Nut Racking Strategy Question to Prevent Accidental Unclipping while Maintaining Easy Single-Handed Racking/Removal

This thought came up to me the other night chatting in the gym with a friend and I've pondered pros/cons of different methods but wonder if I've missed some ideas. When gear or belays get crammed, or I am working up a chimney, inevitably at some point some nut gets unclipped and falls. So not when I am handing or handling them. It is discovered after a climb when a nut or two may be missing. This never happens to slings or cams, so I figure the rigid wire is what makes this so easy to do. This seems to be a reasonably common issue among other climbers I have talked to.

What do you do to rack nuts where they are easy to access and stow, but not prone to accidental unclipping?

Current Racking Strategy
Currently I rack my nuts on wire gate oval 'biners with for easy adjustment, and I can unclip the nuts one-handed by torquing, and clip them by one-handed levering. The 'biners have teeth since the notches don't get in the way of this method of racking/accessing nuts (similar to ice screws).

To avoid having 'biners too congested, I rack a small set of nuts on one 'biner (determined arbitrarily to be the ones with solid heads), and a large set of nuts on the other 'biner (which end up being the ones with heads formed by extruded shapes - i.e. they have holes on 2 of the 4 sides). This, combined with racking them on ovals, seems to make them pretty slim for racking multiple nuts to a 'biner. A similar demarcation for offsets is to put Peenuts on one 'biner, and DMM Alloy offsets on another. Brassies are small enough and rarely used enough to seem to warrant dividing into more than one 'biner beyond a dedicated one for a set (or I intermix if I am using the VERY small ones that don't have similar sizes in regular nuts).

I usually put my nuts at the front of my front harness loops (if I am not aiding with a chest harness).  Sometimes with smalls on one side, biggies on the other, but often I just put both on my left side since I am right-handed and rarely need to use nuts on lead unless the route is particularly nut-friendly.

Current Ideas for Improvement
An obvious solution to the nut dropping problem is to use locking 'biners, but I have found that the locking sleeve gets in the way of the nut wires too much, and/or the solid gates seem to have stiffer springs that make it harder to clip/unclip nuts.

Lately I have experimented a bit with twisty ties (NOT rubber bands) wrapped around one of the gate wires that can then be wrapped/unwrapped once more around the 'biner at the tooth to set my preferred 'biner in lock and unlock mode one-handed, and it seems to work OK, but I wonder if anyone else has a potentially better solution?

You have wires coming off your biner when you're not handing them? Or you mean you fumble them sometimes?

One idea would be to carry less nuts but actually rack them all on individual biners. I mean, do you really NEED 15 nuts? 

Personally,  I rack my nuts on my harness in the front of my front gear loops.

are you using a solid gate carabiner?
are you using a clean nosed carabiner?

you shouldn't for your nuts.

And if that doesn't fix it...

How is the tension on the gate of your carabiner?
strong enough?

The only thing that has ever fallen off of a harness I've ever seen was from the rear gear loops.

I've climbed a decent amount of chimneys and have only had one thing fall off, which I retrieved.
So if stuff falls out and I don't get it back, I guess I just go without or go get another.
I wouldn't bother putting rubber bands on my carabiners.

Señor Arroz wrote: You have wires coming off your biner when you're not handing them? Or you mean you fumble them sometimes?

One idea would be to carry less nuts but actually rack them all on individual biners. I mean, do you really NEED 15 nuts? 

I'll update my strategy notes above, but to respond here (also to Alex): 

Wires come off when I'm not handing/handling them.

Currently to avoid having 'biners too congested, I rack a small set of nuts on one 'biner (determined arbitrarily to be the ones with solid heads), and a large set of nuts on the other 'biner (which end up being the ones with heads formed by extruded shapes - i.e. they have holes on 2 of the 4 sides). Or for offsets, Peenuts on one 'biner, DMM Alloy offsets on another 'biner, brassies (if I brought a full set) on a dedicated 'biner. This, combined with racking them on ovals, seems to make them pretty slim for racking multiple nuts to a 'biner.

