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Fritz
Trad climber
Hagerman, ID
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Topic Author's Original Post - Jan 28, 2009 - 11:00pm PT
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I enclose photos from Oct. 1972 of what looks like a
drilled #7 or maybe #8 hex. Since I respect the opinions of
those posting here, and I also referred to my 1972
Chouinard catalog: this seems close to impossible.
I would love for one of the regulars (or an irregular
for that matter) to tell us what brand chock this
photo is of----sure looks like a Chouinard hex.
The photo (I have the original slide, dated Oct 1972)
was taken in the Bugaboo Lodge parking lot. I enclose
the scan of original slide and a close-up of the mystery chock
that I cropped and blew-up. I suppose it is possible
that we drilled a Chouinard Hex. However, I was the
only one there with access to a drill-press and I’m too
lazy to have ever drilled a #10 Hex that I still have from
that era.
Great first trip to the Bugs. We had the brand new
A-Frame hut all to ourselves. The weather sucked,
there was lots of fresh snow, and all we managed to
climb was Crescent Tower. After four days some
Canadians showed up and informed us that the dreaded
Grizzly of Bugaboo Lodge had broken into our locked
car-top carrier and spread the uneaten contents
around the parking lot. After they shared the bear’s
rather impressive history of local camp and car raids;
we got to walk out in a snowstorm/rainstorm the next
afternoon. Of course we had fresh Grizzly tracks,
steaming bear feces, and finally impressive thumping
noises in the surrounding forest.
On our way to Crescent below Bugaboo and Snowpatch. Peak to right is Eastpost??
The Snowpatch on Snowpatch Spire shedding some excess, photo from Bugaboo-Crescent ridgeline.
We escaped intact----except for the car-top carrier.
Fritz
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RDB
Trad climber
Iss WA
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Jan 28, 2009 - 11:11pm PT
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hey Ray,
Saw your post in the other thread. Thought someone might take the time to get you an answer. Couple of thoughts.
If you look at how the rope goes through the hex it obviously isn't a Chouinard, ie no rope out the top. Also looks like the rope sling is whipped to give you a lttle more extention.
I seem to remember a hex with a pin to loop the rope through, similar to the attachment point of stoppers on the left. (same company?) But it is almost exactly the right size to fit in with Chouinards. Just clearly not a Chouinard hex. The other thought is the "drilled" hex idea came from some where. Looks pretty obvious from where :)
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Larry
Trad climber
Bisbee
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Jan 28, 2009 - 11:13pm PT
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It's from Europe. An Eiger make, I think. That was the first nut I ever bought, along with some soft iron pitons.
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Jan 28, 2009 - 11:41pm PT
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Looks like a home made hexagonal stock nut. Too big and thin wall for an Eiger. Too big for a Colorado Nut. The Wedges are early SMC's, this might be too since they did use the hexagonal section stock.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Jan 28, 2009 - 11:46pm PT
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Here's a guess: a drilled Colorado Nut company hex? I don't know if they sold any, but
Bill and Paul made a few, around 1971. And that looks like one of their I-beams at far
right in your first photo, too.
I see a couple of vintage blue Foxheads, as well!
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Fritz
Trad climber
Hagerman, ID
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Topic Author's Reply - Jan 28, 2009 - 11:59pm PT
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Chiloe: You have points for best clues so far. I have no idea where original nut is at----maybe still with Harry in Olympia (haven't climbed with him since 74). You are right about the I beam type nut on top right (another one that must have belonged to Harry), plus some Forest blue nylon nuts at top center and the odd stopper just to left of the drilled hex. I think the nut to the right of the drilled hex is a Chouinard #8 stopper that I still have.
We were too lazy and uninventive to have any gear that we didn't buy, borrow, or shoplift-----so some company made that hex.
thanks, Fritz
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SteveW
Trad climber
The state of confusion
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Jan 29, 2009 - 09:06am PT
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Look at that collection of the old Chouinard Salewa screws!
Woo hoo!
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Jan 29, 2009 - 10:44am PT
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Chiloe: You have points for best clues so far.
Here's a couple more reasons I think that hex is from Colorado NutCo:
1) Looks like the size and shape of their largest hex, a #6;
2) It's shiny. After their first production runs the NutCo boys got hold of a rock tumbler,
I think it was, and began polishing their hexes and I-beams to a very shiny finish -- another
way to distinguish them from Clog. Sometime after that, Roos experimented with drilled
lightening holes.
These refinements all took place in a short window, around 1970-71, before the
fancier design of hexentrics took over the market.
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survival
Big Wall climber
A Token of My Extreme
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Jan 29, 2009 - 10:51am PT
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It looks like a Euro hex that Keith and I pulled off of the Direct on Half Dome in 77......Dunno.
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local
Social climber
esprings
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Jan 29, 2009 - 11:14am PT
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You may be in the Twilight Zone, but the nuts appear to be grounded in reality. The hex with double holes and the cord threaded through the middle looks like a Colorado Nut, particularly the polished finish. It's hard to tell the size, but we didn't manufacture anything over 1 1/2". It's possible we made a few larger hexes - we commonly fooled around with any size extrusion we could find. We drilled a variety of hole patterns in the larger hexes. I suspect that the owner threaded the cord through the center to reduce the overall bulk of nut/cord combination. The nut was intended to be threaded in the traditional manner, however, primarily because the interior holes were not countersunk like the outside holes were. A cord threaded over the sharp edges inside could result in a nasty surprise under a heavy load. It doesn't take much to damage a cord like that.
