avoiding back clipping cams?

my level of experience is lead climbing in the gym, leading easy sport routes outdoors, and following a few multipitch trad routes, but this was a good while ago and i remember trying not to fall rather than focusing on how the gear had been placed and so on. i just bought some cams and nuts and i'm ready to start practicing and gaining some confidence leading trad routes. one of the things drummed into me from the very beginning was to not back clip, and i understand why that is. but as i'm practicing placing a cam in a vertical crack in my garage, the way the sling and biner hang means that i have to clip the rope left to right or right to left, where there is no obvious back clipping orientation, as opposed to clipping a quickdraw on a bolt, where there is an obvious orientation and the rope should come up along the rock and out through the biner to the climber. see the picture attached. so if i'm climbing a vertical crack, do i just clip in the same orientation every time and then if i take a fall, try to fall on the side of the climber's rope? that doesn't seem like a super solid solution. alternating the clipping orientation as you go up seems just as weird. i could clip a quickdraw directly to the wire loop in the cam but then what's the sling and biner for? because you clip a quickdraw directly into the wire loop in a nut though, nuts don't create this orientation puzzle for me.

if anyone has an comments on my thought process, i'd love to hear it, or let me know if i'm overthinking it and it's not an issue on actual rock for some reason. thank you in advance! 

Part of the reason backclipping is an issue with quickdraws is that the sling is so stiff that whole thing can't rotate to avoid the issue. But with most removable gear, there's enough freedom to move that the carabiner will never be so captive as to create the backclipping failure mode. Try it for yourself.

I can easily unclip the rope from a backclipped quickdraw. I have to put a lot of work to do the same with a cam or nut. So pay attention to the work you had to do, and just extend placements that might risk such a circumstance.

This is also why backclipping failures on very steep routes are less of an issue.

Alpine draws help with keeping the correct orientation, for one they arnt stiff like regular sport draws, so they can almost self orientatate themselfes, and they swing with the flow of a fall. And two, they can be extended so that when your placing trad gear, you can get the most strait line, so there’s less rope drag, and less stress on you so you can make the best out of your pro and clipping correctly. Highly recommend a set of alpine draws. 

Back clipping can kill you on any route whether it is slab or overhanging or whatever the sling length is.

https://gripped.com/profiles/three-common-lead-climbing-mistakes-to-avoid/#:~:text=Back%2Dclipping%20is%20when%20you,carabiner%20going%20toward%20the%20rock.

Not really a serious issue with trad gear. The reason you extend gear is so the alpine draw can flop around and so there's less drag. If you're clipping direct to a cam it should be obvious the right and wrong way, just like with a gym draw...

Trad climbing involves accepting more risk than most other forms of climbing and I think this kind of falls into that noise.

I let the cam orientation that provides the best placement determine which way the cam faces because I think the risk of a blown placement is way higher than the risk of a back clipping failure. Furthermore, the carabiner is not held on the sling tightly with a rubber “string” so the likelihood that the carabiner would get caught and held in the right orientation for the rope to unclip seems exceedingly small.

If you’re really worried about the carabiner’s orientation you might consider buying cams with thin flexible slings like those from DMM. You could also extend your placements with flexible trad draws or alpines.

thanks everyone. sounds like it's okay, and alpine draws help orient the rope like it wants to be oriented, as does an upward pull. i'm sure i'll see this with experience on the wall. see you all out there sometime!

Andrew Rice wrote:

Not really a serious issue with trad gear. The reason you extend gear is so the alpine draw can flop around and so there's less drag. If you're clipping direct to a cam it should be obvious the right and wrong way, just like with a gym draw...

Bullshit!

ilya f wrote:

thanks everyone. sounds like it's okay, and alpine draws help orient the rope like it wants to be oriented, as does an upward pull. i'm sure i'll see this with experience on the wall. see you all out there sometime!

I hope you never see a back clip fuck you up.

EZ Pete wrote:

On a related noted, does it matter if the gate of the carabiner is up or down? In OP's pic, the gate is "up", but another option would be to flip the cam so that the gate is "down", i.e. facing the rock. In the "up" orientation it seems possible the rope will become unclipped in the same way it can during a fall on a back-clipped draw (though less likely). But if the gate is "down", the rock could potentially press against it and open the gate, allowing the rope to escape... I've seen videos of people doing it both ways, but I'm curious if anyone has a strong opinion.

Not particularly, or at least I don't worry about it. I focus more on the cams placement in the crack. Sometimes the cam is better with the narrow lobes facing left, sometimes facing right. 

Narrow lobes to the left, biner faces the rock/crack

Narrow lobes facing the right, biner faces away from the rock. 

And yes, that is a VERY tipped out .5 placement.... 

ilya f wrote:

i could clip a quickdraw directly to the wire loop in the cam but then what's the sling and biner for? because you clip a quickdraw directly into the wire loop in a nut though, nuts don't create this orientation puzzle for me.

Don’t clip quick draws directly into the wire loop.  Black Diamond designs the webbing a special way to spread the load to the wire.  If you plan to extend them clip to the webbing. I’m sure it wouldn’t fail but isn’t good for it.  Somewhere on their QC lab site I saw them test this. Sometimes it’s worth reclipping a biner if you think that a fall could unclip it. Usually on traversing sections you want to spine facing the traversing direction so that if you fall the rope is on the spine not the gate. 

Or flip your rope side biner after clipping. 

Putting a draw on it helps and you can look at it t0 see if its running straight or twisted.  Its also very rare for a route to be straight up and down. (except Indian creek I guess). Even in the creek if your in a corner its pretty obvious if you're back clipped or not. I always look at the route and if the route goes up and left I have the gate face righting if the route goes right I have the gate face left so the gate is facing away from the direction that the rope is going.  You have to look and make sure the rope come through the carabiner towards you and not through it away from you.

Although I know it isn't usually a big risk considering the floppy cam slings, when I'm gripped and worrying about this issue my dumb solution is just to clip it and then rotate the carabiner 180 degrees away from me so the carabiner is "upside down" with the gate facing into the crack. I know that statistically it only marginally reduces the risk of an already not-risky situation, but damn it makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

aiden the cam slinging slasher wrote:

Although I know it isn't usually a big risk considering the floppy cam slings, when I'm gripped and worrying about this issue my dumb solution is just to clip it and then rotate the carabiner 180 degrees away from me so the carabiner is "upside down" with the gate facing into the crack. I know that statistically it only marginally reduces the risk of an already not-risky situation, but damn it makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

Be careful with this technique.  if the gate is facing the rock and the gate is somehow opened when it impacts the rock during a fall that will mean that the carabiner is open and that dramatically reduces its strength.  a carabiner with a closed strength of 20Kn is reduced to about 8Kn in most cases if the gate is forced open during a fall which could break the carabiner.  You never want to bet your life on a single piece.  You can place 2 at a crux or even better having at least 1 draw with lockers can add a lot of security.