How to Clean Gear From a Trad Climbing Route

Learn how to clean gear from a trad climbing route with instruction from the American Mountain Guides Association.

[@chad4853]

Thanks for sharing this rad video, thanks for the safety information, thanks for wearing your helmet. Five Stars.

[@brianclimbs1509]

Thanks for the video on an important topic. The upward tug is how I will initially try to clean my nuts (especially on a multipitch) because it takes way too long to pull out the nut tool every time. However, my wires are getting annoying bends in them. Is there an accepted way to fix this, or at least prevent it from happening? Nuts have like doubled in price in the past 7 years so I really can’t afford to start replacing them every season. Thanks!

[@Govanification]

Brian Climbs Put your nut tool in an accessible place and use it. Especially for asymmetric/curved/offset nuts the upward tug tends to rotate them into a stuck position because they didn't go in line that.

[@brianclimbs1509]

@@Govanification Usually when this happens I find that I can undo it by tugging in the opposite direction. I would be concerned that if I pull my nut tool out for every single nut, it will add up to a lot of time over the course of a day.

[@Govanification]

@@brianclimbs1509 Not sure how many nuts you are placing but often it's only 0-3 per pitch for me depending on the area, and the amount of time my followers generally spend getting it out AFTER giving it an intial tug and getting it more stuck is way more than if they just pulled their nut tool first. For reference I have the Metolius ultralight asymmetric nuts and they slot in beautifully almost like offsets but they get horrendously stuck if you tug up and rotate them.

[@brianclimbs1509]

@@Govanification Maybe the difference is the curve in your nuts. Perhaps they can bend around a variation in the rock, but then they need to slide out the same way they go in. I just use the old fashioned BD nuts. Depending on the climb, I can easily place half a dozen on a 50m pitch.

[@kiwibird8988]

Hey love your videos! Keep on doing this really important tutorials! One of your videos really showed me some usefull information about how to "abseil" more secure! However I thinks it's worth mentioning that a simple quickdraw connected to a nut is in my opinion not state of art in tradclimbing and therefore shoundn't be needed to be cleaned :-)

[@SeaBear161]

What reason would you have to not clean the gear off of the climb?

[@bboyorc]

how to take off gear. Remove it. Uhh... Thank you?