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Clint Cummins
Trad climber
SF Bay area, CA
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Darwin,
Yes, rec.climbing archives are searchable. Here's a slightly edited
version of your post that focuses on the Porter nuts.
Darwin O.V. Alonso Aug 19 1996, 11:00 pm
Newsgroups: rec.climbing
From: dalo...@u.washington.edu (Darwin O.V. Alonso)
Date: 1996/08/20
Subject: building cams, Yosemite Lore
The talk of making cams reminds me of one rainy fall day
in the Valley (TIOOYK, Yosemite) in about '72. This was
pre-Friends, but after nuts really started taking off in
the Valley. The more mechanically adventuresome climbers
were hunting around for alternatives to the clogy hexes
imported from Britain and the newer Chouinard hexcentrics.
I don't know if Friends were a glimmer in Jardine's eyes
yet, but Charlie Porter, Valley aid guru, was trying out
ideas. On that particular rainy off-day, the Pollock
brothers (Matt and Bruce) and I headed down to Porter's
machine shop in Midpines for a visit.
Somewhat peripherally, I had taken fall quarter off from
College of the Redwoods to be a climbing bum, but now was
agonizing about making this a permanent condition. The
alternative was going on to for degree in chemistry at a
university. Porter adamantly voted for climbing bumdom.
...
Getting back to the story, Porter was onto a new cam! He
had these prototype P1 - P4 nuts. He had dug into the
enginering literature and came up with the rounded cam
shape that Jardine (later?) used. However, Porter didn't
quite get the active camming part. They looked very much
like hexes, but Porter had rounded two of the faces to some
magic curve that would hypothetically give a great
mechanical advantage if they rotated. He milled them
out of solid aluminum stock, and the walls are (I just
measured) 3/8" thick, compared to about 1/8" in
hexcentrics! We were dazzled, though, and bought a couple
of sets. Over the years, I've actually used them a number
of times, although, they never did much more than act as a
passive lumps. Nonetheless, these must be very valuable
collectors items, I still have the set, and if anyone wants
to finance my retirement, please give me a call. You see, I
returned to college and could use the money.
Darwin
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ec
climber
ca
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Interesting OP. Didn't Bridwell 'create' the first beaks out of Crack n' Ups? OP pic looks like its inception. To the contrary, this DID catch on (at least in idea).
 ec
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Captain...or Skully
Big Wall climber
leading the away team, but not in a red shirt!
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Bridwell had all sorts of shizz in his beakrack.
He was showin' it to Tyson & Boulos when they climbed "Tinker Toys".
Crazy stuff. Some of it even worked. His line. not mine. :-)
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Salamanizer
Trad climber
The land of Fruits & Nuts!
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How about these things. I can't imagine they sold alot of these. Every one I've ever seen looks like it's never been placed.
I like the design but I think they would be more useful in much smaller sizes, like black to red Alien small and with a flexible stem. They certainly would have the narrowest head of any cam out there. Much narrower than Aliens or Mastercams.
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Peter Haan
Trad climber
San Francisco, CA
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Nature, Les Wilson and I used crackjacks in 1965 to do the third ascent (aided up the wazoo!) of the right side of the Hourglass. There are photos up on ST on it even showing that. It was a really eccentric ascent. I was a 16-year old kid never before in such a situation and Les was an old mountaineer type who loved to aid. That was the only climb I ever used crackjacks on. I wasn’t really into them back then but would be now.
Darwin, yeah, that was the deck at 46 Del Mar, Berkeley, where I grew up. I even chiseled that chimney making a route on it up on to the roof above my bedroom. And the monterey pine in the backyard had eyebolts right away when I began climbing in 1963. Hilarious, obsessed maniac teen. Quite the chaise longue, huh?!
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froodish
Social climber
Portland, Oregon
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Clint dug up the article, but in case anyone wants to troll the old wreck dot climbing archives (still an valid usenet group, but nothing but spam posted these days), google bought the old dejanews archives and a searchable archive of rec.climbing is here:
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.climbing/topics
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Gym Birdwall
Gym climber
The "Koop"
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Here's one from ST member karabin museum. Found it in his pics. What's up with that, Marty?
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Rooskie Mini-Jugs seemed sweet to me!
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justthemaid
climber
Jim Henson's Basement
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Weird asymmetric tri-nuts? So versatile! I can't imagine why everyone doesn't use these. Where do I get the rest of the set? ;)
I love da small tri-cams but I could never really get inspired to try and place this:
I've climbed with someone who still actively uses those tetons. They are actually good if you have those cracks with "lips". Totally useless anywhere else unless you are in it for the weight training.
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groundup
Trad climber
hard sayin' not knowin'
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Let’s hope these don't catch on...
Bill Forrest made some decent plastic or Teflon nuts in the 80's. One of my partners still has one on his rack and it works great. The shape was the same as his foxhead chocks.
Crunch- did Harvey ever use his rack when you two climbed together? Hehehe, good times!
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Nice belay Teeton on the bottom!
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Disaster Master
Social climber
Born in So-Cal, left my soul in far Nor-Cal.
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Omega Pacific makes them still???????
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jmap
Social climber
NC
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these look like a sort of tri cam cam. fascinating concept.
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LongAgo
Trad climber
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Peter,
Wish I had had those jacks on the right side of Hourglass, as you describe. Left side too. And several other Yosemite cracks I can think of. Probably way better than our tube chocks.
Another long ago protection device, pretty useless: T-Bars. They were T section aluminum stock with slanted tips and a hole drilled through one end. Sorry, no pics. I remember some fellow in Colorado loaned us (Mike Cohen and I) a set to do Crack of Fear, a chimney, off-width thing. I placed them but was not at all sure they would have held.
Tom Higgins
LongAgo
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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These are the original plywood cams that Jorge Urioste made to bolt Ixtlan.
They worked well but me thinks aluminum works better.
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Tom- Something like a Forrest Chimney Chock? A #17 shown here.
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SteveW
Trad climber
The state of confusion
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If I can get through some of my old slides,
I may have a picture or two of Dave Rearick's osage orange (wooden)
chocks. Pretty amazing. . .
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Brian in SLC
Social climber
Salt Lake City, UT
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I dunno, those old Forrest chocks were worth something...
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Batrock
Trad climber
Burbank
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Jmap,
I have a set of those cams. Bivos were poorly made and walked out of cracks faster than you could place them. I think I used them on a handful of climbs but are now hanging on the peg board in the garage.
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