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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Topic Author's Reply - May 20, 2007 - 11:32pm PT
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You can call it anything but RELIABLE that's for sure!
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 18, 2008 - 12:15pm PT
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Keep your heels down going over that bump!
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SteveW
Trad climber
The state of confusion
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Dec 18, 2008 - 01:10pm PT
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Steve
You're amazing. Though I wasn't climbing until a few
years later ('72), I have a pair of those crampons, in addition
to the salewa type, and used to have a few of the screws, including warthogs. I donated them to a play, K2 at the CMC a few years ago and never saw them again. . .
Keep up the history!!!
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TwistedCrank
climber
Ideeho-dee-do-dah-day
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Dec 18, 2008 - 01:14pm PT
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Those Annapurna glasses were the shiznit!
I had a pair of those. It was so bitchen bopping around on glaciers looking like a bug.
About that french technique - did anybody ever really use it? Pff...
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philo
Trad climber
boulder, co.
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Dec 18, 2008 - 01:18pm PT
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The Chouinard cramp was a thing of beauty, a work of art. As were the droop picked bamboo shafted ice axes he produced.
Yeah TwistedCrank I have seen Jim Nigro French +70% ice without getting his tongue stuck. Won't work in double boots.
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SteveW
Trad climber
The state of confusion
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Dec 18, 2008 - 02:15pm PT
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Philo
Jim and I started climbing together back in the east,
waaaaaaayyyyyy back!!!!
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TrundleBum
Trad climber
Las Vegas
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Dec 18, 2008 - 04:19pm PT
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Cool thread ;)
That Chouinard article was huge !
Speaking of French Technique:
Ok so I have not even seen a climable ice flow in over 20 years. So I see all this new fangled gear that looks like it rox on steep/vert ice. Tools with no leashes, crampons with heel hooks etc.
So getting back into climbing now I have had a conversations with active ice climbers. When I ask "do you know all the terms for the various foot work techniques in French style?" they look at me funny and say something like "Who uses any French technique these days?".
I figure either:
1. they do not ever climb things less than vert, never do/ encounter any long 70 degree ice.
2. They look like these contemporary pictures I have seen of people climbing 60 degree hard snow ice, front pointing with double, short tools...
To which I look and say I don't get that ?
Then I ask "but on a long less than verticle section, don't you get tired for no reason, like your calves and shoulders from swinging that extra tool? I usually get responces with rationale that I don't think makes sense, but 'what'ahey' I don't go ice climbing since all these new tools, so I'll take their word for it.
It just seems to me the influence of the new tools and the hype to climb more spectacular climbs has left a lot of todays newer ice climbers ignorant of the whole revo/evolution that was the combining of what was known as German or front point and the French or flat foot techniques. Then of course our hero YC tops off the revolution with his advancements in tools and then protection.
in the near future, with all this mixed climbing using bolted pro, will we start to refer to 'sport ice' and 'Trad ice' ?
I am drying out gear from being out in the Mojave the past couple days.
It was awesome, perhaps a 50 year snow storm. (I hope I got a few good pics)
Trooping around in the big boulders covered in snow got me thinking a lot about ice BITD.
I am gunna dig out my old set of crampons and post a pic.
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TwistedCrank
climber
Ideeho-dee-do-dah-day
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Dec 18, 2008 - 05:00pm PT
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That's real funny. Yeah the heel hookers and -- what's the wierd thing they do when they hang their leg on their arm while upside down and 3 feet away from a bolt -- well those guys, they couldn't climb 70 degree ice fer nothing.
As for the so-called french technique well, I've always hated the french so I generally refused to call those techniques frog names like Pinot Noir Neve and Chateau Blanc Boofoo. They were just efficient ways to cover lots of vert in the hills.
I guess Yvon had some french blood - well, french canuck at least - so I guess he musta felt obliged to call it something. I don't think Fred Beckey ever gave much thought to what it was called.
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 18, 2008 - 06:36pm PT
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Classic ice axe ad from March 1973 Mountain 26.
Another from Mountain 24.
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Larry
Trad climber
Bisbee
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Dec 18, 2008 - 08:53pm PT
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Also speaking of "French" technique...
I was retreating from the Run Don't Walk Couloir in the early '80s with Scarpelli. I faced out, flat-footed, using YC's techniques. I got outta there 1/2 hour before Bob did.
