Onsight trad climbing - what do you do?

Hey,

My favorite style while climbing (sport at least) is onsight/flash. I would say I've gotten pretty efficient at sport climbing onsight.

But I've been climbing a lot more trad lately and I can't seem to do nearly as well onsight. Obviously trad is a lot more complicated to climb this way, because the gear management aspect adds a lot to it, there's more trade-offs to manage (gear vs weight vs peace of mind etc.)

So.... for those who like to trad climb onsight, what are your tricks? I'm interested in small details as well as more macro strategies... Do you tend to eyeball the crack to adjust the gear you bring? Do you just bring lots of gear? How to you tend to manage protections?

Does onsite to you mean no looking at the guidebook for gear recs?  I usually take gear to the size the guide or mp if no guide says.  

Also if you know the area.  I take extra finger size pieces at my local crag.  If I'm at the creek whatever the book says.

I was recently doing a route to warm up and I was.  Like hey there's a splitter hand crack that keeps going and I still had 2 2s and 2 1s and a 3 so I was like F it I got this and it was great.  But it was below my max so I wasn't stressed going in with 0 info.  For me that only works of its below my grade.

Sometimes I can eyeball it.  But when I do it usually turns out that i need the 3 or 4 my girlfriend said i needed but i left on the ground...

The bigger question is: "Can a trad follower get an onsight?"  Hear me out: Theres so much involved with finding good positions to remove the pieces.  Sometimes you need to use a nut tool to hammer out the nut, doing this without a take can be impressive.  Then...  theres the whole reracking and putting the extended slings back into alpine draws.  So much work.

Is it all about the trad leader getting all of the flashy onsight credit for being awesome?

On a slightly less serious note:
Everyone has their preferences.  I think getting a lot of mileage (thus practice) on easier trad routes will help you become more efficient at the process and find what works for you.

True on-site in my book would mean no gear beta.

It's all what you can see from the ground.

Zack's nailed the point about knowing an area, it can really help you decide what to bring.

I like to bring doubles in nuts if I'm insecure in my gear beta. Saves weight but still lets you have the peace of mind. 

I think of it as island hopping.  Look for rests/gear to gun for.  Biggest mistake I find is commiting to a terrible gear placing stance when you're desperado, all while if you kept going another 2 meters there's a rest and better gear.  Look ahead and go for it, and there sure ain't no shame in downclimbing.  

kiff wrote: I think of it as island hopping.  Look for rests/gear to gun for.  Biggest mistake I find is commiting to a terrible gear placing stance when you're desperado, all while if you kept going another 2 meters there's a rest and better gear.  Look ahead and go for it, and there sure ain't no shame in downclimbing.  

This is good advice.  Part of it is also the learning curve of learning to place gear efficiently, knowing what to place where based upon the size of the crack.  Obviously, that's not too hard with a nice, deep crack.  I always found that what helped me onsight was learning how to hang out and place good gear.  The goal is make the effort to place something that will catch a fall, not place junk for a false peace of mind.  All of this is consistent with what kiff mentioned.  If you're at an area where you can eyeball most of the route from the ground, do so,  Sometimes you can get a good sense of what you'll place and where even before you start climbing.  Also work on a consistent racking system.  It's hard to place gear when you have a hard time finding a particular piece. 

Yeah let's say guidebook is off. I check in details what comments/descriptions say mostly for multipitch when things can be serious. But single-pitch onsight attemps I try to stay clear of it.

Cory F: yeah second onsighting could be a thing.... I just haven't got to it yet. It's above my current paygrade....

Downclimbing more - I like the idea. I don't to that too often sport climbing - sometimes after making a hard clip that's after a rest. Other than that you need a pretty good rest/shake to justify it. However I could see how trad climbing it would happen more often. Like going back to a good lock or something. Or after wasting energy exploring some placement options etc.

