Wow, great content! I usually judge mine on the Crap - Sketchy - Decent - Pretty Good - Truck scale, but I like your *assigning points* method though, and the *10 points for a belay* rule.
People think I'm a bit silly for using hexes since they're a bit old-school, but I really like them. Didn't really know how to place them at first, but then I took a course with an older (at least 60), very experienced climber who loves them and now I do too!
This tutorial is super helpful for a newb like myself who is afraid of crack climbing. I've gone trad climbing with more experienced buddies, but your detailed explanations help me understand this niche sport more thoroughly. Thank you so much for making this one!
Hey man - I've been absolutely binging your videos over the last week or two, absolutely brilliant content, all amazing quality. I'm just in that transition from doing some climbing indoors over the last year to wanting to get out and get shit done on real rock - been spending a fair bit of time on southern sandstone, a bit of seconding in the peaks, and recently checked out cleeve hill in cheltenham... just bottom roping at the moment, but honestly your channel has been invaluable for learning to rig anchors, knowing what equipment to buy, and honestly just getting me psyched on trad in a way i wasn't before... I'd be booking a course with you ASAP if you weren't such a long way away! Massive thanks for getting me psyched and keeping me safe!
Great vid as always! I think it'd be really interesting if you made a video on video examples of all the ratings (1-5) maybe 5 of each. Theres nothing like it on youtube and i think it'd be super helpful, as i'm through and through a visual learner ahahah. Maybe even as a fun bonus, make it a quiz style, where we guess for ourselves what rating it'd be, to kind of get us thinking. Anyways, cheers from Canada :) Thanks Jez
@@Globalsends I recommend either of the books Rock Climbing Basics or Anchors by Craig Luebben. He has many examples of bad, good and best placement for cams and nuts
I'm a Washington granite climber and this has convinced me to finally sell my hexes. I have never seen such featured, faceted cracks in my state. Love the Huel shirt btw.
Really good video, loads of slow steady information and I liked the close ups you did when setting the gear, you don't see many other people doing that. Thanks 👏
Try using an alpine sling clipped to your Camelot from the rope to inhibit movement of the Camelot like we do in California. Take Care. Steve Thaw, Moraga, CA
Great videos! I’ve been sharing these with a few new climbers in our club so with your help they should be in a good place when we can get back on the rock. Keep it going! :)
Nut craft is a skill new climbers are either struggling to learn or not learning and relying on cam placements only. And climbing big wall routes. particularly in the valley, require expert level nut craft if you want to climb as clean and quickly and efficiently as possible.
Had to place ones a few times just cos there aint ought else to place, took a fall luckily only once on one of those, it held😋 wasnt exactly a whipper but so happy I placed it.
Good load of info there. Could I make a request for a video on setting up top rope anchors with both slings and a spare rope. I found myself tieing far too many overhands at the weekend. Thanks
Hi. First off İ would like to thank you for all the excellent work you have been doing with all your videos. They are super nicely done, on the spot, no rubbish and professional and at the same time with a very good approach in what comes to the way you speak and present all the info, no matter how technical it is. Congratulations, really. İ would also like to pose you a question about Cams and show you, what İ consider, to be a nice trick that a learned from a Spanish climber (website) to see what yo make of it, but it would be much easier and clearer if İ could show some photos. İs there anyway that İ could share them with you to understand your opinion on the matter? Thank you for you time, sorry for the extra long message and congratulations again for all your great work. Cheers.
i've been doing that 'six' idea for slings on boulders&trees. But actually finding that in practice, even though i'm still wanting to score a 10 for nuts , i'm often happy to belay off one sling if the boulder/tree is solid enough. so maybe they should be scored out of 10? I think it comes down to how easy it is to judge... the score would deteriorate pretty quickly if it didn't seem part of the mountain.
