Placing Cams straight in

I have gone through the searches and havent found what I was looking for so...

How does everybody rate a cam that is placed straight in the crack?

Instead of the stem facing down in the direction of pull this cam is place straight out at you.

Sometimes when climbing the cracks flares slightly outward and by placing the cam stem down in the direction of pull it causes the lobes to not be as equalized as they could if you were to just place it straight in.

What I heard from some is that it will hold a fall though it may mangle the cam.

If I were to rate it this type of placement I would say its not quite bomber but not absulute shit either.

All other sides stuff is out of the question too. The rock is solid and its not a link cam.

Thanks in advance

Well it's not optimal and better than nothing, in most cases, but the biggest contributing factor will be whether or not it's a flexible or rigid stemmed cam. The former is the obvious better example, of course.

I would rather have it oriented downward and have the lobe sets unequally sprung (with at least one set sprung optimally) than have it straight out and almost 90 degrees to the direction of fall with the lobe sets equally sprung. My reasoning is that it would be better to have one lobe set solidly holding than both loaded in a rotational arc path of travel/force. There's no telling how the lobe sets will be sprung and situated after the stem has rotated and the full fall force is applied.

Edit: there's always offsets if you have a specific route to tackle and know you'll need a specific size for a flared application.

caughtinside wrote:My personal opinion is that it's better to place the stem in the direction of fall and have the cam lobes be unequalized so long as they have solid contact with the rock. Sometimes this can take a little finessing to find the right spot, trying both sides of the cam to see what works better, etc. Having a cam sticking straight out, where it isn't a horizontal, I'd say is a technique of near last resort.

+1 to all that...

Plus, seems like the huge risk is that the whole deal is going to rotate (not because of equalization, but because of leverage) 90 degrees when weighted, unless you've judged the placement perfectly, and then even if it remains in the crack at that point, it's just going to be random chance if it's placed in a way that'll still hold (or less than random chance, because otherwise you would have placed it that way to begin with). Plus-plus, almost by definition this placement will only have a tiny thickness of rock between it and the outside world, so really weak in all but highly unusual cases.

EDIT: aren't the "downhill" lobes actually completely unweighted in this scenario? Isn't the physics of it trying to push them toward the sky?

Sounds like the kind of spot where you wish you'd brought your Tri-Cams, mostly...

Slight thread drift -

Implied in the above responses is a belief that cam lobes retracted at different rates matters. Does it actually matter given that cam lobes have a continuous camming angle?

Chris Horton wrote:Where is the cam between the boobs picture when we need it?

I'll bet she'll see your BoobSignal and come to the rescue...

What it really depends on if it is free to rotate or not. If the cam is free to turn, it will simply turn downwards. Since it will be doing that anyways, you might as well place it stem down to begin with and not have to worry about it coming out as it turns. If stem down makes it fall out, then that cam probably won't do much good.

However, if the cam is not free to rotate, you are basically torquing it out. That means the top lobes are taking more than double their intended load in "pulling", while the bottom lobes are pushing against whatever constriction they have hit up against. If it's a Link cam, it probably means a broken cam. For other cams it often bends the axle, or buckles the top lobes. Might hold, might break.

Stem flexibility isn't really an issue for anything with cables (everything but forged friends). At 5 kN they are all equally flexible.

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

BD wrote:Not only do we have tests to show that it (the ‘stiffness’ of the stem) is not a problem, but we have tests that show too much flexibility is a problem in certain placements. Think about how cams work in a perfect placement: you pull straight down on the cams, that force is converted to a rotational force on the cams, and the surface of the cams push against the rock surface. Now place a highly flexible cabled cam in a vertical bottoming crack (the stem is sticking out horizontally). Should be good right? Think again about how the cams need to work. Pull straight down on this placement and you’ll notice a large component of the downward force is acting parallel to the cam surfaces. This is not how the cam is designed to work. The cams will not push against the rock surface without a force perpendicular to the cams plane of movement. In short, it stops camming and acts like a nut placement. You need some torque on the placement to convert the parallel load to more of an outward one that can act on the cams. This torque is provided by the stiffness of the cable, or the length of the shank of head terminal, or some combination of both. In testing, the high flexible cables did not generate the torque necessary to hold the falls and the units slid sideways out of the placement at very low loads. We even made C3s proto types out of softer cable, only to watch them fail our bottoming crack test because of this issue.

Alpine Exposure C3 Review

Wow, great info from BD.

I know that as a gaper inexperienced w/setting gear, I sometimes set cams straight in on accident. Really will be watching myself for that in the future!

In answer to the OP... Even my limited experience has shown me that cams slide/skitter/walk/rotate/do-the-mashed-potato when loaded to orient toward the direction of pull. Sometimes, as evidence by the BD quote above, they do the mashed potato right out of the crack, and you do the mashed potato onto a ledge/the ground. Either way, horizontal placements won't stay horizontal no matter what you do - so why not just make a vertical one that you can at least set yourself?

My train of thought was pretty much on the same track as DannyU's. The cam is going to rotate if it can. If it can't you're unequally loading it (even more so than having the two sets of lobes deployed differently in the stem down configuration) w/ the resulting... may or may not fail.

