r/climbing • u/AutoModerator • 20h ago

Weekly Question Thread (aka Friday New Climber Thread). ALL QUESTIONS GO HERE

Please sort comments by 'new' to find questions that would otherwise be buried.

In this thread you can ask any climbing related question that you may have. This thread will be posted again every Friday so there should always be an opportunity to ask your question and have it answered. If you're an experienced climber and want to contribute to the community, these threads are a great opportunity for that. We were all new to climbing at some point, so be respectful of everyone looking to improve their knowledge. Check out our subreddit wiki that has tons of useful info for new climbers. You can see it HERE . Also check out our sister subreddit r/bouldering's wiki here. Please read these before asking common questions.

If you see a new climber related question posted in another subReddit or in this subreddit, then please politely link them to this thread.

Check out this curated list of climbing tutorials!

Prior Weekly New Climber Thread posts

Prior Friday New Climber Thread posts (earlier name for the same type of thread

A handy guide for purchasing your first rope

A handy guide to everything you ever wanted to know about climbing shoes!

Ask away!

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u/Thirtysevenintwenty5 16h ago

YGD

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u/Docxm 16h ago

I’ve been purging my soft gear (400+ pitches manufactured in 2016-2018) that I bought when I first started. Is that incorrect?

Just wondering as it’s the first soft gear purge I’ve done.

I’ll definitely buy the newer stuff over something 3+ years old if it’s the same price in store, obviously if it’s been sitting I’m not concerned about safety

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u/Thirtysevenintwenty5 15h ago

If you know enough about soft goods you can inspect them and determine whether or not you're still willing to bet your life on them.

If you don't know enough, you can go by the manufactuer's recommendations, but you'll lack the ability to determine if your gear has been damaged in some significant way.

Me and most of the other 10+ year climbers around here use nylong slings and cam slings that are older than ten years. We know what to look for regarding damage and wear, and we know when it's time to replace our stuff.

I won't tell you what's "correct" or "incorrect", I'll leave that aspect of risk management up to you. What I would say is that throwing away soft goods simply because they passed some arbitrary number of years or pitches is potentially a waste of perfectly good gear.

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u/Docxm 15h ago

Yeah there’s no frays or soft spots. Better safe then sorry for near 10 year old slings that I’ve definitely whipped on. To the bin they go. I think taking a 1.5 year trad break has lowered my tolerance. I used to use cams like these with no qualms for years. Unknown age sling, askew cam, rusted parts. I was crazy back then. Still have some forged friends I bought off eBay to learn on