I have a question: I climbed with my uncle and his climbing partner a few weks ago. We climbed in the "Südpfalz" in south germany. Routes are usually two to three 20 meter piches and at the belays there are big solid Bolts with rings epoxied into the walls. But inbetween you have to place your own pro. We allways put our personal anchor on these rings, AND belayed the folower on them. All on one of those rings. And they are usually quite new and look REALLY bomber. We did the same with trees that grew on the on the top of the crag. (+20cm diameter) Do you think that is a valid way to do things? My uncly climbs for more than fourty years now and has been all over the world. So he does have a good amount of Experience, so I do feel quite confident about thet method. I guess it also depends on win which region you climb, how the Rings are there and, and allways on the individual ring in question. I would be happy to hear your opinion. Greetings. :o)
Great job! I've normally avoided placing passive gear in the past, but your descriptions give me confidence to trust my placing (and not get it stuck). Do you have any info on tri cams? I have a friend who always prefers them and I cant figure out how to place w/o donating them to the wall lol
What do you and the people here think about placing a nut sideways? Like in a hole where you can slide it in from one side and you have to tuck it with pulling away from the wall?
I’ve been indoor climbing and outdoor bouldering for 1 year and just recently doing outdoor top rope and plan to learn lead this winter (indoor and out) - does it per se “matter” if I try and learn trad same time as sport? I’m looking to take a class soon and get out with my buddy (similar skills so far) and climb some easy fun stuff and want to be as safe as possible - kinda intimidating to get started - thanks for the information
Great video. I have watched a number of your video during lock down and always very useful. I have started to train again during lock down after a number of years of not climbing following an injury. Once things open up again is there a course you would recommend to get me going again.
Although scoring placements to an accuracy of 5 places is a desirable goal, it is not practical in the real world. There are too many variables to achieve that accuracy. It really only comes down to 3 - bomber, adequate, and psychological. Although you can get a lot of information from inspecting and tapping, the only way to tell how good a placement is is to bounce test it like aid climbers do. I've been climbing for 50 years - started just as clean climbing using nuts was developing. I thought I was a good judge of placements until my first big wall climb and aid climbing many pitches on nuts. Nuts I thought were adequate ("3" in your system) would pop under body weight and ones that I thought would pop ("1 or 2") held. In the 80's, I started bounce testing and it was quite illuminating, and my ability to judge placements went way up. In my experience, without bounce testing you can only reliably judge the end members - bombers and really bad placements. What's was most interesting were some placements that I was reluctant to even put body weight on ended up holding moderately vigorous bounce testing - and thus would hold a small fall. There is an important factor in judging placements that you didn't discuss in detail - security. Security is whether the placement will stay in place as I climb above it. To judge this you need to look at direction of forces on the rope and placements in case of a fall. This is a 3-dimensional problem. The standard today seems to be to add a full length runner to every placement, which adds a meter of length to a fall, and may not keep the placement from getting pulled out or cams pulled to an angle which makes them worthless. Sometimes the only way to insure security is to place an opposing nut. A way to learn this is to observe what the rope does when lowering or hanging.
Know what you mean on the security, have taken falls and the previous bit of gear to the one I fell into popped just because of direction of pull, if the first bit wouldnt have held I would have taken a veryyyyy long fall 😬 but I think thats one of the reason you sometimes see if the first bit goes on a hard fall it literally is Pop,Pop, Pop.
Really? You sat in front of the same crack for the entire video and talked. Better to show different cracks with different configurations and placements. A picture is worth a thousand words.
"super safe, super expensive" 😂 perfectly said
Haha, I like the saying!
Wow, great content! I usually judge mine on the Crap - Sketchy - Decent - Pretty Good - Truck scale, but I like your *assigning points* method though, and the *10 points for a belay* rule.
People think I'm a bit silly for using hexes since they're a bit old-school, but I really like them. Didn't really know how to place them at first, but then I took a course with an older (at least 60), very experienced climber who loves them and now I do too!
Hard to beat a big lump of metal wedged in a crack!
