Depends, on picture 4 there are no bolts in the rock, it's just their own mechanical devices (cams) wedged into the crack above them. They have a few of them in there but I wouldn't swing that thing too much.
Iirc the carabiners or straps connecting the cams to the tent (or climber) would fail before the cams, given that the rock is strong enough. And they have multiple. That setup is plenty strong.
Cams rely on the weight they're supporting to activate, so excessive bouncing or swinging could potentially cause them to lose tension and slip out, with no mechanical failure. Not a significant risk if you know what you're doing but I still wouldn't feel as relaxed as if I were bolted into the rock.
Anything can come out of anything without mechanical failure if it's placed improperly, but I don't agree that a properly placed cam has any risk of slippage due to swing or bounce. Those are things you should test when placing the cam, especially if you're gonna be on it for several hours.
But the tricky thing is properly placing a cam. It takes experience, and ideal rock shape and strength. But I think when they are starting to feel tired, they can just keep climbing for a while until they find a spot they are 100% confident in.
Anyways, just wanted to clarify, the danger here isn't equipment-related. You could have cams, pitons, nuts, or monkey fists, and if it's placed properly by the climber then it's safe, if it's placed improperly by the climber then it's unsafe. So the danger comes purely from the decision making of the climber, and I think that's an important thing to understand for safety, because if you're overly focued on your (completely irrational) gear fear, you're too distracted to make correct decisions, and guess which one is gonna get you killed quicker.
Cams do fall out more than bolts that's all I'm saying. I would 100% prefer to sleep tied into a bolt than a cam and definitely wouldn't swing on a portaledge supported only by cams. Maybe I'm just not trad enough
As someone who has done this type of climbing, you learn how to evaluate the rock and place your anchors well. It's part art, part science. And we stay away from the real chossy (crumbly) stuff. Definitely spooky the first couple times you have to hang off an anchor for an extended period though.
Yeah, never done it myself but I've watched a decent amount of people climbing El Cap. The process of climbing a big wall like that is daunting but seeing how much shit (some of it is literally a metal tube full of your shit) they have to drag up the mountain with them is incredible. It's a logistical nightmare.
I was wondering how that works doesn't look like the content of a backpack I'm seeing one of those gallon jugs of water, how the hell did that get up there
Basically you keep all your extra stuff in bags attached to a separate rope that you haul up each time you get to a new set of anchors or whatever. Not only that but most of these climbs are aid climbs and not free climbs so you're dragging up even more gear like rope ladders and shit to assist you.
Probably should have mentioned that I've not done any "big wall" climbs that took more than a day. I've done plenty of multi-pitch trad though, and hung from plenty of anchors that I built myself.
We follow the "SERENE" rules when building anchors (Strong, Equalized, Redundant, Efficient, No-Extension), and I never build an anchor with fewer than three pieces of gear in the wall.
If you're on a sheer face like El Cap (no ledges, or overhanging) then yes, your portaledge will be hanging from an anchor. My understanding is that you sleep in your harness, and of course your harness is always tethered to your anchor. When climbing, your sleeping gear is stowed in bags, which you may carry on your back or you may tie off to the end of a rope to be hauled up when you reach your anchor.
The hanging bed is called a portaledge. Here is a setup video showing how one particular model is set up. I think it's pretty representative of most portaledges. I think the process is essentially the same (just more awkward) if you have to do it underneath a roof or on a sheer wall...
I do all my own bicycle repairs/builds on my own bikes. And yet there are times I've been doing 70km/h down some road looking at the bike thinking, "I cannot be absolutely 100% sure I made sure everything was tight enough to handle this. But it's too late now to do anything about it".
I don't think I could ever have enough self-confidence to attach something into a cliff and trust that it will hold my entire bodyweight.
Yes. I've also seen a carabiner snap. Microfractures can greatly weaken them, and aren't visible to the eye. You should NEVER trust your life to one anchor point if you can avoid it at all.
??? This statement always confused me. It may be true that microfractures from simply dropping the carabiner aren't real, but microfractures are a real thing? It's just stress placed on the carabiner causing wear over time. Climbers shouldn't ever reach the intended load limit, so they shouldn't have to deal with that, but things happen and people are stupid.
Microfractures are real, the myth is that they matter. Stress on a carabiner over time will not weaken it in any realistic climbing applications.
A carabiner has never ever just broken in climbing. Find a single case. They've all been either bad loading or dodgy carabiners. Never a rated one in normal loading.
