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john hansen
climber
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Topic Author's Original Post - Jul 31, 2011 - 01:59am PT
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I know 'Nutcraker was done in 68 or so, and friends came in about 77 or 78, even though I climbed till 86, I never climbed with friends (too expensive) or pitons. Only climbed for about ten year's but never placed a piton,or used a friend. We used nut's and slings and hex's.
Any insights on that era between pitons and Cam's?
I think the climbing was much more bold during this period.
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labrat
Trad climber
Nevada City, CA
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Jul 31, 2011 - 02:28am PT
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If I had been climbing I would have called it the scared shxxless era. It would have taken all winter to clean up each summers climbing activities. I'm not talking about big wall paper bag tossing!
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Mungeclimber
Trad climber
sorry, just posting out loud.
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Jul 31, 2011 - 02:43am PT
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I'm sure there were overlaps, no? But interesting categories to define the generations to be sure.
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Todd Eastman
climber
Bellingham, WA
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Jul 31, 2011 - 02:44am PT
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There were lots of still pretty solid fixed pins in places where stoppers and hexes wouldn't work.
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Moof
Big Wall climber
Orygun
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Jul 31, 2011 - 04:42am PT
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Pulled cams, pulled nuts.
Trad Falls:
#13 nut held
Red Alien held
Half dozen "self cleaning nuts"
Zero "self cleaning" cams
Aid:
Pulled offset nuts, regular nuts
Pulled assorted aliens, TCUs
All depends. The biggest rash these days is folks who head out on lead with no real mentoring aside from a few classes at their gym.
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johntp
Trad climber
socal
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Jul 31, 2011 - 06:26am PT
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Fricking can't sleep.
What I find curious are all the passive cams developed before friends that never seemed to catch on. Other than the Lowe tri-cam, none of the others seemed to go mainstream. But there were so many other designs that came out. I'd like to hear the thoughts from the designers of the passive cams during that era.
It is funny how the sound of the rack has changed over the years. The sound of a rack of pins versus a rack of hexes versus a rack of cams is entirely different. The sound of a rack of hexes and stoppers or a rack of pins is truly musical. Cams, not so much.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Jul 31, 2011 - 06:58am PT
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All of the passive cams sucked essentially, especially the SMC Camlocks (megasuck) and Kirk Kamms (deathsuck).
We can still promote a 'National Cams Free Day' so folks can understand what climbing before cams was like. Jump on some old .10/.11 classics that were put up without cams and it can really open your eyes.
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johntp
Trad climber
socal
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Jul 31, 2011 - 07:10am PT
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healyje
I hear you. I'd just like to have the designers of them post up their thoughts. What led the to the designs, their thoughts on the pros and cons of the designs. A little history as it were.
Earlier on another thread DR discussed tube chocks. I'd like to hear more from others with regard to passive cams. For instance, who came up with P-Nuts? I really thought that was an incredible design.
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karabin museum
Trad climber
phoenix, az
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Jul 31, 2011 - 08:23am PT
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P-Nuts were from Bill Forrest.
My friends and I used to go to our local crack crag, The Overlook which is a basalt wall 100 feet tall in Oak Creek Canyon, AZ. I was responsible for bring along the rack and at times I would surprise them with just bringing nuts, hexes and Lowe tricams. It is pretty amazing how the 5.12 climbers were suddenly whimpering in fear as they lead the 5.7 cracks. Hexes were good for some placements but mostly sucked due to the parallel cracks at the Overlook. The Lowe Tricams were the life savers. I still lead a few 5.10s and 5.11s on the natural pro to prove my crack wisdom to these new 5.12 sport climbing specialists.
Rock on! Marty
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Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
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Jul 31, 2011 - 10:16am PT
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The Colonel and I were just talking about this yesterday;
"Jaybro can tell you, Gary, I was not an early adopter of friends. Those walls we did, in seventy nine I wouldn't place them on my leads...
I remember Scarpelli making a point of first leading the right tube in Vedauwoo, "Cam -free"
My hex placing skillz peaked about '77 only to detereriote after that first #2 friend entered my life in '78
Frank, btw, lives at Deto and must have over a hundred cams these days...
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rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
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Jul 31, 2011 - 10:24am PT
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I lived through a lot of stages: soft iron, chromemolly, nuts from the UK, Chouinard nuts, RP's Friends, Aliens, Ballnuts, etc.