He was facing in, front pointing. How can you swing an axe that way, when you're down climbing? Five minutes after he exited the gully, the sun hit it, and major sh#t started falling. Nearly cost him big time.
Larry
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Fritz
Trad climber
Hagerman, ID
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Dec 21, 2008 - 04:12pm PT
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Got bored last week and dug a pile of my 70's climbing gear out of my garage. In going through it and matching up stuff to my old Chouinard catalogs I've established a pretty good timeline.
One item I can't find in my 72, 78, 83 Chouinard catalogs is his U.S. made WartHog ice piton. It is marked Chouinard-USA on one side and Wart Hog on the other and replaced the Salewa Warthog in his line-up.
I bought 4 of them between 1978 and 1983---but I'm uncertain when. I retired from ice-climbing in 1983 when it dawned on me that I had used up an incredible amount of luck in the previous 12 years. Still climbing---just not that slippery cold stuff.
Can anyone provide more history or a time-line on this item? thanks, Fritz
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Doug Robinson
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
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Dec 21, 2008 - 05:03pm PT
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Somehow I've always thought the ice pin in YC's hand on that catalog cover was not a warthog but a way old-school one that looks basically like a very long vertical blade pin. Somebody gave me one recently; when I'm posting again, I'll show it off.
My fuzzy recollection is that Warthogs didn't come along until later, like early 70s. YC liked em enough to make his own; I always wanted a bomber Salewa screw.
I'm still climbing with my 70 cm bamboo Piolet. What a beautiful tool! Ultimately esthetic hand forging, fine balance, and over the years grain rises in the bamboo to improve grip. All the wood-handled axes (and ice hammers) dampened vibration nicely, helping the pick to stick in brittle ice. But when Yvon started comparing the bamboo handle to a fine fly rod, I thought he had gone round the bend.
That Salewa "coathanger" ice screw was way sketchy. On the water ice FA of the V-Notch with Yvon, he placed one for his only pro halfway up a pitch. Coming up behind, I pulled the shank end right out. It had snapped off at the top of the corkscrew. That was the end of that for me. Except for pulling wine corks.
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F10
Trad climber
e350
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Dec 21, 2008 - 08:20pm PT
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DR,
You're not the only one still using a 70 cm bambooo Piolet,
I just love the feel of it
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 21, 2008 - 10:07pm PT
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Wasn't long before he too was selling a "dayglow metal monster!" LOL
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Doug Robinson
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
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Dec 22, 2008 - 02:36am PT
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Steve, let's not be hasty here. He never sold a dripping-in-orange, clang-a-bang monster like the MSR "negative hooking-angle" implement that was all designed wrong-way-around to arrest a fall rather than positively holding to prevent falling in the first place. Nope, not the Chouinard style.
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apogee
climber
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Dec 22, 2008 - 02:56am PT
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"About that french technique - did anybody ever really use it?"
Yep, as an aspiring alpinist oh-so-long-ago, I studied 'On Ice' word by word, and practiced all those frenchy names assiduously. I came to realize that there was much truth in YC's rock vs. snow/ice descriptions of body positions, and still think about them when I scramble through the mountains.
Learning those techniques never resulted in me becoming another Twight or Gadd, but it sure was a formative experience...
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 22, 2008 - 10:19pm PT
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Time for the Ice Screw Parade.
Starting with the scrawny Marwa!
The thinest will take a cork out and are too delicate to believe. Falling on one.......even aiding on one, yow!
Classic late sixties screws and drive-ins. Charlet-Mosers on the bottom. Salewa tube up top and frst generation Chouinard-Salewa Warthog drive-in.
Darker second generation Salewa Warthog on botttom with two Camp screws below early Salewa tube.
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Doug Robinson
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
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Dec 22, 2008 - 10:40pm PT
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Nice collection Steve.
After my experience with the snapped-off Charlet-Moser ice screw, I went into the Ski Hut in Berkeley and bought out their stock of a dozen of those Marwas -- just to be sure no one accidentally used them for pro.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Dec 23, 2008 - 12:19pm PT
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Marwa screw: I broke mine off absent-mindedly screwing it into a picknick table.
Didn't even get to try it in the wine bottle...
That last Warthog is art.
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 27, 2008 - 03:06pm PT
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I have been waiting patiently for a Warthog to end up as a dagger in some low budget sci-fi horror flick.
Doug- those delicate imported screws never had a chance considering the way we often used to put them in, using the ice axe or alpine hammer like a brace and bit. Rock out and snap!
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