> There's also a long tradition of the strongest climbers you know climbing on mank (i.e. safety gear so ragged it is terrifying to behold)
It's not uncommon for trad climbers, or maybe it was. When I was younger I couldn't afford much, and I climbed with others in basically the same situation. My rack consisted of mostly passive protection, some nuts, some rocks (not literal rocks, i'm not that old). I eventually got a few micros and cheap cams (literally 3).. Some of the climbing I did back then was terrifying, not only because I was so new to it, and climbing relatively hard dangerous routes, but because they were made so much harder by having limited active protection, and a limited range of passive gear.
I got very very good at creative nut placement, threading the gnarliest of threads, and was very sparing with cams, trying to save them for only where it was completely impossible to place passive gear. I also got good at hanging on in uncomfortable positions for stupid amounts of time while trying to engineer a safe piece of protection out of very little.
In more recent years I added a couple totems (which are amazing, and amazingly expensive), and then got gifted a rack of cams the likes of which i've never seen. A lot of my trad climbs are feeling a hell of a lot easier now I can just chuck tons of cams with far less sparingly especially big crack climbs... It makes me wish I bought better gear earlier, maybe I would have been able to try a wider range of routes, but I'm also grateful for my hard earned skill of making the absolute best of poorly protected routes with passives, my opinion "well protected" is often very different from other peoples provided it's not literally blank run-out. And what others consider "unprotectable" I can often find perfectly safe protection on.
A very decent trad rack can be had for under £1000, and last a long time - In the scheme of things that's not a lot compared to most activities. I don't know why I'm still so frugal about it, I can afford it now. I feel like ropes are the most expensive part of climbing because you can go through them so quickly and have to buy new ones pretty much every year.
It's not uncommon for trad climbers, or maybe it was. When I was younger I couldn't afford much, and I climbed with others in basically the same situation. My rack consisted of mostly passive protection, some nuts, some rocks (not literal rocks, i'm not that old). I eventually got a few micros and cheap cams (literally 3).. Some of the climbing I did back then was terrifying, not only because I was so new to it, and climbing relatively hard dangerous routes, but because they were made so much harder by having limited active protection, and a limited range of passive gear.
I got very very good at creative nut placement, threading the gnarliest of threads, and was very sparing with cams, trying to save them for only where it was completely impossible to place passive gear. I also got good at hanging on in uncomfortable positions for stupid amounts of time while trying to engineer a safe piece of protection out of very little.
In more recent years I added a couple totems (which are amazing, and amazingly expensive), and then got gifted a rack of cams the likes of which i've never seen. A lot of my trad climbs are feeling a hell of a lot easier now I can just chuck tons of cams with far less sparingly especially big crack climbs... It makes me wish I bought better gear earlier, maybe I would have been able to try a wider range of routes, but I'm also grateful for my hard earned skill of making the absolute best of poorly protected routes with passives, my opinion "well protected" is often very different from other peoples provided it's not literally blank run-out. And what others consider "unprotectable" I can often find perfectly safe protection on.
A very decent trad rack can be had for under £1000, and last a long time - In the scheme of things that's not a lot compared to most activities. I don't know why I'm still so frugal about it, I can afford it now. I feel like ropes are the most expensive part of climbing because you can go through them so quickly and have to buy new ones pretty much every year.