Like the fact that you are showing things as they really are, rather than just text book stuff. Great 👍
Cheers! I'm all about showing stuff in real life context!
This is the best channel on youtube by some way.
This tutorial is super helpful for a newb like myself who is afraid of crack climbing. I've gone trad climbing with more experienced buddies, but your detailed explanations help me understand this niche sport more thoroughly. Thank you so much for making this one!
Thanks!
You are such a good teacher! It's so fun to listen to you and follow along. Keep up the good work. Cheers from Switzerland
Very kind :)
Hey man - I've been absolutely binging your videos over the last week or two, absolutely brilliant content, all amazing quality. I'm just in that transition from doing some climbing indoors over the last year to wanting to get out and get shit done on real rock - been spending a fair bit of time on southern sandstone, a bit of seconding in the peaks, and recently checked out cleeve hill in cheltenham... just bottom roping at the moment, but honestly your channel has been invaluable for learning to rig anchors, knowing what equipment to buy, and honestly just getting me psyched on trad in a way i wasn't before... I'd be booking a course with you ASAP if you weren't such a long way away! Massive thanks for getting me psyched and keeping me safe!
Hey Tony, glad you've been enjoying them! Ace to hear they've helped with the psyche!
Great vid as always! I think it'd be really interesting if you made a video on video examples of all the ratings (1-5) maybe 5 of each. Theres nothing like it on youtube and i think it'd be super helpful, as i'm through and through a visual learner ahahah. Maybe even as a fun bonus, make it a quiz style, where we guess for ourselves what rating it'd be, to kind of get us thinking. Anyways, cheers from Canada :) Thanks Jez
I second this!
@@Globalsends I recommend either of the books Rock Climbing Basics or Anchors by Craig Luebben. He has many examples of bad, good and best placement for cams and nuts
8:07 rock - yep. Always good to check it hasn’t evaporated 😂 Great video. Thanks as always
Really helpful man, appreciate you making this video!
I'm a Washington granite climber and this has convinced me to finally sell my hexes. I have never seen such featured, faceted cracks in my state. Love the Huel shirt btw.
I'm curious, why did this video convince you to sell your hexes? It seems like he had a high opinion of them.
@@shaungould8793 cuz we don't have rock like that where hexes actually work well
xmnemonic tbh it’s worth keeping them for alpine/adventure climbing. They’re light af and cheap to bail from if you have to
Been doing alot of sport climbing but trying to expand my climbing. This was a big help
Glad it was useful!
Recently saw a video instruction wich was filmed while climbing. Very vaszinazing and a great learning...I think it would be great with you as well!
"Angel wings" for the cams: that's a super easy way to remember the optimal setting.
Really good video, loads of slow steady information and I liked the close ups you did when setting the gear, you don't see many other people doing that. Thanks 👏
Glad you liked it!
I'd been scouring the internet for resources to reinforce things I've taught to people. This is sensational and no nonsense. 5/5 mate
Glad you liked it!
You have a way with words! I absolutely loved it 💪👏
Thank you 🙌
I really enjoy trad. just being in control of my placements dicated by nature.
Its like creating up rock.
and I can rest anywhere I can put gear.
Hey man, I'm new to outdoor climbing and the content on you channel is fantastic. Thank you. 🤙🤜
Pleasure 💪
Great video, you've put me in the mood to place gear around the garden 😂🤣
Haha, enjoy!
I'm currently reading Climbing Anchors by John Long. best one I've found so far
He's a legend!
Try using an alpine sling clipped to your Camelot from the rope to inhibit movement of the Camelot like we do in California. Take Care. Steve Thaw, Moraga, CA
I recognise that crack from my RCI training with you! Good stuff, as always, Jez!!
Good memory!
Great videos! I’ve been sharing these with a few new climbers in our club so with your help they should be in a good place when we can get back on the rock. Keep it going! :)
Glad you've enjoyed them!
Great video, super helpful. Thanks mate!
Absolute pleasure!
