Trad Climbing Gear: A Complete Guide to Building Your Rack

Building Your Lead Climbing Rack

Now things really start to get exciting. You’ve been seconding for a while, cleaning gear, and learning the ropes — literally. You’ve watched closely as your partners placed protection, you’ve studied how to build bombproof trad anchors, and you’ve probably had a few days out with a professional climbing instructor to build your skills further.

Bit by bit, you’re becoming ready for the next step: leading your own trad climbs.

Chances are you’ve already done some leading using someone else’s rack — either with a friend or under instruction. Now you’re psyched to start putting together your own set of trad climbing gear and chasing adventures on your own terms.

There’s no need to rush out and buy an entire rack. In fact, it makes more sense to build it gradually — picking up a few key pieces to use alongside your partner’s gear. Before long, you’ll have enough to lead shorter routes, and eventually a full rack for longer or more gear-intensive lines.

Let’s walk through exactly what you’ll need to build your trad rack from the ground up.

Nuts (Wires)

The bread and butter of any climbing rack are nuts, or wires (I’ll hereafter refer to them only as nuts). These tapered alloy chocks are designed to nestle in constrictions in cracks in the rock, and when placed correctly will remain in place until removed by the seconding climber.

Individual nuts can be purchased, but you’ll need to start off with a set. All manufactures will give their nuts a number, typically from 1 to 10 (although numbers below one, and fractions do exist!). A complete set of wires won’t set you back much, and on short to medium-length routes a single set of wires should allow you to adequately protect a route without the need for additional gear.

Why do I mention a single set? Well, as you climb longer, more challenging routes, you may well decide you need more nuts. Whether you need a whole additional set is up to you. You may just want to buy a few single nuts of sizes you need.

For example, I have only singles of the largest nuts i.e., 8-10. I have doubles in the 3-7 range, and triples of sizes 1 and 2.

You may want to consider buying a comprehensive set of protection. For example, DMM offer some ‘starter sets’, allowing some savings to be made by buying in bulk. These can include a full set of nuts, as well as hexes, and even offset nuts (both of which we discuss below).

Quickdraws for Trad

Nuts aren’t much use without quickdraws. Quickdraws are your linking piece that joins your item of protection to the rope. They consist of two (usually) snap gate carabiners, joined by a short length of material. This allows the rope to run smoothly, and as the sling or dog bone between the carabiners can move, it lessens the likelihood of gear being lifted out of its placement as you push on upwards.

Finally, the ability for the quickdraw to twist, reduces the chance of a catastrophic failure caused by metal-on-metal twisting during a sudden fall.

Trad and sport climbing carabiners do vary. Whilst you could use any quickdraw for either sport or trad, generally speaking, trad optimised quickdraws tend to be designed to be as light as possible. And that’s because saving weight, where possible, is paramount for trad climbers, as we’re carrying much more gear than just the quickdraws needed for sport climbing.

You will need a minimum of eight quickdraws starting out. In my opinion this will only allow you to climb short routes, so choose your objectives wisely. I’d strongly recommend placing more, rather than less protection, when stating to lead your first climbs.

The more experience you have at placing gear, the better. It is also normal for your gear placements to be less than perfect when starting out. If you’ve only placed a handful of pieces, and several of them fall out as you’re climbing above them, that’s not a great situation to be in.

So, as I say, eight is a bare minimum for quickdraws. Try to add to that umber as soon as you can, going up to ten or twelve. You may want to include some quickdraws of different lengths as you increase the total number.

Slings and Carabiners

The slings you already acquired as a competent second will do you fine here. But you may want to add a couple more.

A few extra 120cm slings are amazingly useful if you are climbing a route that offers some natural threads or spikes that take a good sling placement. As well as being some of the most bomb-proof placements you can find, there’s something incredibly satisfying about using a good thread or spike placement.

Typically, every sling you own will (eventually) want its own small screwgate carabiner. This allows you to take advantage of as many uses of this combo as possible, including building anchors that may require many different pieces.

You will also want one large carabiner to use as your master point for any anchors you build. Classically, this will be a large HMS carabiner, capable of safely holding two clove hitches without compromising its function.

Hexes – Do You Need Them?

That jangling sound of metal-on-metal hexes clanging together is a less common sound at the crag these days. Generically known as hexes, owing to their shape, these oversize items of protection were essential items in the racks of early trad pioneers. But with the advent of cams, they became less and less relevant.

So do you need hexes in your rack? The next items you may want to acquire for your climbing rack may be some hexes. There are a couple of reasons you may want to invest in a set of seagull bashers.

Firstly, as a novice lead climber, they are incredibly reassuring pieces of kit to place. They are easy to place and it’s easy to judge the quality of their placement. Additionally, being so obviously big and strong, they can be real confidence-boosters for your early leads.

Secondly, the alternative to hexes are cams, which cover the same size range as hexes (plus much more). Cams are inordinately more expensive, and you can get a set of three hexes for little more than the price of one number 3 cam.

Therefore, they do serve a place in a beginner’s trad climbing rack. However, they will doubtlessly eventually be superseded by cams. Cams’ superior versatility cannot be denied, and there’s simply no point in carrying both hexes and cams in your rack. Once you’ve gotten confident at placing cams and can afford a few, it will be time to say goodbye to your hexes.

Cams

Cams are simply amazing achievements of engineering. Their deceptively simple, spring-loaded concept, means that they act as ‘active protection’ – they are continuously gripping the rock, rather than just passively sitting in a crack.

