Ice screw holder for trad climbing?

Thoughts on using ice screw holders to rack quick draws/alpine draws to help with rack organization? I usually stack draws together on my harness, but I think it would help with space to have them stacked on a ice screw holder between my gear loops on each side.

Josh Hendrickson wrote:

Thoughts on using ice screw holders to rack quick draws/alpine draws to help with rack organization? I usually stack draws together on my harness, but I think it would help with space to have them stacked on a ice screw holder between my gear loops on each side.

The first time i tried this i was in a chimney and the ice clipper snapped and half of my draws fell three pitches to the ground, I also did the same thing mixed climbing once, I never tried it after that. The key is to rack smart. I find if I just think about my racking I can fit a double rack and draws on any 4 gear loop harness no problem.

Thats how my partner racks his draws

To create more room for pro I use a Petzl attache (or any munter carabiner) on a gear loop on each side and clip all my quick draws to the attache. That frees up quite a bit of pro space. 

They would get in the way any time you needed a hip next to the rock

Yosemite rack quick draws and alpine draws, I.e. clip multiples to the top biner of one, making sure the fabric part of the last one (the one actually clipped to your gear loop) is behind the other draws clipped to it. 

I do this with 2-3x of both kinds stacked on each side so for my typical rack of 8-12 draws (a mix of quick & alpine) there always are only 2 biners per side clipped to my harness. As long as you get the orientation correct on the left and right it feels quite natural to unclip the first couple, and then it's super obvious when you're using the last one on that side because it's the one actually on the gear loop.

Getting used to this has the added benefit of allowing me to cram a double rack on my light alpine harness that only has 3 gear loops, plus 6 alpine draws, 6 quickdraws and 2 double length slings. Anchor stuff, belay device, all that jazz goes on the back one. Here's the right half, and if you Yosemite rack your cams too and do big on left and small on right (or whatever) it'll all rack even smaller.

Might work well for racking nuts but have never tried. One of the dmm or grivel ones might be more secure.