I had a request recently for a few tips on how to rack your trad gear on your harness. This is very much personal preference but most people do seem to follow a few conventions.
Know Where Your Gear Is
When you are climbing at your limit, speeding up gear placement by knowing where your gear is can make a crucial difference. By always racking the same way every time, you know exactly where to grab to get that post-crux bomber no.2 cam, stuff it into a crack and finish the pitch. There’s no messing around trying to find where it’s disappeared to around the back of your harness!
To further speed up placements, all of my cams are on colour coordinated carabiners.
My wires are split across three oval carabiners and these always go on the right side of my harness, small to large. If I’m carrying a set of hexes these go behind the large wires. I also put tiny cams on the right, at the front to balance the weight between the two sides of my harness.
Wires and small cams on the right.
Cams go on the left hand side, in size order, small to large.
Quickdraws, again in size order, small to large, go behind the gear on the rear gear loops.
Kit which doesn’t get used as often, eg. belay plate, long slings, prussiks etc, live on the back of my harness out of the way.
120cm slings go over my shoulder with the ends clipped together ready to use.
Medium and large cams on the left.
Belay kit out the way at the back.
Size Matters
Putting large gear at the back of your harness and small at the front has several benefits. You can see your feet more easily, your gear will generally keep out of the way of your climbing movement, and small items of gear won’t get buried on your harness under larger ones. Putting longer quickdaws and slings at the back also keeps them from interfering.
Gates In vs Gates Out
A contentious issue! I always rack with my carabiner gates facing out as it seems to work better for me. It’s worth having an experiment with both to see which you prefer. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter too much, just remember your partners preference so when you clip gear to them at belay change overs they don’t need to swap it all round!
Don’t Panic!
Having a system is all well and good, but often you might find things move around depending on which hand is free to place a runner and reclip the gear to your harness. Whilst I always start with the same system, if it gets a bit cluttered during a pitch it doesn’t really matter. Sort it out when you get a good rest or at the next belay and don’t worry too much about it whilst you climb.
Re-Rack As You Go
A top tip for keeping things organised and speeding up belay change overs is to re-rack the gear where you want it whilst you’re seconding a pitch and removing the runners. I will always collect all the wires I remove on a single quickdraw or screw gate, re-racking the other quickdraws on my harness ready for the next pitch. Each cam I remove goes in size order on my left hand side as per my racking system. This means by the time I reach the belay I’ve already got half the rack ready to go, perfect for grabbing the remaining kit, re-racking the wires from my single collection on a quickdraw and blasting off up the next pitch.
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