One anchor? Really...

I was climbing with a friend once who used to only use one anchor when he felt it was safe? What actually sparked this off was a sling round a chockstone which was never in a million years going to move, however there was loads of other opptunities for more gear so I pulled him up on it. "Why only use one anchor?". His response was that it was a bomber anchor, it was never going to move and his friend who was an SPA had told him that in his personal climbing, one anchor was fine.

My friend is a good mountaineer and I would never have expected it off him. It actually occured to me he might have done it to annoy me (in a joking way) because it was an easy route which I've also lead before. Admittedly catastrophic anchor failure isn't a commen occurance, but I'd had a belay completly rip out on me before due to 3 bad anchors in shit rock. Building a belay with more than one anchor is also a fundamental skill in climbing. This whole thing got me thinking about anchors, and namely what risks we willing to take?

So there are no rules in climbing? Or are there? I've already pointed out that its a bit of a mess around the area of "rules", but there are rules, maybe they arn't written on a mighty tablet of stone or anything but they are there. Between me and most of my climbing buddies its commenly accepted that we never use one anchor. We always build some form of redundancy into our systems, whether its a massive 4 piece anchor where each piece is a tree or boulder weighing in at 6 tonnes or its 3 pegs and a nut you've hammered in with your nut key because your worried about the pegs. Basically we never accept 1 anchor, no matter how good.

But why not? My friends counter argument was that you only clip in with one 'biner, you only have one belay loop, only wear one harness etc etc. This is a good point, we do only have one of those things, but then again if we had two of everything would it make climbing possible? There is obviously a level of acceptable riska dn this changed from person to person, rope to rope and with the situation. If I'm out rock climbing I'll never use one anchor, because there is no excuse, but scrambling? well thats another matter. For some reason single anchor belays are accpetable. In the alps me and Dan had a rule that there was never less than one anchor between us moving together. Now if we'd have fell off I'd hate to think what would have happened.

Screwgates is another small "rule" thats odd. Uncle Rob carries enough to have one on each piece for a belay, I on the other hand use wiregates. Now my theory (and its not just my theory) is that snapgates are lighter and if you keeping an eye on for anchors then theres no problem. Rob preferes the extra security of screwgates. I also look at this another way. If I carry less screwgates its slightly lighter, this means more wires or protection. Risk goes both ways.

Anyway I guess this rant is coming to an end. For a sport with no rules, there are some rules. These rules may be different for each team, person and environment but they all follow the same principal. The principal that life is not worth the risk. How much your life is worth however is up to you...(a cold belay, but with 3 anchors at least!)