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Jaybro
Social climber
The West
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Blue Girder = CMI I-beam they were available at least up to 18"!
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Rocky5000
Trad climber
Falls CHurch, VA
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I started leading just after Friends came out, and I didn't use them, because I was cheap, of course, and also because my simple monkey-mind trusts simple things more than complicated ones. I used hexes for a long time; I did the classic young, dumb lead up the overhanging parallel crack (Supercrack at Moore's Wall, NC) with mostly hexes, and when I started to belay my second and the rope went taut, most of the hexes fell right out. When Tricams came out I put the hexes in the closet and never touched them again, and Tricams are still the foundation of my rack.
Here's an excerpt from an old TR - May '94, Seneca Rocks, WV, that seems to fit this thread. It was and still is annoyingly crowded, but I still feel my own little adventure when I go there. Adventure is in our heads, after all - a personal thing. And in any case if I want solitude in climbing around here, in the swarming East, I just walk a few minutes farther into the bushes, off the trail.
...so I woke Gary from his nap and up the slope we trudged, to stare at the legions of the damned swarming around Westpole and environs. Finally I decided on Tomato, 5.8*, a two-pitch circus that became the comic masterpiece of the weekend. Esconced in the shade of a tiny tree, Gary rested, drank water and watched the shenanigans of a couple over on Pleasant Overhangs; the female, following the last pitch, was cursing a blue streak in French, hanging on the rope, sounding quite adorable.
The first pitch is a short, dramatic, overhanging flake, easy and well protected, looking a lot harder than it is. The last half, after the overhang, is easy but protected only by a sling loosely laid over a mild horn, after which one must chimney up a last move to the top of the flake, which looks at this point as if one could sit on the main cliff's edge and topple the whole thing with a good push with both legs. Gary followed with little difficulty, and I started up the second pitch, about 70 feet, with confidence, as it looked easy, with good jam cracks and plenty of features to work with. I noticed a helmeted girl above us at the Gunsight, waiting to follow the spectacular 5.3; there was some kind of procedural jam on the summit, and she had been waiting a good while, tied in. Tomato ends at a point about twenty feet up from the Gunsight, on the trade route; I figured she'd have climbed through by the time I got there, since I'm not the world's fastest leader by a fair margin.
About forty feet up it started getting steeper, sparser, more interesting, etc. I was depleting the fuel reserves hanging on the arms while putting in the pro, and I knew I was running a bit low when I got to the last crux. I came to a large flake on the main wall, forming a huge bucket with the crack down behind it, but the stance was overhanging, and footholds very scarce. My only decent option for pro was to stuff tricams blind down the crack, reaching high over my head and tugging to set them. I got a good #2, but I couldn't be sure just how good it was, not being able to see it, not having time and strength left to pull up and peer down in at it; so, foolishly, I tried and succeeded in setting a #5 farther out left, near the end of the flake, where, it occurred to me, greater leverage would have greater chance of snapping off the whole flake and dropping me ten more feet onto a medium-sized wire. Actual risk of such a break is quite low here, though; the rock is so very strong. Anyway, many modern rock climbers think nothing of these risks, nor mind such a fall one bit; in their clear-headed assessment, they might even deliberately fall, so as to avoid any dangerous awkwardness such as catching one's foot in a sling. I am still mired in a past century, saddled with the subconscious dictum: the leader must not fall! Or, to simplify still further: climbing: good! Falling: bad! I still allow my primitive fear free rein as a spur to a higher level of frenzy, but not to the extent of paralyzing my will, of course.
So all the while, as I put in the tricams, the girl at the belay, bored and nervous and stuck there, was talking to me, trying to get me to stop or retreat so as not to clog up her path to the summit. My mouth was now so dry I could barely speak at all, and nothing I said would convince her that it was not a problem. Distracted, I tugged on the #5 at an angle, thinking it might pull that way if I fell, and it popped out like a champagne cork and slugged me like brass knuckles just over the left eye. I put it back in and fiddled with it until it seemed well set, wiping the seeping blood away at intervals so that it wouldn't run into my eye. I started laughing, thinking that if it was a boxing match, the referee would have to stop it; but I knew I'd finish it out, then, especially since I saw that I could avoid the last few feet of thin crack by escaping left, with my feet on the famous flake.