And if it's got any room to rotate into the crack, you could be looking at fixing it if it's weighted.

Always place your pro in the anticipated direction of fall/force. No question. Hence why people build multi directional anchors when the force can go in multiple directions potentially. I would never place a cam pointed upwards on lead....Nor would I place one horizontal in a vertical crack. If that is your only option, choose a different more appropriate piece of pro, or when in doubt, run it out. Often, people get so focused on one piece of pro they miss the opportunities around them.

Thanks everyone for your replies it certainly changes my mind on how to place cams.

Granted in climbing there arent any hard and fast rules to placing gear and this is only a guideline ruleish thing.

But I think with placing gear you look for certian placements and you get used to finding those. I would have never thought that placing cams with slightly unequal lobes would have been better than placing it straigh it with perfect lobes. Granted both are some degrees of marginal but placing them with unequal lobes atleast makes a little more sense.

It is also interesting to note that I learned to place cams straight in by someone that from what the looks of it had lots of expirence climbing. I noticed his partner was climbing Jam Crack in Yosemite and she placed all her cams straight in so I asked why and he siad sometimes the contacts better that way.

Now it makes sense that cams can rotate and pop out in some cases and I am sure these placement will be easy to avoid. My question came out of climbing at J-tree last weekend where even though its granite and the cracks run the length of the climb the gear placements can get a little funny. Im thinking specifically of Mr Misty Kiss.

Not only could they get pulled in the direction of the fall, they will. The only thing to prevent that from happening is a feature of rock inside the crack. If that were to happen, the cam is likely to become a conversation piece rather then something your going to want on your rack. Depending on the MFG, the cam may be deformed badly (especially u-stemmed cams)

I have seen a cam loaded on two of four lobes, however the overall strength is GREATLY reduced. And it is susceptible of again, being deformed. So much so that it could be pulled from its placement.

Be safe! Read up, grab a book, or better yet take an anchors class with a certified instructor. Cheers!

Greg-Az wrote:Thanks everyone for your replies it certainly changes my mind on how to place cams. Granted in climbing there arent any hard and fast rules to placing gear and this is only a guideline ruleish thing. But I think with placing gear you look for certian placements and you get used to finding those. I would have never thought that placing cams with slightly unequal lobes would have been better than placing it straigh it with perfect lobes. Granted both are some degrees of marginal but placing them with unequal lobes atleast makes a little more sense. It is also interesting to note that I learned to place cams straight in by someone that from what the looks of it had lots of expirence climbing. I noticed his partner was climbing Jam Crack in Yosemite and she placed all her cams straight in so I asked why and he siad sometimes the contacts better that way. Now it makes sense that cams can rotate and pop out in some cases and I am sure these placement will be easy to avoid. My question came out of climbing at J-tree last weekend where even though its granite and the cracks run the length of the climb the gear placements can get a little funny. Im thinking specifically of Mr Misty Kiss.

Actually, to respectfully disagree with you, there ARE some hard and fast rules in climbing, including:
1) Gear failure can result in injury or death.
2) Physics always wins.
3) Place bomber gear.
4) When you have to place bad gear (happens), know that it is bad.

The unequal lobes make a LOT more sense, not a little. The issue is not that the lobes should all be in an identical orientation to the rock: the whole point of four lobes is to allow the thing to adjust to variations in the crack. The huge issue with the horizontal stem in the vertical crack is that the cam won't be where you placed it once you fall on it, it will move to the point that it's a completely different placement you never inspected or tested, so you'll just be rolling the dice!

I'd say your Jam Crack experience was a valuable lesson cheaply learned! Always good to be skeptical of every source on the topic of staying alive (including random guys on the internet). Always good to research all this stuff from the ground up with a certified guide or text (eg John Long's Climbing Anchors). In this particular case, a review of the instructions stapled to every new cam you buy would have told you that the guy you were speaking to was off the track.

and in case you're wondering if cams can catch on just one lobe pair..

.. they most certainly can.

I caught a friend on this one after the rock blew out.

Greg,

I would say that in this case it is the torque applied to the cam that would need to be considered. When placing the cam straight in, the stem of the cam would act as a moment arm so the force of the fall would be multiplied by the lenght of the cam's stem.
I am not sure if the cam manufacturers spec the failure torque. I am interested enogh to have a look.

Farzin

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.

I couldn't explain why but a bomber 4 lobe straight-in placement always makes me feel better than only 2 good lobes but facing downward placement.

Maybe because w just 2 lobes it feels like a tug from the rope could easily make the cam walk and completely fall out of the crack? Not sure.

Christian wrote:I couldn't explain why but a bomber 4 lobe straight-in placement always makes me feel better than only 2 good lobes but facing downward placement.

There is no such thing as a bomber straight-in placement. Two cams is A1 -- ask Dale Bard.

You read on these boards lots of things that you should NEVER do.

Placing a cam straight in is the only one I actually have never done.

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…

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.

This is a well placed cam ...

I wouldn't want to fall on that - it would probably pull right out. Psychological pro, definitely!