The ultimate trad quickdraw is a great option anytime you might want a quick and simple way to extend your protection piece. We hope you find this top tip helpful on your next trad climbing adventure.
Trad climbing requires a flexible approach. Sometimes you need to ensure your protection piece sits in a certain way to avoid rope drag and usually you want to have your rope take as direct a line up the route as possible. Occasionally you might also want a short sling readily available to thread a feature or hook a spike.
On trad routes this flexibility isn’t usually best delivered by a sport style dog bone quick draw. Something a bit more versatile will make your life much easier. For most situations the Ultimate Trad Quickdraw’ is the way to go.
Use a 60cm sling (something like the DMM 8 mm Dynatec slings work really well) and the rest is all in the threading. Attach 2 snap-gate carabiners into the sling and you have a long quickdraw that can be very useful but isn’t easy to carry.
To turn it into something portable thread one carabiner through the other. The sling will follow it through. Next, clip the sling back into itself (follow the photos to get the sequence right). Now you have short sport length quickdraw that’s a third of the length of the original sling. This can be used like that to extend many protection pieces.
When leading, to convert from the shorter length to longer just clip one carabiner into your protection piece. Next, unclip the other free carabiner and clip into any single strand of sling. You can now just pull and it automatically becomes full length. Simple and quick. We did say this top tip was all about the ultimate trad quickdraw. Now you know why!
If you are a trad climber please also check out our abseiling top tip about rope balls.