As far as the "adventure quotient" comparison between the all-nut days and today, in the Gunks it is far beyond night and day. What has made a huge, now almost incomprehensible difference is small cams, which have made most routes far better and far more easily protected than in any other era, including the chromemolly age.
The modern climber with a modern rack on a Gunks climb is in a totally different world than someone BITD with a bunch of hexes (which never worked all that well in the Gunks) and Chouinard stoppers, which often had to be placed in opposition in horizontal cracks. Even when you could get the gear in, the strenuousness of, say, concocting opposed stoppers in a horizontal at the lip of an overhang made the climbs seem a lot harder than they do now when you can fire in a unit on the run.
By the way, I'm not complaining or pining for the good old days. As I approach 70, modern gear's ability to reduce both the strenuousness and the seriousness of routes enables me to keep at least a hand in a game I'd have probably had to give up otherwise. Bring on the gadgets!
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Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
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Jul 31, 2011 - 11:21am PT
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And, shitty placements are shitty placements. You can achieve them with all technology. Everything fails. Though more often than not, they work!
Yesterday I led the bonhomie Dingus variation on Deto. For those who have done it features one of the very best nut placements known to climberdom. If you don't put a sling on it you could be toast!
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okie
Trad climber
San Leandro, Ca
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Jul 31, 2011 - 12:01pm PT
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Nutcraft. Was doing a classic hand crack in T. Meadows the other day. As I was fiddling around with cams, trying to get them to optimal placements in the uneven, knobby crack, I realized how much better hexes would be in that one.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Jul 31, 2011 - 12:09pm PT
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I recall those in-between years pretty vividly because they coincided with a time when my friends and I put up a handful of mostly moderate FAs, "hammerless" as we called it, on previously unclimbed faces in the high country of RMNP.
So there was no fixed gear or anchors at all; you'd start up each lead into unknown territory with a rack of hexentrics and stoppers, hoping you'd find cracks where you needed them, and said cracks would not be hopelessly flared, loose or choked with grass. It was a whole different feeling from going up on routes that had previously been aided.
Routes like Warhead on Arrowhead, Dog Star on McHenrys, Snark on Powell, NE Corner on 4th Ptarmigan Tower, and White Room on Notchtop (very scary} were climbed in this style.
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Mark Hudon
Trad climber
Hood River, OR
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Jul 31, 2011 - 12:56pm PT
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Placing hexes was actually pretty fun, although, that was back in the days before we readily grabbed gear to hang on, ability mattered much more.
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jstan
climber
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Jul 31, 2011 - 01:26pm PT
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I never used cams extensively so I can't comment. I resisted using them because they were complicated and did not sit still. They needed to have a little loudspeaker that would say, "John. I am about to move a little bit, so you are on your own now."
I found one junk sling trick that helped me sort through the nuts while stretched out horizontally under a roof. I made the junk sling (8mm perlon) so it was pretty tight around the shoulder. That keeps the junk from falling off to the left down where I could not see it. Then I could pull everything up on my chest and it would stay there. When sorting gear I was a little like an otter cracking clams on its chest. With passive nuts you did have to spend a some effort sorting through stuff. I found using these nuts was enjoyably creative; like the climbing itself. Climbing is not plug and go. Aesthetically, these nuts fit right in.
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SteveW
Trad climber
The state of confusion
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Jul 31, 2011 - 01:37pm PT
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I never placed a piton for real protection--I put them in a few times just
as practice placements in boulders, not on climbs.
I started with a rack of hexes and stoppers, and that's what I used
until the second generation of cams came out.
It sounded like I was wearing cow bells all of the time, but they
worked. It might have taken a bit of fiddling to put them in to
get a decent placement, but I fell on them and they held.
There's another thread here about a Boulder climber that could stack
hexes well--Philo, which thread was that?
But we stacked stoppers on cord up in the Gunks to work in the
horizontal cracks and thought nothing of them.
But I'll admit, I do love my C4's!!!!!
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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Jul 31, 2011 - 01:47pm PT
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Interesting that the intro. of 5.11 and 5.12 to the Valley occurred during that period. Every FA that I did in Yosemite was during that era. Euro climbers who came over learned that grabbing gear was not free climbing. It was an exciting time. Climbing changed, and for the better.
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jstan
climber
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Jul 31, 2011 - 03:00pm PT
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Are you saying climbing has gone socialist following the Euros?
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