They do take a bit of experience to learn how to place effectively, and some learners do take a while to become confident with their cam placement. Once mastered, however, their versatility is unmatched, and cracks of all orientations and sizes can take a cam. This includes parallel-sided cracks that lack the constriction required for a good nut or hex placement.

Preferences for cams, like anything, vary considerably. And indeed, most people who will passionately vouch for one brand of cam over another, have had spent a disproportionate amount of time using that particular device over others.

As you get the chance to climb with other climbers and use their gear, you’ll start to develop your own personal favourites.

Note that, cams are generally sold without an accessory carabiner, so you will need to get one of them, ideally for every cam you use. However, some climbers do economise of both cost and weight by grouping cams together on one carabiner and then detaching them and necessarily adding them to a quickdraw when placing them on the lead.

This is an extra level of faff I don’t need when wanting to hurriedly place a cam on lead, so I have an individual carabiner for each cam. To easily be able to choose the required cam from your harness, I’d recommend pairing it up with a carabiner that matches the cam’s colour.

Extendable or Alpine Quickdraws

As you climb longer and more meandering routes, the need for careful rope management will increase. An integral part of this is the use of extendable quickdraws, where necessary (also known as Alpine draws).

I’d recommend choosing carabiners that correspond to the snap gates on your quickdraws, so that you can easily be consistent in which carabiner you clip to the rope, and which carabiner you clip to the protection.

Trad Climbing Ropes

Of course, at some point, if you’re going to be an independent climber, you need to have your own rope. This article is written on the assumption that you’re gradually building up your rack whilst still climbing on other people’s gear, and mixing and matching racks as you steadily acquire more gear.

Thus, the time at which you buy your first trad climbing rope will vary. But at a minimum, armed with a set of nuts, quickdraws, and enough gear to build a safe anchor, you could get a rope and climb carefully chosen routes with this bare minimum of equipment.

Climbing ropes is a huge topic in itself, so go here so see the accompanying article to this guide that talks just about the different types of climbing ropes.

To cover all bases, you need a single rope of 50 to 60 metres in length. It’s worth paying a little extra for a dry-treated rope that will undoubtedly last longer than an untreated rope.

You will likely move on to using two half ropes to trad climb. Here you have the choice to buy a single half rope and team up with a buddy who also has a half rope. But bear in mind, you should not climb with just a single half rope.

One way of future-proofing yourself is to get a triple-rated rope. A triple-rated rope can be used as either a single, half ,or twin rope (twin ropes are generally the reserve of ice climbers). With all things being equal, this will be the costliest option for your climbing rope. But it obviously gives you the greatest versatility and may prevent you having to buy twice, or even thrice if, for example, you were to buy a single rope and then two half ropes.

Also consider if you need to get a dedicated abseil rope. If you’re regularly climbing sea cliffs, for example, you should consider getting an abseil rope. Setting up a retrievable abseil, using your climbing ropes to abseil, and pulling them down afterwards is a good option a lot of the time. However, there as many occasions where using a bespoke abseil rope is a better choice.

For abseiling, climbers tend to prefer using semi-static (low stretch ropes). These make for a more pleasant and ultimately safer abseiling experience, as the sea-sawing effect of stretchy, dynamic ropes is reduced, lessening the chance of damage to ropes on any sharp edges.

Most (but not all) abseil ropes come in more drab colours than dynamic ropes. They conform to standard EN 1891, and ideally should be type ‘A’.

At this point, you are now a fully-equipped trad climber. With all the gear we’ve gone through thus far, you should have enough kit to independently climb a wide variety of objectives, from sea cliffs, to mountain crags up to medium grades.

But what are you going to climb?

Guidebooks – Planning Your Trad Adventures

One of the joys of climbing, apart from climbing itself, is thinking about what you are going to climb next! What classic routes are there to be climbed? What esoteric, off-the-beaten-path routes are out there that tickle your fancy? Where can you go to get lots of mileage, or hone a particular technique? And what are the routes you want to climb that will be test pieces and help push your climbing to the next level?

All of this, and much more, will be found in climbing guidebooks. At the very least, you’re going to want to have guidebooks that cover your local area, or the area you will be climbing in most often.

For your local area, a definitive guidebook such as one by the Climber’s Club should be your go to. Once you’ve climbed out the classics at your local crags, you should find stacks more to go at in your local area. Finding unknown gems in remote crags, away from the crowds, in one of the coolest things about trad climbing.

If you’re heading off on your trad climbing travels, you may want a guidebook that gives more broad coverage of a wider area. You’ve only got time to climb the classics, and don’t necessarily need to know about some slimy, unrepeated, E5 that relied on a rusty peg that no one has been able to confirm is even still in existence.

The guidebooks by Rockfax have come to dominate this latter type of guidebook. Their photo topos are hard to beat, and they only include the essential classics for any given crag.

Of course, these days, there is a vast amount of information online on crags and routes everywhere. This can include notes by people who have climbed these routes. This can give invaluable information, such as current bird-nesting activity, recent rockfall, or anything else that may affect your route that was not apparent at the time of publication of the guidebook to that area.

Getting lost in guidebooks is a splendid way to spend one’s free time. Learning about new areas, creating tick lists, as well as impressing your friends with your guidebook collection, are all fine reasons to keep buying climbing guidebooks. Indeed, which climber worth their salt doesn’t have at least a few shelves’ worth of climbing guidebooks in their house?