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, but many climbers like to have the gear they are actually using on the route over their shoulders, and not on the harness. This can be especially true when you’re alpine climbing and probably wearing a backpack, where the waistband can limit access to your harness gear loops.

Having your gear on a shoulder length sling can make it easier to rack when cleaning, slightly easier to place when leading, and easier to hand off gear to your partner when changing leads.

However, if you put the slings one by one over your head and a shoulder, odds are they’re going to become a tangled mess when you try to pull one off over your head, and even more so when you’re pumped and need to place gear fast.  

A better system is using a designated “racking sling” to carry your other slings.

The purple racking sling is just a length of about 4 feet of 9/16 inch tubular webbing, tied in a loop with a water knot. It could also be a distinctly colored sewn single length / 60 cm runner (ideally wider webbing so doesn't cut into your shoulder. )

Below we see several different styles of slings you might be carrying. From left to right:

1. 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.

2. A standard sport climbing quickdraw. Not so common in the alpine, but hey, you might want to have a few if the route goes straight up.

3. A double length / 120 cm runner, twisted around itself a few times to form a nice bundle. Another good trick and you can read more about here.

4. FInally, this is a clever way to rack a single length / 60 cm runner. 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.