Why Tom taped the crux cam to his chest?

Hey Cracksters,

In last week’s newsletter, we looked at racking up and some tips to make your life easier. However, that was purely a racking system for when you’re onsighting a climb.

Things can drastically change when you are redpointing—so much so that on one route, Tom actually taped the crux piece of gear directly to his chest! I’ll explain why when we go through the tips and tricks that you should apply to your racking system when you’re going full beans on the redpoint burn!

So, how would I rack for a hard trad redpoint?

The main thing to remember for redpointing (or headpointing) trad routes is that you have already been on the climb. You’ve learnt the moves, the hand sequences, the foot sequences, and where you will rest , which means placing gear should also come into this process.

A lot of people don’t give enough care and attention to the "gear placing" bit of redpointing. But what you need to remember is that placing gear is just like figuring out a move. In some cases, when the gear is hard to place, figuring out the best method to get it in efficiently is like working out a 3 or 4-move sequence.

If you multiply that across all the gear placements on the route, you actually have a mini-route of moves inside your already worked-out climb. So, here are 6 things to consider when racking up for your redpoint:

1. Match the side to the placing hand

Rack pieces of protection on the side of your harness that correlates to which hand you will place them with on the route. For example, if I’m holding on with my left hand and placing the piece with my right, I’ll have that piece on the right side of my harness.

2. Rack your pieces chronologically (front to back)

Front pieces should be the first pieces you place, and pieces further back on the harness should come later. This way, you don't even need to look down at your harness—you can just grab the frontmost piece each time and trust it’s the right one.

On some routes, it can happen that all the pieces on the right side of your harness disappear before the left side (or vice versa), just because on the lower half of the route, the sequence has you placing gear only with your right hand. Don’t worry—this is completely fine. I always stick to this rule and never try to "balance out" the harness, as that can start to get very confusing in the heat of a hard redpoint.

3. Keep post-rest gear on the back loops

If you have a good rest midway or further up the route, after a crux section, clip the pieces you need after the rest to your back gear loops rather than the front. This keeps them out of the way of your crucial crux pieces early in the route. Once you reach that good rest, moving them from back to front is no hardship, and it massively declutters your front loops for the hard climbing below.

4. Pre-rig your pieces

Prep your gear exactly how you need to place it. If you need a quickdraw on a cam, make sure it’s already attached, and remove any extra carabiners you don’t need (for example, if you clip a quickdraw to a cam, you don't need the cam's original racking carabiner anymore).

5. Dial in your crucial cam setups

On high-stakes cam placements, you often need the wide and narrow lobes to sit on a specific side of the crack. If that's the case, make sure the cam is clipped to your harness in the correct orientation (either narrow lobes pointing forward or wide lobes pointing forward), depending on how you unclip the cam from your harness and end up grabbing the thumb loop. When you grab the thumb loop, you should have the cam in the correct orientation so you don’t have to cock your wrist at a funny angle to get the cam in correctly.

For crucial crux gear, I will also often tape the cam sling tight to the carabiner (or use rubber carabiner keepers) so it doesn't spin. When doing this, make sure the carabiner gate is set up in the correct orientation relative to the direction you are climbing.

6. Use quick-release devices for emergency gear

If you need to get a piece off the harness very, very quickly, and unclipping it and grabbing the thumb loop takes too long, there are now small quick-release devices on the market which can help you do this. You would never do this for a normal racking situation, but for one or two crucial pieces, it can occasionally be useful.

I’ve only ever done this once, although I know Tom has used this method a few more times than me. On one roof crack, he even taped a cam (a small one) to his chest—as being in a roof, it was easier to reach his chest rather than reaching all the way to the side of his harness. His chest was also closer to the roof, so there was barely any distance between removing the piece from him, and getting it into the rock.

Conclusion

As you can see, many of these points break the rules we talked about last week! But that's because onsighting and redpointing are essentially entirely different sports, so the tactics are completely different.

Some of these details might seem small and insignificant, but you would never skip working out the best way to grab a specific handhold, so you shouldn't skip figuring out the best way to rack your gear on a redpoint. Remember, lots of small things add up to one big thing—and that one big thing could be the margin you need to stick the finishing jug.

If you don't pay attention to your gear racking, you might waste just enough energy through inefficiencies that you can't latch the final hold. But if you do all the small things right, it gives you that tiny bit of extra gas. Lots of small things make a massive difference when redpointing.

Happy jamming,

Pete

Want to learn more about crack climbing technique? join Global Crack School

 Join here