Offwidth crack machine

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Jaybro

Social climber

Wolf City, Wyoming

Jul 9, 2009 - 11:46pm PT

His supertaco name is dogtown, you can contact him through that.
He looks like one of these people,

Eric Beck

Sport climber

Bishop, California

Jan 23, 2010 - 12:44pm PT

At the Lawrence Berkeley Lab above the campus, there was a collection of very large concrete blocks. These were used for shielding the radiation of various experiments. Sacherer was interested in the possibility of configuring these into cracks of any width and configuration, i.e. straight in, or corner or flare.

Ed Hartouni

Trad climber

Livermore, CA

Jan 23, 2010 - 12:48pm PT

We used to climb on the shielding blocks at the Alternating Gradient Synchrotron (AGS) at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) on Long Island in the dead of winter... at one point a sign went up on the blocks next to our scuff marks:

"Radiation Area
DO NOT LINGER!
radiation levels 120 mrem/hr
when beam is on"

We didn't really mind...

storer

Trad climber

Golden, Colorado

Jan 24, 2010 - 11:54pm PT

Ed, I too was at the AGS ('70-'72'). Our Stony Brook/Wisconsin group had an extracted antiproton beam. We used many of the big blocks and lots of lead bricks even some of DU. I remember also climbing offwidths made between the blocks even some that were flared.

One night around 2 am, alone in the huge hall, I was moving blocks around using the bridge crane. Anyone in the hall (I thought I was alone) could hear and see the crane moving. Of course, I was totally unauthorized to do such work which could only be done by safety-trained union millwrights.

I feel a tap on my shoulder from someone behind. "I'm going to file a grievance on you with the union", the interloper barked. Being a lowly grad student I shot back, "you were supposed to be doing this tonight", and kept stacking them. Our experiment was ready to accept beam as scheduled.

PellucidWombat

Mountain climber

Berkeley, CA

Oct 5, 2011 - 04:36am PT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NR-UdCK_UCM&feature=related

Aha! Here is the Berkeley crack machine in action! Nice video, Ed. :-)

Ed Hartouni

Trad climber

Livermore, CA

Oct 5, 2011 - 11:31am PT

here's Gary's crack:
http://www.vimeo.com/2677859

I have to do one with Scuffy's

nutjob

Gym climber

Berkeley, CA

Oct 5, 2011 - 12:06pm PT

Thanks for the memory lane posts!

Jaybro, you mentioned the super-shallow wide stuff... I tried shuffling up an I-beam at PGSF near the two main wide climbs. That sounded similar to the setup you mentioned.

spyork

Social climber

A prison of my own creation

Oct 5, 2011 - 01:35pm PT

Cool stuff Ed!

Steve

HighTraverse

Trad climber

Bay Area

Oct 5, 2011 - 01:51pm PT

Those videos are just SOOOO Wrong!

PellucidWombat

Mountain climber

Berkeley, CA

Oct 5, 2011 - 02:21pm PT

Any chance of a revival of the wide sessions in Berkeley? :-D

Also, does anyone have a suggested rating for the OW on Evans Hall? It's a nice one.

scuffy b

climber

dissected alluvial deposits, late Pleistocene

Oct 5, 2011 - 04:24pm PT

Shallow, near the west doors, walk off a higher level?
I used to do those a bunch around 1980 but no numbers.
I recall Not Too Bad as a tentative rating.