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Rave About Your Rack Please do not post retail SPAM.

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Victorian Rack 18-Nov-2011 At 12:45:13 PM citationx

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On 18/11/2011 nmonteith wrote:
>On 18/11/2011 citationx wrote:
>>I just don't understand exactly what esoteric piece of gear could be
>required
>>for a place that's existed, and been visited by thousands of people from
>>all around the world, for decades. With the exception of RPs being made
>>"specifically for araps".... what could you need?
>
>I can think of many examples where getting some region specific gear advice
>makes for a much nicer trip. For example any desert crack climbing in the
>US you will want at least 3 or more of each size cam in the finger/hand/fist
>sizes. They have 30m pitches where it takes exactly the same size the whole
>way. We ended up borrowing other peoples cams at the crag so we had 6 of
>the same size!
>
>Blue Mountains you can leave your small wires behind.
>
>Many sport crags in Europe REQUIRE a 70m rope to lower-off. These sort
>of pitches also require a LOT of quickdraws. You certainly want to take
>at minimum 20 quickdraws to a place like Kalymnos. I'd suggest double that
>really so you can leave draws on a project for a few days and have other
>draws to do the warmups. