Nut Tool Rules

If your harness ran some kind of hardware caste system, you’d have flashy cams at the top, followed by nuts (micros coming before the less sophisticated chunky ones), then the quickdraws — the foot soldiers of their betters.

At the very bottom of the list would be your humble nut tool: the last thing you clip on your harness, and the last thing you want to use when climbing.

I think most people have got their nut tools all wrong. Learn how to use one properly and it might just save your life.

The Nut Tool Rules

Here are a few things worth thinking about next time you clip one on.

A tool for life, not just for seconding

Most climbers see the nut tool as the weapon of the second, forced to dig out stuck cams and wires. Some teams even make only the second carry one.

In reality, no leader should ever be on the sharp end without a nut tool. Nuts get stuck just as often when leading as when seconding — usually the rubbish ones that jam just as you’re trying to remove them to place something better.

When placing microwires or fiddly wires, a nut tool is invaluable. You can press or even stab the nut into place far more effectively than you ever could with a fingertip.

Good for rock gardening

I can’t overstate how useful a nut tool is on new or adventurous routes — even on neglected trade routes — for gardening cracks. It’s ideal for digging out dirt and grass, levering out loose flakes, stones, and grit.

Many routes hide bomber placements exactly where you need them, but they’ve become filled with soil or debris. A minute of careful digging can turn a terrifying runout into something far more reasonable.

There’s obviously a fine line between cleaning and damaging a route. I think of this as progressive cleaning: removing shattered rock or soil to expose solid placements, rather than chipping or manufacturing holds.

A5 Pro

A modern steel nut tool with a decent hook can sometimes offer the slimmest “pro” possible — in situations where nothing else fits. A nut tool was once used as the first runner on Comes the Dervish.

This might be by hooking into a blind wire slot where a cable won’t seat, or into a thin horizontal crack like a hand-placed knife blade.

How strong is this? Not strong at all. It might hold bodyweight if you slip onto it — and that’s a big might. Think of it as psychological protection at best.

On extreme routes, one thing that’s often missing is protection that hooks. On El Cap you might hand-place birdbeaks; a nut tool hook is the closest equivalent most climbers carry. The difference is that a beak can hold a serious fall, while a nut tool will only take the sting out as you whizz past it.

It would be interesting to see someone design a nut tool that could genuinely double as protection in situations where even micros no longer fit.

Dry tooling

If you find yourself on a rock route smeared with verglas, a steep grassy top-out, or even an icy slope, the only piece of gear that may offer any security at all is your nut tool.

On icy rock, a nut tool is excellent for scraping ice off footholds and cleaning cracks before placing cams. On grass or snow the security it offers is mostly illusory — but sometimes illusion is better than nothing.