putting a screamer on it is likely a good decision. It may make a difference, it may not. The vast majority of the time you will never know as the piece won't get tested.

Go for it - use those screamers! I do and many of my partners do.

Climb Ohn. Wally

My screamers sit in the gear box at home and there they will likely remain.

Wally wrote:If you place a RP, a tiny nut or cam, or come across and old fixed pin, putting a screamer on it is likely a good decision. It may make a difference, it may not. The vast majority of the time you will never know as the piece won't get tested. Go for it - use those screamers! I do and many of my partners do.

Wally, with all due respect this just isn't good advice for a beginning / intermediate climber - particularly with regard to small pro. As far as fixed pins goes, from my experience from having replaced [or reset] shitloads of old pins and bolts, I'd say old bolts are far more worrisome than old pins. But regardless, encouraging new climbers randomly slapping screamers on things in the blind hope they'll contribute anything at all to the situation is just a bad idea.

Also, small pro and marginal pro are two very different things. What RMS and other climbers need, as rgold suggested, is to learn is to place good pro no matter what the size. And when it comes to placing small gear the important thing is eyeballing things down to the millimeter level to really understand the topology and rock quality of the placement and how to make that work with the geometry of the piece. If a piece is good then a screamer is pointless; if it's not, then you should probably reconsider your options or your plans unless you're highly experienced, good with gear (not everyone is), and used to dealing with and climbing above marginal pro.

Don't get me wrong. I've used them extensively in marginal-pro free climbing situations on various FAs and blown a couple of dozen of them in repeated falls - some of those involved pre-slicing them at steep angles with razor blades to alter their loading curve - but again, it's all an advanced topic and not a piece of gear beginning and intermediate climbers should be involved with.

Wally that's the whole issue of "to scream or not to scream".
Do they work? Yes, but not how many people expect them to work. They don't turn a crappy pin into a bolt. They work on short falls very well but once you start to run it out a little bit they they are useless. On falls with very little rope out they may even become a liability.

The important thing to realize is that in a high energy fall the screamer will fully deploy and limit the load to the 2kn but only until it's fully deployed. At that point you're right back to the dynamics of the rope and can still load that crappy pin with excessive kn's.

rocknice2 wrote:The important thing to realize is that in a high energy fall the screamer will fully deploy and limit the load to the 2kn but only until it's fully deployed. At that point you're right back to the dynamics of the rope and can still load that crappy pin with excessive kn's.

In the course of going through about two dozen of them on 20-40' falls our experience was that they fully blew / deployed only about one out of every twelve falls. The rest of the time they partially deployed and we'd sport tape them back together and reuse them until they were fully blown.

I've deployed one screamer in my life, and it absolutely saved my life. I was on the first pitch of an aid climb, and I left a screamer on a wire hanger on a rivet. Higher up a hook popped, and I went for the scariest ride of my life. I was 50 feet up and stopped 5 feet off the deck, held by the screamer on the wire hanger on a rivet.

RMS wrote:Apologies if this sounds like a dumb question to more experienced climbers, but I've been leading for about a year and decided to buy some Yates Screamers after reading up on them. However, the reading materials that come with them are full of test information but short on usage details, so I have two questions: 1. These things are pretty stiff, so is the rope yanking them out a serious concern as one climbs? 2. Is one end the gear end and another the rope end? Thanks!

To answer your questions...
1. Yes, adding a stiff piece of gear to your protection system can cause the pieces to walk and could result in a piece pulling out.

To add to that, screamers are more useful for tiny pro, stuff that might break. As a new climber I recommend you master placing good gear instead of thinking about ways to place marginal stuff and make it better.

2. You can clip either end to the rope or piece.

Additional commentary:
I've climbed over 300 different trad routes at this point and I've never wished I had a screamer. I've broken cams and ripped a few nuts but I always knew I was placing crap gear at the time and understood the risk. I don't think the screamers would have helped those situations either.

I use "screamers" every day as a rope access technician. They are called energy absorbers in my line of work. We use them as a catastrophic backup on a double rope system. I've used them at work and tested them using Petzl gear, dropping 400lbs of weight off a roof onto a static line I've seen these deploy and keep the arresting forces around 800 pounds of force to the human body and barely leave a mark on the rope. OSHA limits workers to 1800 pounds of impact force and the human body just breaks at 2700 pounds of impact force. So yeah, when the stitching or loomed material blows out it does decrease forces.

All that being said, the expectedly short length of your falls and stretch in the rope will do everything for you. If you start looking at 50 foot runouts on small pro and factor 1.9 falls then you might want to use them. Or, just climb a different route like I do!

Healyje wrote: In the course of going through about two dozen of them on 20-40' falls our experience was that they fully blew / deployed only about one out of every twelve falls. The rest of the time they partially deployed and we'd sport tape them back together and reuse them until they were fully blown.

That doesn't tell the whole story. Someone can take that out of context.

I once took a 20+ footer on a C3 000, with only two cams in the crack. It held just fine, to my amazement! If I was to leave it at that, people can take away the wrong message. The reality being that the fall was on 150 feet of a single Beal 8.6 and I had a light belayer.

I'm not saying they don't work because they do work.
What they don't do is turn every fall into a 2kn fall or remove 5kn from the total fall like Yates claims.
I would say if you're not deploying it all the way to the second to last tack then in all likelihood you didn't need it.

This topic has been pretty beat to death in the past. Check out this forum post from a couple years back. mountainproject.com/v/when-…