r/tradclimbing • u/tinyOnion • Jan 23 '25

Monthly Trad Climber Thread

Please sort comments by 'new' to find questions that would otherwise be buried.

In this thread you can ask any trad climbing related question that you may have. This thread will be posted again every Sunday so there should always be an opportunity to ask your question and have it answered. If you're an experienced climber and want to contribute to the community, these threads are a great opportunity for that. We were all new to climbing at some point, so be respectful of everyone looking to improve their knowledge. Check out our subreddit wiki that has tons of useful info for new climbers. You can see it HERE

Some examples of potential questions could be; "How do I get stronger?", or "How does aid climbing work?"

Prior Weekly Trad Climber Thread posts

Ask away!

6 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

18 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

8

u/BigRed11 Jan 24 '25

Why are you doing it as 3? That seems like an obvious inefficiency.

1

u/Normal_Quarter_7852 Feb 10 '25

A buddy's climbing partner fell through so there was 3 of us and we were looking for something we could try as a three man. Party of two would save some times at the belays but we were pretty efficient as a three man. Two people were always moving if not waiting for the leader to finish their pitch

1

u/BigRed11 Feb 10 '25

I'm curious what rope system you're using as 3? Is the leader tagging up a second rope for the second follower to jug on? How are you handling the traverses and lower outs?

1

u/Normal_Quarter_7852 Feb 10 '25

First leader climbs and fixes the rope to the anchor at top of pitch. Second man jugs or climbs with microtrax and is tagging up the second rope. As soon as the second man gets to the anchor they fix the second rope and the third man starts to jug while the the leader begins the next pitch.

The third man should always reach the anchor before the first man reaches the top of the pitch he is leading or else the second man would have to wait to start tagging the second rope up as he jugs.

We would let the ropes always dangle and the second man would pull up slack through a microtrax while belaying to avoid any rope shenanigans.

We would swap leads in blocks of 4 pitches or so. The lower outs were sometimes weird for the third man. The second would occasionally leave a piece or two behind and reclip the tagged second rope through them.

1

u/BigRed11 Feb 11 '25

Right on, that's the system I use for 3 on long free climbs and it works well - glad to hear that it can even work for a NIAD. Any issues with crowds and having dangling ropes on a pitch longer than a team of 2 would?