Barbed wire.

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Messages 1 - 9 of total 9 in this topic

mike m

Trad climber

black hills

Topic Author's Original Post - Jul 23, 2012 - 08:04pm PT

Seems like I have been driving around it or jumping over it almost all of my life. Having not traveled much outside of the Western US is barbed wire everywhere? I know people collect it and ranchers are fanatical about it. Others will shoot you for jumping over it. Seems to show up around a lot of climbing areas if not for fencing then probably tatooed around someones arm.Does anyone have any good stories or good climbing uses for the stuff?

tradmanclimbs

Ice climber

Pomfert VT

Jul 23, 2012 - 08:08pm PT

Used to have a bunch of this stuff in the north east when I was a kid. mostly electric. falling out of favor as they mostly use the cloth electric fencing now. Still some on my sisters dairy farm and lots of old rusty stuff out in the woods allong old over grown stone walls.

ElCapPirate

Big Wall climber

California

Jul 23, 2012 - 08:43pm PT

There's a local tower I jump off with a barbed wire fence a few hundred feet from the base. I've jumped it hundreds of times, mostly at night, and only came close to the fence a couple of times. I took a couple of beginners there a few months back and the winds were blowing just hard enough to get close to the only object that could hurt... besides the ground. I kept warning them about the barbed wire.

"Yes, yes, you have told us 10 times already", they said.

Well, guess who hit the wire fence? Left some pretty nice scrapes/cuts on my face, arms and hands.

Haa haa, you can't win 'em all.

Just about every pair of shorts I own are shredded from either barbed wire or worse; razor wire. No matter how careful I am, I seem to get stuck on it.

Cheers!

kennyt

climber

Woodfords,California

Jul 23, 2012 - 08:44pm PT

I can think of one use!

bullfrog

Trad climber

Jul 23, 2012 - 08:54pm PT

Does anyone have any good stories or good climbing uses for the stuff?

Extreme micro-nailing?
Going one further than "red tagging" new routes? (Get off my route brah!)

No, no good climbing uses...

Anastasia

climber

InLOVEwithAris.

Jul 23, 2012 - 09:13pm PT

Fedrick Jackson Turner a great Western Historian always said that in the Hollywood version of the Old West, it was the rip-snorting, gun-toting cowboys who tamed the wild frontier. In reality, it was barbed wire. It ended nomadic movement of both wild animals and natives, took away the ability to free range, etc. Now large parcels of land could be closed in, encased, claimed.

Barb wire is everywhere, seen it in China, Europe, Argentina, etc. It's a pain in the ass!

Some Random Guy

Trad climber

San Francisco

Jul 23, 2012 - 09:31pm PT

well this is a graphic one........

back in the great white north where i grew up a guy on a snowmobile got decapitated whilst driving his sled at high speed across a field. unknown to himself, there was a string of barbed wire just about neck high stretched out perpendicular to his trajectory. ouch