Nut craft is a skill new climbers are either struggling to learn or not learning and relying on cam placements only. And climbing big wall routes. particularly in the valley, require expert level nut craft if you want to climb as clean and quickly and efficiently as possible.
Dude what a great vid u are a Good instructor would love to climb it u peace and love and keep climbing on
Very kind, thank you!
really good clear simple instruction
Very kind :)
Man i have to try this sport. I like the idea where you have to think ALL the time.
Awesome job! Love your style
Had to place ones a few times just cos there aint ought else to place, took a fall luckily only once on one of those, it held😋 wasnt exactly a whipper but so happy I placed it.
Your video's ane invaluable to someone like me who is now moving on from a hill walker to climbing/mountaineering etc. Thank you ☺
Glad you've liked them :)
These videos are great! Informative, funny, entertaining
Good load of info there.
Could I make a request for a video on setting up top rope anchors with both slings and a spare rope.
I found myself tieing far too many overhands at the weekend.
Thanks
Glad you liked it! I'll give it some thought...
Thanks for this, really well explained!
Absolute pleasure!
Great video, really enjoying your stuff
Much appreciated!
Hi. First off İ would like to thank you for all the excellent work you have been doing with all your videos.
They are super nicely done, on the spot, no rubbish and professional and at the same time with a very good approach in what comes to the way you speak and present all the info, no matter how technical it is. Congratulations, really.
İ would also like to pose you a question about Cams and show you, what İ consider, to be a nice trick that a learned from a Spanish climber (website) to see what yo make of it, but it would be much easier and clearer if İ could show some photos.
İs there anyway that İ could share them with you to understand your opinion on the matter?
Thank you for you time, sorry for the extra long message and congratulations again for all your great work.
Cheers.
Hi Joao, thanks for the kind words!
Drop me an email :)
jbmountainskills@gmail.com
i've been doing that 'six' idea for slings on boulders&trees. But actually finding that in practice, even though i'm still wanting to score a 10 for nuts , i'm often happy to belay off one sling if the boulder/tree is solid enough. so maybe they should be scored out of 10? I think it comes down to how easy it is to judge... the score would deteriorate pretty quickly if it didn't seem part of the mountain.
Enjoyed that one.
Glad you enjoyed it
Great showcase of nuts vs hexes! I've been wondering about that.
Still, I'm wondering: why are we even still using nuts? Hexes seem more versatile.
Hexes are great, sometimes have less "bight" in to a crack though. Not sure if they can be made in the smaller sizes like nuts.
I have a question:
I climbed with my uncle and his climbing partner a few weks ago.
We climbed in the "Südpfalz" in south germany.
Routes are usually two to three 20 meter piches and at the belays there are big solid Bolts with rings epoxied into the walls. But inbetween you have to place your own pro.
We allways put our personal anchor on these rings, AND belayed the folower on them.
All on one of those rings.
And they are usually quite new and look REALLY bomber.
We did the same with trees that grew on the on the top of the crag. (+20cm diameter)
Do you think that is a valid way to do things?
My uncly climbs for more than fourty years now and has been all over the world. So he does have a good amount of Experience, so I do feel quite confident about thet method.
I guess it also depends on win which region you climb, how the Rings are there and, and allways on the individual ring in question.
I would be happy to hear your opinion.
Greetings.
:o)
lovely video
thank you for the video, lot of great information!
My pleasure!
7/5 mate
Nice video! Thanks!
Glad you liked it!
Great video 👌
Thanks 👍
Great job! I've normally avoided placing passive gear in the past, but your descriptions give me confidence to trust my placing (and not get it stuck). Do you have any info on tri cams? I have a friend who always prefers them and I cant figure out how to place w/o donating them to the wall lol
Glad I could help!
I have never used tricams enough to talk much about them I'm afraid.
Awesome Video. 😀
Cheers!
What do you and the people here think about placing a nut sideways? Like in a hole where you can slide it in from one side and you have to tuck it with pulling away from the wall?