At the belay, with an old piton and several good pieces, I couldn't convince the girl, now that her leader had called down to her to begin, that she could easily climb past me on the inside, the outside or any way she pleased. My tongue felt like an old sponge that's been forgotten under the kitchen sink for three years, and I felt like telling her she could climb up my ass and down my dick, but instead I was patient and kind, in between trying to get Gary to follow and trying to figure how to clean the pitch if he didn't without rapping on the one ancient piton. Finally I took apart my belay, went inside her rope and scrambled up the route 25 feet to a huge ledge, and she began climbing, and got past me at last. I downclimbed to the belay, wasted lots of time going over the to Gunsight and back with some cockeyed scheme in my head, and finally rapped on my anchors and the piton, cleaned the pitch, pulled the rope, walked back to the Gunsight on ledges to the north, soloed to the anchor to recover the pro, downclimbed to the Gunsight, walked back down to Gary, rapped to the packs, and fell into a dream, as the song goes; gradually getting more tired and dreamy as we packed up and drifted downhill in the golden afternoon light. A long sentence, but it was a long day; at the bridge we turned, as per irresistible tradition, to look at the salmon-colored cliffs. At the parking lot we were surprised that the time was past eight o'clock; I told the story of my bloody forehead to a fellow climber, who understood. This was pleasure, as I knew I'd have to tell some sort of story to a lot of people who really wouldn't understand just how it was, driving down Distraction Boulevard at a hundred miles an hour, at that overhung stance, in the powerful gold wash of the afternoon. How, in the end, the blood is nothing; the pain, the fear, the fatigue - they're nothing, inconsequential, weighed against the beauty, the burning beauty of the idea in the rock, as you wrestle it out and make it your own, a heavy vein of gold in the precious geology of existence. Overblown? Pompous twaddle, you say? Possibly so, seen from outside; but I was inside, experiencing my life immediately and directly. I have a small scar over my left eye, and memories more indelible than that.
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Classic tale of old school terror at Seneca. You would certainly agree then that it takes nut to use em!
Jaybro got any I-beams for show and tell or have they all ended being used for furniture repair? I sold my giant Forrest Titon long ago speaking of weapons.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Shipped my I-Beams and a set of drilled hexs off ebay to Stephane's Nut Museum this past year. The I-Beams never did much for me. In fact, I can't say I liked a single piece of pro that came out of CMI to be honest, but for a bit there the I-Beams were better than nothing - sort of.
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Aw now, don't be too hard on CMI. They are dear to my heart for their pitons oddly enough! They used a stiffer steel than Chouinard and bent the opposite side of their blades so that you can keep the eye down on expanding features that face either direction. The several sizes of Cracktacks are indispensable for RURP sized placements too! I never saw a CMI catalog with all of their meticulously labeled pitons. Anybody got one? Their nut designs didn't thrill me either, so I never carried any of them.
If anybody ever runs into a rack of CMI pitons with "CC" stamped on them, please contact Charles Cole at Five-ten or me. His whole rack was stolen from the base of the NW Face of Half Dome while he was preparing to do The Queen Of Spades and a little payback is long overdue!
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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steve,
this love of pitons from the man who blamed ammon of placing one on a route? is something strange here?
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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I like most everything else CMI makes - just not their attempts at pro. The pulleys and Figure 8's and about everything else is fine...
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Hawkeye, I love a well designed piton right well and even enjoy placing them when it proves necessary. What I don't care for is scarring and crack degradation caused by excessive hammering where more challenging and sustainable options have been shown to exist. I once owned more than 200 pins and justified the accumulation by desiring to solo a first ascent on El Cap someday. I have the fistful of RURPS, the fan of knifeblades and all the other ironmongery to conquer whatever fantasy horrorshow crack that my fears can conjure up! The great irony is that I carried the pile of comforting little steel wedgies all the way up the Turning Point and ended up needing a rack of less than two dozen. The take home message for me; pin racks are a study in obsessive psychological cushioning and reassurance.
Most of my ascents on El Cap have been new routes. When you encounter cracks in their natural state, there are lots of possibilities that rapidly disappear once hammered force enters the picture. The difference between a beautiful RP placement that will challenge and delight every passerby for decades and another fixed trash c-head can so easily be one single lazy decision. I pound pins and place bolts but only as a last resort having exhausted the other options first. Still think that there's something fishy???????
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Jello
Social climber
No Ut
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Topic Author's Reply - Jan 3, 2007 - 01:05am PT
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Great story, Rocky!
