An "Interesting" Bolted Climbing Anchor Video

Hello Internet. Today we're gonna make another anchor building video for you the people of the Internet. Why don't you seem too excited? Alright we're gonna make an anchor building video but this one's gonna be different. Roll the intro. Hope you enjoyed that intro. That's our commute into this secret climbing area that's totally on Mountain Project. Anchors! What do you need to know about anchors? Let's see how many... Alright Luca, how many different terms do you think we can come up with to describe the different principles of anchors? Redundant. Equalized. Timely. Efficient. No extension. Limit the extension. Elegant. Then what am I missing? I know there's more. Point system. Oh there's a... that's right. Who the f*** does math when they're out like building anchors? So there's two considerations that we should just really be on our list to double check every time. The anchors are redundant and they distribute the load. Alright I've said some words that I probably ought to explain. I've used the word redundant. By redundant I mean that I have more than one component. These two legs are separated or isolated by this knot. I've got two loops. I've got two carabiners. So if you gave me a figurative or a real pair of scissors and I was allowed to cut any one item here this anchor would not fail. It would still totally support the system. A second thing is I've been saying distribute the load. Now these two components are identical so in an ideal world we would just equalize the load between them but it doesn't need to be perfect. Each of these is about ten times stronger than it needs to be for the whole system and we've got two of them. Let's dive right into the first anchor that we're gonna use as an example which is a pre-equalized anchor. So for this example I'm just gonna click my carabiners directly into the bolt hangers not further down the chain. A lot of people ask does that matter where you clip to? The answer is no and yes. No it doesn't really matter. It's all plenty strong but yes it does matter. You don't want to clip somewhere that the carabiner is gonna get cross-loaded or the gate is gonna be interacting with with the rock or another thing that might actually push on that gate. And then since I'm building a pre-equalized anchor I want to anticipate the direction it's gonna get loaded. Pull in that direction, grab in the middle of the sling, and then tie my overhand or figure-eight knot there. Load these guys up. So now you can see we've got a nice clean equally distributed load amongst those two components. Alright next up the quad. For the sake of of being different I'm actually gonna just clip into a different part of the anchor here for this. Again the main thing is like those gates are free, not pressing against anything. So I have a 180 centimeter sling. Get it doubled over, tie the first knot. Sweet. I'll take this end, drop it into its carabiner, unclip this end, bring it back down, get everything all untwisted, tie my second knot. So in order to build my anchor now I want to clip one carabiner to two of those strands and I want to clip the second carabiner to the second two strands. See that they're completely separate from one another. Drop that guy in there opposite and opposed and voila I've got an anchor. Quads are an awesome application for two bolts. Pre-equalized anchors will work in literally, virtually, completely. I really can't think of any scenario where you couldn't build a pre-equalized anchor. But you've got to untie them or retie them each time. Quads on the other hand, I could actually decide you know actually I do want to clip it up here high. Oh maybe I only want one of them high. It's still automatically distributing the load. Alright and for our last example, in the words of every famous youtuber, I'm gonna tell you what no one else will tell you. The two quick draws are perfectly legit. So for the sake of experimentation I'm gonna go ahead and clip down here on the bottom of these chains. There's a redundant anchor. Distributes the load. There's a limited amount of extension. The angle is all good. It's simple. It's strong. Now let's go back to where I clipped these. I clipped them in the bottom ring. So at the point that I come back to clean this anchor, that's gonna be in the way. So I really I would be better off if I didn't put them in the very bottom. But there are some scenarios that we want to watch out for. In the event that your bolts aren't at the same height and you don't have a variety of places to clip into on the hardware, then yeah this isn't this isn't the way to go. You want to think about pre-equalized or quad in that scenario. Alright let's close this video out and get on with this. I don't know what it is with the fetish people have on Instagram of posting every conceivable variation of anchors, but just remember it doesn't have to be complicated. There's some really simple ways of doing this that shouldn't be overwhelming. Cool. That's it. Until next time. Back in the hole. See you guys later. Don't worry. It's a squeeze tube. You can't fall out of a squeeze tube.