I would look at the reason you aren't able to onsight a pitch. Some common reasons I have seen are....Did you consistently need to go through 2 or 3 pieces before finding the right one for a placement?  Were you trying to place a piece in the crux of a route when you had good gear 5 feet below you and a clean fall?  Do you not trust the gear you place?  I myself have struggled with these a lot.  I am an onsight trad climber and I think that many of those reasons correlate to my long slow progression through the trad grades.  Now years later I see it, and try hard to push when the fall is clean instead of putting in a piece and saying take.  I personally always take way too much gear for single pitch routes.  A couple weeks ago I onsighted my hardest trad lead.  I brought way more gear than was recommended in the guidebook including big gear.  I figured it would be easier to slam in a #4 really quick and climb on then fiddle with small gear way back deep in the crack.  One last comment would be maybe you are hoping to onsight what is currently your redpoint level?  I have a number of friends who have a higher sport onsight than trad onsight.  It definitely isn't a result of not trying but I think it comes down to lack of technique on crack.  I have watched them go for it and take the whip but without lots of experience on crack they become fatigue earlier and don't climb as efficiently as they do clipping bolts.  Anyway just my $.02.  Good luck!  

FWIW, one of my first mentors suggested placing a bomber piece before a challenging section, climbing through the section, then place another piece.  His argument was getting too pumped placing might be more dangerous (increased chances of falling) than climbing a few more moves.  Of course, I find this to be somewhat situational advice.

Edit:  Another piece of advice I was given.  If its a long pitch place nuts when you have a very good stance.  Save the cams for the "plug and go" (the more challenging sections) parts.  I learned this lesson once and haven't forgotten it.

Idk not done many trad leads yet. but all of them have been onsight and all of them I ran out really far due to lack of proper gear for some part of it!

Maybe I'll start taking a double rack from 00-4inches and a set of nuts up every time to alleviate this issue. Being 20 feet above your gear and knowing the only way down is up sucks but can also be exhilarating!

Different strokes tho. Saw a guy this weekend with 8 placements and he was only 20 feet up. He even had a big purple hex placed at the base before you even start the climb. Keep it inside your comfort zone and ability is the best advice I can think of!

Marlin Thorman wrote: I have a number of friends who have a higher sport onsight than trad onsight.  It definitely isn't a result of not trying but I think it comes down to lack of technique on crack.  I have watched them go for it and take the whip but without lots of experience on crack they become fatigue earlier and don't climb as efficiently as they do clipping bolts.  Anyway just my $.02.  Good luck!  

Lol. My best onsights are 12a sport (a few repeats different years at the grade). Probably not in that shape right now, but I could do 11c/d fairly regurlarly. I've onsighted once a (cruxy) 10a but I tried longer 10bs in the Dacks recenty and got shut down. I don't feel like I was all that close to doing it. So definitely in the "my sport onsight is wayyyyyyyyyyyy higher than my trad" right now!

Franck Vee wrote: Cory F: yeah second onsighting could be a thing.... I just haven't got to it yet. It's above my current paygrade....

Sorry, but with the exception of the occasional stuck piece of gear, leading and following trad are worlds apart.  

Fat Dad wrote:

Sorry, but with the exception of the occasional stuck piece of gear, leading and following trad are worlds apart.  

But if you fall cleaning a piece, if you take to clean a piece, or you watch the leader while you're belaying... You lose your "Follower Onsight" and all hero accolades.  The follower/belayer is undervalued and overlooked.  

Best to climb with a bigger rack and tend towards overprotecting when onsighting. It's easy to misjudge protection opportunities, and it sucks to find out that the crack you ran it out to, planning on slamming a bomber cam in, is actually super flaring.

Most climbing I do is onsight trad - this is how I justify my habit of sewing it up   .

I like to take extras of the sizes that I struggle with. For me, this means 0.75s.

Cory F wrote:

But if you fall cleaning a piece, if you take to clean a piece, or you watch the leader while you're belaying... You lose your "Follower Onsight" and all hero accolades.  The follower/belayer is undervalued and overlooked.  

Yeah, like a solid defencemen. He doesn't score a lot, he's not the most traded player card at school but he's still invaluable....

First, I lost out on doing a lot of good climbs because I was saving it for the onsight flash.

Second, look at the climb first. You develop a kinesthetic and technical sense of how it's going to go, where the bomber #4 stopper placement will be, where the bomber hands will be, when to crank and when to rest.

Then rack up in order, have that #4 handy (we used to do a thing called a "quick draw", whereby your stopper would clip to the neck of your T- shirt via an oval, and a sling would connect the neck carabiner to the one on the rope - probly dangerous), take a breath, and let it flow...

