2 November 2018

Ethics on stick trad placement?

Placing gear on lead is what counts in trad climbing in order to make a valid ascent even on redpoint. This means sometimes a route is much harder and dangerous as you do not reach a placement from a good position. If you had reached just 10 cm further possibly you could have gotten a bomber solid nut placement but instead the only solution might be to either do a dead serious run-out or place the nut from bad holds, creating another crux. In sport climbing, such situations are rare but you might end up in the same out of reach to place the quick draw on an onsight. The solution is then to carry a stiff quick draw with open gate and voila, problem fixed. As trad ethics is pretty conservative, most probably the trad community would not give credit placing gear with a stick-clip or even using one of these 45 cm stiff dog bones quickdraws etc. But what if you just squeeze in the cables in the rubber normally stabilizing the lower carabiner. By doing so you could gain some 10- 20 cm, resulting in a safer and easier trad experience even if the objective difficulty remains the same. Safety: Please not that once the nut has been placed pull the quickdraw and clip it into the wire.
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