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Chockstone Forum - Climbing Videos

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Topic Date User

Cam failure in climbing fall 22-Oct-2013 At 10:34:39 AM snowkiwi

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I think mikllaw is talking about horizontal movement related to this diagram (and the way the cam was setup).

If you look at the diagram (great sketch of the problem by the way Mikllaw), the vertical bars are the bits of the cam that move and "cam" into the rock. Because only the corners of the cam arms are touching the angled rock rather than sitting square to the rock, they move in the direction of the arrows when they are weighted.

The cams are only designed to move vertically in this diagram, so the fact that the arrows aren't perfectly vertical means they've got some horizontal movement. This means they'll try to move sideways. The sideways movement will create friction, not camming.

Don't know if that clears anything up or makes it more confusing, but that's the best I can think of...