The I-beam looks like a Colorado Nut.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Jan 29, 2009 - 12:54pm PT
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Local is the definitive source on things NutCo.
Overall, what with the blue Foxheads and I-Beam, that gear in the first photo looks
more Colorado than Euro. Even those funky MOAC-sized wedges left of the hex in the
second close-up photo -- which had a bar between two prongs on the base where you
threaded the sling, instead of the usual drilled holes -- were on the shelves at Holubar
and probably Culp's store in Boulder ca. 1971.
Maybe Local remembers who was whipping the cord for more stiffness in those days.
I know I've seen that, but I can't recall who.
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ec
climber
ca
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Jan 29, 2009 - 01:11pm PT
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'not impossible...remember people drilled them out on their own. By 1974-5 the GPIW offered actual paper drilling templates through their dealers for patrons to copy and use, since some were already lightening their load. I did too. The largest Hexes weighed considerably less, however I was sad to see much of my hard-earned investment in shavings on the floor of my garage...BTW the one in the photo is knott a Chounard product.
 ec
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local
Social climber
esprings
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Jan 29, 2009 - 02:43pm PT
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I've never seen that whipping technique before
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Fritz
Trad climber
Hagerman, ID
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Topic Author's Reply - Jan 31, 2009 - 11:43am PT
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Local: Thanks for your information. We did not have a Colorado Nut Co. connection and were hanging out in Idaho & Washington-----but gear shops were far more willing to carry stuff from tiny companies back then. Interesting to know how far the little guys were ahead of Chouinard.
I do remember working real hard to put perlon through just the bottom holes in my first large hexes and then learning that was bad physics.
Here's another blowup of the 1972 rack showing the Forest blue plastic (nylon?) nuts. I thought they were cool, until I was making an aid move on one in 1973 and it popped when I put my full weight on it. One side of the nut had been resting on a feldspar crystal and it actually ripped a furrow through the plastic and then the nut popped. I took a nice clean 10 ft. fall and missed hitting a ledge by about 2" (bounced back up and landed sitting on the ledge:)
The classic East Ridge of Bugaboo Spire in Oct. 1972 from near the top of Crescent Tower. Note the slab avalanche fracture line towards the bottom of the photo. Conditions were not climber friendly.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Jan 31, 2009 - 11:45am PT
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nice!
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Fritz
Trad climber
Hagerman, ID
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Topic Author's Reply - Jan 31, 2009 - 11:58am PT
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Tarbuster: Thanks for the complement!
Your photos and prose have been great fun to look at and read.
The Christmas Card photo below is an inspiration----can't wait to find the right sand-dune with the right background to do a similar shot---only with an empty wine bottle.
Tarbuster Christmas photo.
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local
Social climber
esprings
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Jan 31, 2009 - 11:16pm PT
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We started Colorado Nut sometime in 68, I think. We were both working in retail stores then - Holubar and Gerry's - and as far as we knew, we were the first in the US to manufacture climbing nuts. The Brits were clearly the first, with MOACs and some hexes. We basically copied the hexes, and made a continuous range from 1/4" to 1 1/2, and three sizes of I-beams, both for cord and cables. Forrest came along pretty quick thereafter, with a much more extensive line of gear.
Our first shop was in a tiny little room - maybe 6' x 10'- in the basement of 819 Lafayette in Denver. At first, we were cutting hex stock on a small horizontal band saw and drilling on a bench drill press. We busted a hole through the brick wall into the boiler room, so we could run a full 10' bar through the saw.
We eventually moved the shop to Eldorado, in late 1970 I think, and bought a proper cut-off saw, which really speeded things up. We had Triton Machine Shop in Boulder make up some countersink drill bits, which made for nice smooth hole. We also started tumbling the nuts, getting a nice bright finish.
We eventually got evicted from the Eldorado shop, and built a new shop in Marshall at Paul's new spread. By then, we had pretty much given up on Colorado Nut. Running the machines was pretty serious work - slicing through 3" aluminum I-beams with a 14" carbide tipped blade. Paul and I had blown up a couple of blades, imbedding carbide teeth in the ceiling and walls. Scary.
We had hired Jimmy Dunn and Ray Jardine for a while. (I still have a 6" I-beam that Ray made up for some hideous crack climb he had in mind - those were pre-Friends days)
The combination of not wanting to spend 8 hours a day on the chop saw and drill press, or hiring someone else to do the work led us to give it up. We had twenty or so accounts at that time, and they were amazed that we just let the company go.
GPIW had just come out with the first hexcentrics, which were a superior design to regular hexes, and although we felt we could have competed with new designs, it would have been a considerable investment to buy extrusion dies and really get into it.
Hey, we had girlfriends with trust funds, so we really didn't need to work all that hard!
If Tar can send me instructions for posting photos again, I'll post some pictures of those crude and rude nuts.....
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Now there's a little history!
Typical work with Sibley too: danger involved.
Thanks for the write-up...
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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So it's finally written history, the story of Colorado Nut Company! Glad to see that. I hope
Local will go on to write down some of the many other stories he has from those days.
We eventually moved the shop to Eldorado, in late 1970 I think
In late 1970, I think, out in Eldo -- Paul Sibley:
And Bill Roos:
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richross
Trad climber
gunks,ny
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Here is a 1/2 Colorado Nut hex.
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