Nuts are racked at the front of my front gear loops on wired ovals with teeth/notches.

Losing nuts is not a huge problem, but it happens enough to be noticeable and mildly annoying and seems to be unique to nuts (I have never mysteriously lost a sling, 'biner, cam, tricam, etc.), so as I'm always looking to streamline setups and had a friend bring up a similar problem the other night, I figured I'd see if something can be improved without worse downsides.

Are you racking gates in or gates out? 

Señor Arroz wroteOne idea would be to carry less nuts but actually rack them all on individual biners. I mean, do you really NEED 15 nuts? 

I carry ~15 nuts on every climb, and often place at least a third of them.  I'd sooner get rid of some cams.

It is a very rare occurrence for me to have nuts fall off the rack.  When it happens, it is almost always because of user error on my part, i.e. I somehow let a nut trap the gate open when clipping them back to the rack.  I think this accident is more likely if the nut biners are clipped to harness loops gate-out, because if you don't hold all the nuts down when unclipping and/or reclipping their biner, one or more will slide over the gate since the carabiner has to be inverted.  Once I changed over to gate-in, it almost never happens.

rgold wrote:

I carry ~15 nuts on every climb, and often place at least a third of them.  I'd sooner get rid of some cams.

It is a very rare occurrence for me to have nuts fall off the rack.  When it happens, it is almost always because of user error on my part, i.e. I somehow let a nut trap the gate open when clipping them back to the rack.  I think this accident is more likely if the nut biners are clipped to harness loops gate-out, because if you don't hold all the nuts down when unclipping and/or reclipping their biner, one or more will slide over the gate since the carabiner has to be inverted.  Once I changed over to gate-in, it almost never happens.

I rack gates out. So you rack the nuts 'biner gates in and then flip the 'biner out to take off a nut, and then back before climbing again? Hrm, I'll try that!

Mark P Thomas wrote:

I rack gates out. So you rack the nuts 'biner gates in and then flip the 'biner out to take off a nut, and then back before climbing again? Hrm, I'll try that!

In addition to rgold’s point about needing to invert the biner to rack gates out, giving nuts the opportunity to slide up toward the gate, racking gates out creates more opportunity for the gate to be pressed open by the rock as you climb. I bet if you start racking gates in you’ll see a big reduction in gear falling off your harness. 

No idea what you mean by “flip the biner out and then back in” but give gates in a try and see if it helps. 

Admittedly, I don't really understand how nuts fall off your harness.  I find that the time that this happens most frequently to climbers is when they place a nut and unclip the rest of the nuts from the once just placed.  If you are looking for a biner to rack on that they can't come off of, check out the Edelrid Pure Slider or Grivel Plume Wire Lock

Mark P Thomas wrote:

I rack gates out. So you rack the nuts 'biner gates in and then flip the 'biner out to take off a nut, and then back before climbing again? Hrm, I'll try that!

It sounds like you are taking a single nut off the biner while they are still on your harness? It is way more practical to grab the whole set of nuts off your harness, place the right size, then unclip the racking biner and put it back on your harness. This saves you extra steps when you don't choose the right size the first time. I'm not really sure how you are taking a single nut off your harness with one hand, actually.  The main thing I would recommend is racking them on a keylock carabiner that doesn't have a notch on the nose to snag the wire when you are unclipping them.

Well it sure seems like opinions are all over the place about this one. For my stoppers, I use BD ovals with notched noses and wire gates and rack gates out. I’ve never had a stopper fall off with this set up. 

Biner doesn't matter, it's all about your technique. Unclip the carabiner and keep your hand around the stem of the nuts as you take them off your harness.

I have never dropped a nut.

Mark P Thomas wrote:

I rack gates out. So you rack the nuts 'biner gates in and then flip the 'biner out to take off a nut, and then back before climbing again? Hrm, I'll try that!

I don't take off individual nuts.  I remove the whole biner, place the nut I want, and then unclip the biner from the placed nut and replace it on the rack.  In my experience, this is by far the most common way to place nuts.  Yeah, there's a risk of dropping the entire biner and all the nuts on it, but I've never done this in fifty years of climbing with nuts so don't view it as much of a problem.  

