Offset cams?

[sportnoob]

I'm new to the area and am a moderate trad leader (5.9 and under). I've got tcu's on my rack for the small stuff, and camalots for larger. I've never used offset cams before but on my few recent outings in the Icicle I've found some funky placements where my tcu's were ok but I was wondering "are these the sorta placements offsets are made for?".

 

The typical marketing spiel around offsets is for pin scars. I wasn't encountering these so much as just pod-like features and flaring cracks. I don't have any friends who have some for me to try out. Do folks find they're useful for free climbing mostly moderate trade routes around here? Or am I overthinking it?

[ivan]

you can often use offsets where strictly speaking they're not needed, but that's not much of an argument for dropping all the cash on them when you've not yet any ambitions for climbing on pin-scarred granite - still, small cams don't weigh much, so if you got the scratch, ain't no harm in carrying a few

[JBC]

For moderate trade routes in the Leavenworth area they really are not needed. You could find placements for them, but in general there are plenty of placements for regular cams.

 

To put it in perspective, the vast majority of those route were led for years with just stoppers and hexes before cams became ubiquitous.