Climbing trad without beta is almost like putting up new routes. I used to climb a lot of back country crags and do new routes and almost always took a big rack. Never ran into real trouble that way. The only time I didn't take a big rack was when I felt like I could really see the thing well. Even then I took some range in sizes near what I thought it would need.

Cleaning trad gear is an art, but it is made easier when the leader knows how to place gear well, has the right gear for the route, and doesn't bury it in the cracks any more than needed for a good placement. Don't go without a nut tool though, or you'll be leaving a piece behind sometimes. And learning to clean pieces quickly, one handed, does take practice.

I've backed off of climbs when I thought I couldn't trust the piece I was considering and the implications of a fall were getting serious. Better to take a shorter fall downclimbing than go past your comfort zone and take a really bad one instead. Some routes I simply wouldn't finish without a bolt at a risky spot that wouldn't take reliable pro. A few I walked away from and never finished. No shame in that, and no shame in getting off any route you are really uncomfortable with. Better to level up and come back.

Final point. There is not much reason to climb a one star route when there are better ones available. For learning trad, stick to better quality routes and the whole experience will likely be better.

Ben Pellerin wrote: Idk not done many trad leads yet. but all of them have been onsight and all of them I ran out really far due to lack of proper gear for some part of it!

Maybe I'll start taking a double rack from 00-4inches and a set of nuts up every time to alleviate this issue. Being 20 feet above your gear and knowing the only way down is up sucks but can also be exhilarating!

Different strokes tho. Saw a guy this weekend with 8 placements and he was only 20 feet up. He even had a big purple hex placed at the base before you even start the climb. Keep it inside your comfort zone and ability is the best advice I can think of!

Don't assume anything based on a bunch of gear placements. As a climber who is barely, barely, starting to do anything with gear, I have had some very kind, very capable, partners who placed a shitload on lead......so noobsy here had oodles to practice cleaning on follow or top rope. Ironically, including a giant purple hex at the bottom, when I was discussing that those giant hexes could perhaps be great for me to pitch in quickly for a ground anchor for me dinky self when a refrigerator is climbing on lead.

One of those partners, climbing on routes I can climb (many grades below their ability), invents"games",to sharpen his skills too. Like passive only placements, or, a tricams only anchor. That, was interesting! He left one tricam for me, later, at the base, to clean. It defeated me, not because it was a tri cam, but it was a close fit in the passive ​placement, and I couldn't for the life of me see where it went in.

Or. They simply chose to sew it up. ;-)

Best, Helen

Does your trad grade pyramid reflect an accurate expectation for onsighting .10b?

I have flashed up to .11a sport, but I've only climbed so many hard 10 trad routes that I don't expect to onsight easy 10, regardless of my sport grade.

Maybe it's mental and you just need to trust your climbing ability and your gear.

Chris Blatchley wrote: Does your trad grade pyramid reflect an accurate expectation for onsighting .10b?

I think so - I've onsighted most 5.9 I've tried. I would say that's what I think will happen when I get on one.

Sport vs trad grade are not equivalent. But say in sport I can expect to onsight or be really close to onsight 11d and succeed maybe 50% of the time. I would say onsighting 11c & under is almost 100. Onsighting 12a doesn't happen that often, but it feels quite possible under decent circumstances (style or route etc.). But for trad, adding 1-2 # grades to that "near-certain onsight level", and it feels like I would need to luck out to onsight 10b. The difference feels disportionate.

I don't care about the grades per se, it's mostly a convenient way to try give myself a reference about how relatively hard grades can be...

Franck Vee wrote: Yeah let's say guidebook is off. I check in details what comments/descriptions say mostly for multipitch when things can be serious. But single-pitch onsight attemps I try to stay clear of it.

This sounds very strange to me. If you're going to read comments/descriptions then why would the guidebook be off? And if the guidebook's off, how are you choosing which routes to try and "onsight?" Heck, the MP comments probably give you more beta than a guidebook would. I just don't get this logic I guess. Especially since it sounds like you're wanting to onsight harder grades. Some sort of guidebook must come into play if grades are a consideration. 

Per OP: In my experience, onsighting trad climbs really just comes down to experience trad climbing. Experience placing gear efficiently. Experience trusting gear so you're not shitting your pants 5 feet above a piece. Experience looking ahead and seeing your (hopefully) next good stance (mentioned upthread). Etc Etc.