Starting a lead rack; Quickdraws
Once the nuts, cams, hexes, slings, or other protection are securely placed into the rock, we must attach the rope to the protection somehow. This is where the Quickdraw comes in.
The Quickdraw is a composite device, consisting of two non-locking carabiners, and a peice of webbing joining the two together. For this device, I chose the Wild Country Wild Wire quickdraws.
It’s important to allow the rope to run in a straight line while climbing, and it’s not always possible to place your nuts in the rock in a straight line. As such, it’s good to have differing lengths of webbing making up the quickdraws.
Instead of buying quickdraws of differing lengths, I opt to create my own lengths of quickdraws, by using slings to join the carabiners together as shown in this article, “How to Make an Amazing Trad Quickdraw”.
This means that I will have 20cm long quickdraws, that can be opened out to 60cm long one-handed.