I'm generally with RGold on this stuff:  I carry a full set of nuts on nearly every climb, and I rack the biners with gates facing in.  The tendency to carry a full set of nuts may depend a bit on where you're climbing (RGold is at the Gunks a lot; I'm at Eldo or Lumpy Ridge or the South Platte a lot-- those are all places with plenty of nut placement opportunities), but the gates-in racking style is good for nuts regardless of how many you're carrying.  

The one other change I've made over the years is carrying the full set spread over more biners.  I used to carry all the nuts on a single biner, which of course means a bigger loss if you drop the whole shebang, but more pertinent to this discussion, I think it can push more of the nuts' wires closer to the gate in the first place.  Now I usually rack the set over three biners, which feels like a bit of overkill, but each one is lighter and easier to sort through when placing.  Two biners is probably the sweet spot.

Oh, and yes to BD wire-gate ovals.  The Omega Pacific Dovals are just too small for this application and tend to rotate around on your harness loops more.

rgold wrote:

I carry ~15 nuts on every climb, and often place at least a third of them.  I'd sooner get rid of some cams.

It is a very rare occurrence for me to have nuts fall off the rack.  When it happens, it is almost always because of user error on my part, i.e. I somehow let a nut trap the gate open when clipping them back to the rack.  I think this accident is more likely if the nut biners are clipped to harness loops gate-out, because if you don't hold all the nuts down when unclipping and/or reclipping their biner, one or more will slide over the gate since the carabiner has to be inverted.  Once I changed over to gate-in, it almost never happens.

I carry like this also. Maybe it's a Gunks thing. I've always racked gates in and rarely have a problem dropping nuts.  The smaller nuts in from with larger behind and less per biner as the nuts get bigger.  Generally 4 biners for the nuts plus one for tricams...I love those buggers.

Just to add my two cents, I recently have noticed nuts becoming unclipped from my racking biner while climbing in an offwidth/chimney system. I rack gates out, and use a BD oval wire. My simple solution is to just rack gate in with my nuts and gates out with everything else. I rarely place nuts, and generally only when I am on easier terrain. 

A small, or maybe adjustable pouch might work best. You could get some sort of stretchy material that has the ability to stretch but still be able to retract. You could partition them with some small on one side and large on the other (left side preferably). To protect it from damage maybe hang them off the belay loop, as opposed to the gear loops. I guess the material may sag more as it ages so make sure you get a few of them so your not stepping on your steppers. 

I've always racked between 5 and 8 nuts on a clean-nosed carabiner with the gate out. I've never had a stopper fall off either "randomly" or while placing. 

Alex Fletcher wrote: Personally,  I rack my nuts on my harness in the front of my front gear loops.

are you using a solid gate carabiner?
are you using a clean nosed carabiner?

you shouldn't for your nuts.

Exactly that.  Use a solid gate oval with a notched nose.  I tried using a wire gate and stared dropping nuts.  

Ditto:

-rack gate in (I don't think this is crucial, just what I initially learned and it's served me well. I have partners who rack gate out and also never drop nuts)
-use notched not keylock
-take off entire biner to place the nut that fits. Trying to get the right nut off while still clipped to harness and not able to stabilize all the rest would definitely increase likelihood of others being pulled off and dropped
-be cognizant of wires getting caught in nose when rotating the biner and the wires around the biner
-get the wires behind the opened gate opposite of the basket and essentially trapped behind the gate when placing/removing the chosen one. I use my whole hand over the bunch as well.

-I've dropped a nut from my rack maybe 5 times in 40 years

i think the whole type of biner and gate direction is irrelevant. it sounds like youre trying to take nuts off the biner one-handed when its still on your harness. if you need the 3rd or 4th nut on the biner and youre doing this one handed.... i can easily see that biner getting sloppy, gates left open by other nuts youre shoving above the gate to get the nut you need off, nuts tangling around other ones, etc. i think simply changing this will fix 95% of your problems, or more. ive only dropped nuts while cleaning and i do something stupid