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The carrot patch..? 10-Sep-2010 At 1:43:07 AM Tommo

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OK, this has been hacked to death, and I don't have time to read all 8 pages, but at risk of saying what already may have been said, here's my 2 cents:

1. Carrots (bash-in) could be placed on lead & clipped straight away, back in the day, before good quality expansion bolts were available (or were affordable). You can't glue on lead, obviously.

2. The holes were mostly hand-drilled from a stance on lead = hard work. So the hole was often shallower than todays standards, and you could get away with a bash-in carrot.

3. Cheap! And it was just the way things were done, as they were newly experimenting with bolts in Australia. Maybe one day a generation away we'll laugh and cringe at the idea of a glue-in bolt.

Glue-in carrots are BOMBER. I'm glad they are not the standard, but they are amazingly DISCREET where this is an issue (ever tried to find the rap-carrots at Pt Perp?? Almost impossible sometimes) or where there is one or two bolts on a long trad route and it's purely aesthetic not to have bigger rings or hangers near long sections of crack.

Modern stainless M10 machine bolts of 100mm are MORE EXPENSIVE than a home-made u-bolt, by a factor of 50% or more (although yes, you use less glue with the carrot, which might even out).

Bash-in carrots are now OBSOLETE except for rare applications eg. remote alpine big wall/aid, and even then it's unlikely anyone would bother, with stubby expansion bolts available now, or even just using pins instead.

But the old bashies are PRETTY COOL piece of history, that do actually catch you, until they don't :o)