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rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
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Isn't it kind of silly to talk about one being better than another? If a vertical crack tapers, then a nut will be better than a cam. If a horizontal crack keyholes, same conclusion. On the other hand, parallel-sided cracks need cams most of the time. From a modern perspective, they are complementary. The revolution is that cams opened up all those parallel-sided features as protection sites; those protection opportunities were unavailable in the all-nut days.
Placing both types of gear takes skill, but the skills are different. Part of those skills involves vision; seeing the placements. As an old-timer raised in the all-nut environment, I constantly see nut placements my cam-plugging younger partners have missed, placements that I frequently judge to be superior to the cams they are using.
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john hansen
climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 1, 2011 - 02:22am PT
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A very interesting thread, thanks for all the response's.
I never fell on lead. It seems that was how we did it,, never really led past 5.9.
Some of the pieces I used were actual nuts from my Dads shop with 5mm kevlar rope through them. I did not even drill out the threads, I wonder what would have happened if you ever fell on that stuff.
Grew up spending much time in the woods and spent summers working at my Uncles Dairy Farm up in Oregon. When you work all day you learn to realize what will truly work, and what is dangerous or inefficient.
I remember at 16 years old a big breakfast at 5:30 AM followed by a day bucking hay bails and loading them in the barn till about 8:30 at night, jumping in the river to wash all the hay dust off , and, around 10 PM having a big dinner with desert of homemade ice cream and fresh picked rasberries.
Then getting up and doing it again the next day. The day's are long during an Oregon summer's.
The next week we would help the neighbors with their hay fields..
You learn to work with what you have..
We got to get Roskelly on this thread...
Great story's everyone.
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jstan
climber
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John:
Same experience here. TED, rake, and bale in the morning. For lunch we had proteins, some vegetables but oh my god. Three kinds of berry pie all with vanilla ice cream. We ran on sugar. We would walk out from lunch unable to stand up because we had too much in our stomachs. But by the time we got to the field we had to be ready to hump bales weighing somewhat less than us, onto a moving wagon, all afternoon.
Was that not the best life anyone could imagine?
It was from the same field I watched fleets of B-17's on their way to Great Britain. If I could choose, I sometimes think that is where I would like to finish.
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john hansen
climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 1, 2011 - 03:04am PT
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It was a great way to grow up as a teenager. I started framing houses and doing concrete work for my Dad when I was 17.Some how we always seemed to have the energy to climb every weekend,
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mongrel
Trad climber
Truckee, CA
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John Hansen nails it (so to speak): as I recall it, there weren't nearly so many falls taken BITD. It's true that either a nut or cam can be crummy, but in the case of a nut, it's usually very obvious that your pro is bogus and you are highly motivated not to fall on it. And sometimes you are alerted by that subtle sound of a piece rattling gently down the rope. Cams rarely just fall out and rattle down the rope until you fall on a poorly placed one.
Can't help but comment on what struck me the most about Ed H's photo of Drunkard's: all the new vegetation! This is great. I don't know whether it's because it doesn't get done so much (seems highly unlikely to me) or that people are a bit nicer about not ripping out the plants. But it's good.
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Spider Savage
Mountain climber
SoCal
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A manly man leads Double Cross (JT) with nuts only!
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Studly
Trad climber
WA
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well don't blame it on your mirror Rockjox, it reflects only the truth...
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rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
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Ed's photos do make a point: almost everyone carries more gear nowadays. Protection points are closer together than they used to be, sure, but another reason is that ropes have gotten longer and pitches are being run together. I'd also say, on the other hand, that the woman in his shot is pretty overloaded for the Gunks; I see doubles in pieces I don't think many people double up on or even carry at all.
Another thing in the old picture you hardy see any more is a climber carrying shoes to walk off in. The modern Gunks climber almost never walks off. A lot of time they don't even make it to the top of the cliff. Everyone rappels, giving rise to the slinging of hundreds of trees and bushes, Preserve-installed bolts to try to save said shrubbery, and a host of rapping accidents which show, among other things, that experience is no guarantee of safety.