Sweet thanks man
No problem 👍
I’ve been indoor climbing and outdoor bouldering for 1 year and just recently doing outdoor top rope and plan to learn lead this winter (indoor and out) - does it per se “matter” if I try and learn trad same time as sport? I’m looking to take a class soon and get out with my buddy (similar skills so far) and climb some easy fun stuff and want to be as safe as possible - kinda intimidating to get started - thanks for the information
Not at all, enjoy everything!
@@JBMountainSkills thanks - love your content and your witty fast speech ha - keep it up - Santa may bring me trad gear and I’ll start at it 😀😀
What score had your first placement you actually took a fall into? And what kind of pro was?
Hard to remember, it was quite a while ago 😂 it was a cam and it held though!
Where do you insert these nuts hexes or cams when there is no crack anywhere within your reach?
You don't.
Want to buy me a coffee or the boy a dog treat?! www.buymeacoffee.com/jbmountain
Would you be able to talk about how to trad climb as a 3 person team
That one is on the to do list!
Great video. I have watched a number of your video during lock down and always very useful. I have started to train again during lock down after a number of years of not climbing following an injury. Once things open up again is there a course you would recommend to get me going again.
Glad you've enjoyed them Paul!
Drop us an email if you want to chat a bit more about course, maybe an improver course would be the right one.
where is this?!
Lion Rock near Llanberis.
Amazing videos! I’m so clad I my mate passed you on
Glad you like em 👊
Love your accent!
Haha, thanks!
Oh No !! Climbing Outdoors with No Bolts !!?? 🤯😆😂
Although scoring placements to an accuracy of 5 places is a desirable goal, it is not practical in the real world. There are too many variables to achieve that accuracy.
It really only comes down to 3 - bomber, adequate, and psychological.
Although you can get a lot of information from inspecting and tapping, the only way to tell how good a placement is is to bounce test it like aid climbers do.
I've been climbing for 50 years - started just as clean climbing using nuts was developing. I thought I was a good judge of placements until my first big wall climb and aid climbing many pitches on nuts. Nuts I thought were adequate ("3" in your system) would pop under body weight and ones that I thought would pop ("1 or 2") held.
In the 80's, I started bounce testing and it was quite illuminating, and my ability to judge placements went way up.
In my experience, without bounce testing you can only reliably judge the end members - bombers and really bad placements.
What's was most interesting were some placements that I was reluctant to even put body weight on ended up holding moderately vigorous bounce testing - and thus would hold a small fall.
There is an important factor in judging placements that you didn't discuss in detail - security. Security is whether the placement will stay in place as I climb above it. To judge this you need to look at direction of forces on the rope and placements in case of a fall. This is a 3-dimensional problem.
The standard today seems to be to add a full length runner to every placement, which adds a meter of length to a fall, and may not keep the placement from getting pulled out or cams pulled to an angle which makes them worthless. Sometimes the only way to insure security is to place an opposing nut.
A way to learn this is to observe what the rope does when lowering or hanging.
Know what you mean on the security, have taken falls and the previous bit of gear to the one I fell into popped just because of direction of pull, if the first bit wouldnt have held I would have taken a veryyyyy long fall 😬 but I think thats one of the reason you sometimes see if the first bit goes on a hard fall it literally is Pop,Pop, Pop.
brilliant video. From a beginner
Glad you enjoyed it!
2/5 is mental pro. 1/5 is the stuff you send into #justbombergear
Hahaha!
He’s laying down lol
Everyones crack will have super grip if you mess up.
My scoring system goes up to eleven.
mine to twelve that's one more so its better!
@@jonathansummerfield8390 never watched this is spinal tap?
This comment made my day, just make sure your not a Drummer, that plus climbing spells out new Drummer needed.
The thumbs down is from a poor.
Really? You sat in front of the same crack for the entire video and talked. Better to show different cracks with different configurations and placements. A picture is worth a thousand words.
Thanks for watching.