Paul Sibley and Bill Roos produced a whole series of I-beam nuts in Eldo in the early 70's. They had a very good taper and worked better than hexes in many placements. I used 'em a lot in offwidths back then. Below is a picture of a never-reported climb that John Ruger and I did in 1974, the same year as Earl and Ed did Supercrack. This climb is called Sunglow Crack. It's 150', first half up to the little roof is entirely offwidth. Above that it's hands and fists and a little more offwidth. The offwidth was protected (sparsely) with those old I-beam nuts. The climb is 10+ or so. The area is near Bicknell, Utah. We did half-a-dozen cracks there, in the 10/11 range, often using the I-beams for protection.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Jeff, that was burly then and it would be interesting to see how many folks would head up it today with the same pro. I used my IBeams, but they were definitely not the sort of pro you wanted to accidentally bump in any way.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Jello:
Paul Sibley and Bill Roos produced a whole series of I-beam nuts in Eldo in the early 70's. They had a very good taper and worked better than hexes in many placements. I used 'em a lot in offwidths back then.
Great to see these remembered. I had a set too, and climbed with them frequently until hexentrics came out. The smallest I-beam, about 1.75", looked unlikely but seemed to get the most use.
Shortly after their invention, Bill and I were belaying as Paul led the Turf Spreader. He placed a 3" I-beam and yelled down that it looked good. "Damn, they do work!" Bill called back.
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Jaybro
Social climber
The West
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Sad to say, it appears I no longr own any I-beams, I wonder what the break and enterers did with those?
We used to use them all the time in Vedauwoo and Devil's Tower in the seventies.
I had a little one that was on a swaged wire.
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wbw
climber
'cross the great divide
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Hawkeye,
I don't believe Steve's admiration of CMI pins in any way contradicts the points he has made previously. Without getting back into past debates, I only want to say that his words have been backed by action for many, many years. And not only on
wall routes. Go check out any Grossman route in southern Arizona, and you will conclude, without question, that his approach to climbing is extremely pure, and minimalist in the use of gear.
I know Steve doesn't need me to defend his viewpoints. Maybe I wanted to express my admiration for his approach to climbing back in the Ammon thread, and never got around to it.
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Toker Villain
Big Wall climber
Toquerville, Utah
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Just as long as this doesn't turn into Steve's House of Balls.
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Jello
Social climber
No Ut
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Topic Author's Reply - Jan 3, 2007 - 06:18pm PT
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Yeh, Healjye, you did have to step carefully past those suckers in wide cracks. Good practice for big Tri-cams a decade later, though! Actually, it was often possible to sort of cam those I-beams and set them with a jerk on the sling, so they were a bit more stable.
Protection used to be a more subtle art...
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Well, Granny did open that little afterhours place, The Mirrored Balls Lounge, right next to The House Of Smoke. Come to think of it, that must have been the snake charm that worked so very well in chasing the sidewinders out of town a while back!
WBW, thanks for the support! A little clarity goes a long way in my book. Sounds like you've sampled some of my AZ efforts! Any favorites or tales? As my partners will attest, I carried the full rack up most of my routes and there usually is adequate protection if you are skilled and determined enough to hang in there and arrange it before moving on by. Tucson can be a very challenging area to visit and climb if you aren't solid in your protection abilities. But then there's always the bolt routes..........
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bob d'antonio
Trad climber
Taos, NM
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Jeff wrote: Protection used to be a more subtle art...
I used a car jack in a pothole on a new route in the Garden of the Gods. How is that for subtle??
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Ammon
Big Wall climber
El Cap
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Hey, check it out!! I’m finally learning how to “sack up”. LOL
I was actually thinking about SG when I took this pic up on the Zodiac a few months ago. It was SOO tempting to just clip the fixed piton (what’s it doing there, anyway?)…. But, I could hear this looming voice “Sack UP…. Sack UP…".
I was laughing wildly about it for hours, afterward. Sean and Timmy must have thought I lost the plot and had gone insane.
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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They would have been right and that has been my point from the outset.....
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WBraun
climber
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I would have clipped the pin when I heard it call my name, as I was flying up the line to try and cheat the latest time. But that little nut on my rack was screaming for equal time, while I told it has no balls and it will lose all our time.
That little nut just wouldn't shut up, so I placed him and left him behind.
It'll never be the same again. We've gone on to new balls.
R.I.P. rurps, pitons and bongs. You were a wonderful song ...........
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