Try a “racking sling” for slings
Anytime if you want to carry slings longer than a quick draw, you need to choose how to carry them. The choice is pretty much boils down to on your harness, or over your shoulder somehow.
It’s very much a matter of personal preference. The current trend is to have most all of your rock or ice placements and spare carabiners on your harness and have slings over your shoulder.
(A time when this might not work so well is when you have a backpack, with a waistband limiting access to your harness gear loops.)
If you're carrying a few 60 cm slings over one shoulder without carabiners on them, those usually carry and deploy tangle free pretty well.
However, the issues can start when:
You have carabiners on those slings, which causes tangles
You have some longer 120 cm slings, for a meandering route
Maybe you want to carry an Alpine quick draw with one or even two carabiners on it, for a quick clipping to your gear
Some of those may not fit over your shoulders so well.
An alternative: using a designated “racking sling” to carry your other slings.
This racking sling is a slightly wider, typically mostly or all nylon, 60 cm sewn sling that you use specifically over a shoulder to hold your assorted slings and quick draws.
Below are several different styles of slings you might be carrying. From left to right:
The “alpine quickdraw”, a 60 cm runner with one carabiner passed through another to shorten it up. A crafty alpine trick that every climber should know, read more about it here.
A standard sport climbing quickdraw. Not so common in the alpine, but you might want to have a few if the route goes straight up.
A 120 cm sling, twisted around itself a few times to form a nice bundle. Another good trick and you can read more about here.
A basket hitched 60 cm sling. Pass one end through your racking sling, and re-clip it to a single carabiner. To deploy, unclip one strand and pull. It should extend to full length with one hand and no tangles. If you're on a route with lots of cam placements that wanders a bit from left to right, this can be a good racking strategy, because you can use the racking carabiner on your cam to clip to the sling.
You can keep a few spare carabiners on this racking sling as well, to clip gear like stoppers where you typically need two carabiners.
Use this same system when you’re cleaning gear. Have a designated racking sling on one shoulder for slings and spare carabiners, and another racking sling over the other shoulder for rock protection. When you get to the top of the pitch, changeover with your partner is fast and easy; just hand them the slings with the gear mostly sorted, and they should be pretty much ready to lead.