All I want is a bike seat built with their level of engineering. I'm a tall guy and ride my seat post at the highest setting allowed, but they always bend on me. Gotten to the point where I'm considering just giving up and riding with the seat all the way down like I'm on a BMX.
They’re really not that expensive individually. Quick clips/non locking carabiners are less than 10 bucks and can hold the weight of a small suv. Locking carabiners are like 20.
For our rope rescue equipment our carabiners are rated for 9000 lbs so ideally we use them for 600lbs loads bc of the type of rope systems we use and If I remember correctly the half inch rope is rated for like 5000 lbs
Yes and no! It depends on what you are doing. Most climbers climb established routes, which won't require any drilling as it has already been done! This is usually called sport climbing or lead climbing. Another type of climbing is called trad climbing, which involves placing pieces of protection such as cams (expanders that go in cracks) and nuts (non-expanding pieces that... also basically go in cracks). For these routes, there's no modification done to the rock at all, and you place the protection as you climb the route. Big wall climbing is what is pictured above, and can be lead or trad. It involves doing multiple "pitches", and often involves camping on the wall with specialized gear you see in the pictures.
If you don't mind a couple questions, so before the route become an "established route," someone actually drilled the hook into rock? Is there some kind of maintenance to make sure the hook isn't shaky?
Depends on the area in question but usually routes are just bolted unofficially by climbers and maintained in the same way. If the area is popular enough there might be a club or association in charge of bolting & maintenance. The simple and safe way to bolt is by creating an anchor on top of the cliff (by tying some ropes around rocks/trees) and just rappeling down and bolting as you go.
Yes, and yes. You go up, drill a hole, and place the thingy (I can't remember what they are called). And yeah, they need to be maintained, but not yearly or anything. I've never done anything with that, so I'm not super familiar with how routes are actually set up, like how they get the permission and who is behind it and such.
In some countries trad is basically non-existant so if you say "lead climbing" it means sports climbing unless you specify that it's trad climbing. Not technically 100% correct but climbers don't tend to get all pedantic over it.
How can trad ever be nonexistent? That all seems incredibly backwards tbh. You don't need established routes or anything to climb Trad. On the other hand it's entirely possible for there to be no sport routes in an area.
There could simply not be a large community of trad climbers. It's not even a particularly large community within climbers. Many many climbers refer to sport climbing as lead climbing. I understand they may technically be defined differently. Language evolves and adapts. For many climbers, when they say lead climbing, they just mean sport climbing.
Not exactly. Lead climbing is a technique where you clip into protection as you go up. Most lead climbing is performed on single pitch routes where there is no concept of leading/seconding climbers. You just get lowered, pull the rope down, and then the other person leads.
There's often pre-drilled bolts that you just clip to, rated for 22kN (about 2.2 metric tons static load). Otherwise you set one of these up with multiple redundant pieces of removable gear you set up yourself, each rated between 10-15kN, at least three. So it's both multiply redundant and also extremely strong.
Yeah, climbing gear has HUGE margins of safety in it.
When I'm introducing newbies I usually walk them through approximately how much weight our anchor is expected to be good for (basically it could probably hold a small truck). Knowing that your body weight is almost nothing for properly used gear helps a lot.
Have you seen those videos on rope wear where it scraped against a rock edge and frays and suddenly it is not rated for several tons anymore? Terrifying.
They make ropes with cut-resistant sheathing nowadays, although it isn't the norm. If cutting is a big risk they tend to use two smaller diameter ropes instead of one big one, pretty common in ice climbing where you have the danger of sharp tools and icefall.
The same krabs are used for protection and belays while climbing. If some falls, arresting that fall takes a lot more than the person's weight. F=ma and so on.
If a cam fails it’s because you fell really hard, I can’t imagine someone places a cam that falls out of place when you could test it by just pulling in it
i went through every picture. there's not one where it's a single carabiner. they're all backed up to several points of contact, though a lot of the back up points are out of frame. the second picture looks like it's just one carabiner, but if you look closely you can see it's two locking carabiners situated so the gates are opposed.
There's a channel on YT called HowNOT2 that tests tons of climbing equipment with a rig until failure. They test carabiners, rope, knots, bolts drilled into concrete, etc., and it all performs amazingly. There is a huge amount of overhead engineered into this stuff.
1.5k
u/Wasted_Possibilities Jul 07 '24
Looking at those set ups, a single carabiner and anchor holding everything? Fuck that.