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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While racking up once, Rob uttered one of my favorite quotes:
"Do you really think you're going to need this," he said holding up the gold Camalot, "if you have a hand jam?"
I was glad when he let me bring along the red one.
It's not about the gear, it's about the climbing.
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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A manly man leads Double Cross (JT) with nuts only!
I think you mean "sack" only.
The women, they call it a chalk bag.
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Rocky5000
Trad climber
Falls Church, VA
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Not long after I discovered Tricams and learned how to use them properly, I sold all my well-beloved Hexes and didn't look back. Then as the years rolled on I felt no need to spend the money on active cams, as my general skill with nuts and Tricams met my needs in every situation. I still carry an old 1/2-size titanium-shaft Friend as a good luck charm on longer climbs, but I have so rarely used it. But I know many climbers who simply find Tricams baffling or weird; it's a very personal-preference kind of thing. I might say that in the past quarter century (estimated) I've never had a Tricam fail to hold, never failed to get them out of the crack, and rarely ever had them shift in the placement. What pro is better? That which works!
Stay safe!
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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THAT's how small the climbing world was back then, eh, fellow senior citizens?
How right you are, Kevin!
I also agree with RGold -- we carry a lot more gear now on a standard rack. I have a theory on that. Having started in the chromemoly era, I seldom carried more than ten pins on a free climb. Weight was one factor, but so was the security of a pin placement. I don't remember any protection pins pulling by the simple action of the rope changing angles.
When I learned about British nuts in the late 1960's, I added a few Clog wedges to my runners, and a few hexes, but was still used to relatively minimal racks. Chouinard's introduction of Hexcentrics and Stoppers in the early 1970's put an end to most piton-protected climbing, but my mindset was still toward a fairly minimalist hardware selection, probably as an outgrowth of the steel age.
Over the years, my "standard" free climbing rack has grown a lot, and with lighter weight carabiners and the already light weight of nuts (compared with comparably wide pins), it doesn't seem particularly heavy or unweildy. It just took some time for this old-timer to get used to it.
John
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Note: I've decided I need to do two climbing posts for every non-climbing post - so...
Another thing in the old picture you hardy see any more is a climber carrying shoes to walk off in.
Sounds like the Gunks has been largely transmogrified by a predominance of toproping and rapping in recent years.
As far as climbers carrying more gear goes, I saw an extreme example of this last weekend. We have a five pitch climb I do with four HB Alloy nuts and this weekend saw a real retro scene of a guy on the route racking enough gear to do a hard El Cap aid line. Most of it was triples or possibly quads of original friends rigged with horizontal short loops. Given the heat he looked like he was about to have a stroke or heart attack by the time I saw him.
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tolman_paul
Trad climber
Anchorage, AK
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There have always been bold climbers, and I'm thinking there always will be bold climbers. I don't see cams having reduced boldness in routes, that was the bosch effect.
Friends had been around almost a decade before I started climbing, but who could afford to start their rack out with a set of friends, or multiples for that matter? It was chocks and hexes, with friends added as $ allowed.
Perhaps it was an early experience on possibly my first lead that has always put properly placed passive clean pro as an essential part of my rack. I was climbing Farewell to Arms at Castle Rock, it was rated at 5.9, now I see it's been bumped to 10a. It's likely rarely lead, easy to set up a tr and why go to the added effort of placing pro? Anyhow, it starts as an overhanging fist crack, then the crux is getting into the thin crack in a dihedral and working your way up. My first piece was a hex in a perfect taper, then as I recall a 2.5 friend in a slightly flared crack. My arms burned out at the crux, and I fell onto the friend, which popped leaving grooves in the sandstone, but the hex held and kept me from grounding.
There is something to be said for when you were young and didn't have all the gear you thought you needed, but in reality you were well equiped to climb. Vs. later in life when you have all the gear you "need" but it weighs you down so much you never get off the ground.
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rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
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There have always been bold climbers, and I'm thinking there always will be bold climbers. I don't see cams having reduced boldness in routes, that was the bosch effect.
