Belay Anchor Setups
Every week there’s a new post on rockclimbing.com detailing a bigger, more complicated, heavier, more time consuming, and lamer way to build belay anchors. For example: http://www.rockclimbing.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=2137809;page=unread#unread
I don’t think these people understand that the point is to go climbing, not fuss with your gear all day.
Here’s the anchor setup that I use, and everybody that I climb with uses:
It’s simple, fast, and super light. It’s a knotted sliding X with a light mammut sling, two Camp Nano 23 biners, and a 39 gram trango superfly locker. Weighs 116 grams total.
Got a third piece? Clip it in loose somewhere to the anchor or clove hitch the rope to it. Think you’ll be slinging stuff for anchors? Take out the knots.
Here it is tripled up: No bigger or bulkier than a quickdraw.
DONE. CLIMB ON.
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Good point Nathan Daniel. The point is to go climbing, not mess with gear.
The only point I will make is that its freaking impossible to get those knots out. So taking the knots out in order to sling something, isn’t really an option. In my opinion.
I agree when you want a third piece (me) I just clip it below any of the knots or you can obviously just add it next to the other pieces at the top. If placements are really spread out just sacrifice a runner and bring another piece into the system. This system rawks. And yes make use of the rope too. Thanks Nate!
I am pretty sure I saw a quadralette hooked to a horse one time when I went to a farm. Sweet.
I’ve gotten the knots out in under 2 minutes each when adjusting them to move the wear and tear. Definitely not an option when trying to move fast, but they can be removed. If you need to tie something off, use the rope.
time to clean the rug!
The important point is that this system is redundant. It acts as 2 slings for the price of 1. You won’t find a better deal anywhere.
Trango alpine equalizer, $26 at amazon, before that i was doing Nate`s set up.
The Trango alpine equalizer looks okay too. But it’s heavier, at 105g without the biners and it doesn’t have the same redundancy as this setup. And it costs more and is more specialized, whereas this is just a sling.
Anyway, the point is not to get into a discussion about the details of redundancy, equalization, blah blah blah, it’s to use something that’s “good enough” and climb on.
Yeah i’ve been able to take the knots out without much trouble too. You’d want to do it before leaving the ground on a climb where you think you’ll be slinging stuff a lot.
I love the alpine equalizer, especially for routes you know have bolted anchors. I have also used a 3-point sliding X with a cordalette. The main point is to be able to quickly analyze your situation and be able to maximize the reduction of risk in the shortest time possible. I feel fine using a non-redundant sliding X if both pieces are solid and the terrain is relatively easy. A self-equalizing anchor gives the belayer room to shift positions at the belay as needed and may even prevent complete loading of the weakest piece in the system, which I believe is safer overall than redundancy. remember, there is no such thing as safety in the mountains, only the reduction of risk.
yeah, that R.C.com quardalette thing is ridiculous. Equally ridiculous is the trango alpine equalizer, which is basically the same thing only produced commercially. The most important thing to remember about anchors is that the pieces of pro are what matters. If you have solid pieces, you can pretty much clip anything to them and be fine. If you have shit pieces, all the fancy equalizing, redundant, shock limiting set ups in the world aren’t going to help much. That being said Im a big fan of using simple anchoring methods and simple materials like slings and cordelette. I can use a cordelette to reinforce / build a rap station, ascend a rope, pass a knot in a damaged rope while rappelling, pass a knot on a long lower, raise a hurt / tired climber, do a short lower out, improvise aiders / adjustable daises, create an awesome tether for tandem rappelling, sling a tree or rock, and of course build an anchor. All you can do with a fancy pre made equalizer is clip pieces together, and only if there close enough to do so. They are awkward to rack, heaver than anything else, and cost about 4 times as much as a 21 foot piece of cord, and have about the same life span.
P.S. – nano biners are the shit!
Supposedly there are some metolius biners out that weigh only 20 grams…
A little off the current topic, but have you guys seen the data the guy generated on rockclimbing.com about failures in Aliens??? Worrisome if you climb on those…
Don’t even get Josh started!
+1 to AE
Is that just a 48 in. runner? it seems longer. is it?
Yep, it’s a 48 inch runner. One of the super skinny ones. Gotta replace it more often than normal because the knots keep the wear in the same place every time.
Luke and I field tested this setup on Free Rider this last week-end: it worked great.
We ended up simultaneously belaying (auto-block) and hauling off of the power point, and would anchor ourselves off of the wire biners.
Why not add a bit of coaches tape over the knots to add a bit of temporary durability?
Because I’ve used this setup for longer than the manufacturer recommends without wear at the knots being an issue. I typically move the knots once in a while so that the wear is distrubuted across the sling. I’ve retired this setup due to age twice before sling fuzz warranted a retirement. I’m currently on my 3rd set of 4′ slings.
Been using this setup as well. Very quick.
Not an identical situation, but DMM has a pretty interesting video about dynema slings, knots, ect… food for thought that every climber should be aware of.
http://www.dmmclimbing.com/video.asp?id=5
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