Well, there will certainly always be bold climbers and bold routes. Cams haven't and won't change that. But there is a large number of existing routes that are now either far less bold or far less strenuous, or both, than they were before cams.
I'm not associating any value judgements with this. It is what it is.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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with respect to adverse ecological impact of climbing, from the studies I have been reading lately, the largest problem is with access to and from the cliffs, the paths, etc... and not as much on the climbing of the cliffs.
that being the case, it might be better to rap the route and use a marked trail to get to and from the base of the climbs, not walking off would decrease the traffic and presumably be beneficial to those areas.
so I would reconsider my opinion about rapping in the 'Gunks, perhaps back in those days when there were much fewer climbers it didn't matter as much... but now it could be better to have the rap stations, etc...
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StahlBro
Trad climber
San Diego, CA
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If you don't know how to place pro on the lead, it really doesn't matter what kind it is. Bad pins, bad nuts, bad cams, there isn't much difference.
Once you figure it out, cams work great for anything they fit into. I always carry a 'biner with a bunch of small-to-tiny stoppers for anything smaller. It is amazing what they will hold in a good placement.
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Salamanizer
Trad climber
The land of Fruits & Nuts!
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Well, there will certainly always be bold climbers and bold routes. Cams haven't and won't change that. But there is a large number of existing routes that are now either far less bold or far less strenuous, or both, than they were before cams.
This may very well be so true, but I can think of dozens of the more bold routes I've ever lead where a small rack of pins would have booted that X rating right off the topo.
There is something to be said when climbing well above your marginal pro and staring into a worthless rusted pinscar, taking a deep breath and climbing on that bears light on this "double edged sword" topic we've got going on here.
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Patrick Oliver
Boulder climber
Fruita, Colorado
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I've felt more like listening here rather than participating, but I
should at least say I have enjoyed some of these comments. I respect
individuals such as Kevin (Warbler), Stannard, Goldstone... who I know
and with whom I've climbed. John is too modest about his involvement
with nuts and things. He did important tests for us, helped us
know, for example, how good R.P.s were. I really didn't care
that much about the
changes in gear, the evolution from one thing to another. The most
difficult time was right in 1967 when we started using nuts and began to
believe in them but continued to carry a few pitons... Then no pitons
or hammer... After that, hexes, R.P.'s, whatever. It was all good.
I personally felt I
could climb any kind of thinner crack, or rather could protect it, if I
had a good rack of R.P.s, lots of the dinky ones. Cams, and I assume
that means Friends and the like, simply made things easier. They
revolutionized protecting cracks, no doubt.
Rich makes some good points
about the rock being different from one area to another. In Eldorado,
nuts were wonderful, and as John says... the creative part of it all,
protecting otherwise difficult things to protect, was a great measure
of the enjoyment... I liked protecting things such as "Sacherer Cracker,"
in Yosemite, with nuts. Then Friends and small cams made that a trivial
thing and a much easier pitch.
One can be too creative, I suppose. Recently they
discussed relocating a bolt to a more strategic place on a route of
mine, Super Slab, which I did free in '67. I argued against it, because
it's simply possible to protect that part with creativity. I used
two hooks in opposition, a bomber point of protection,
and a technique I've found well protected many cruxes
that were said to be unprotectable. Most today won't want to carry
hooks or like to fiddle a little to get such a setup, but I enjoy that
sort of play, fiddling... One time I was leading a pitch in Eldorado,
and a friend on the road far below yelled up, "Get in some opposition,
Pat." It made me feel a little silly, and clearly people recognized that
as one of my trademark things. The problem is that I was doing it
sometimes on routes today's stronger climbers could simply climb past
without the need for any protection... I've never been too proud to
place something, whatever kind of gear, if I felt like it.
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tolman_paul
Trad climber
Anchorage, AK
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Honestly I don't understand how one can become good at placing cams if they haven't learned nut craft. Not only do you learn how to read cracks, but you get that feedback of not properly setting the nut or extending it with a sling causing it to come out of the crack. With a cam, just retracting it and stuffing into a crack or pocket doesn't gurantee it'll protect you, only that it will support it's own weight.
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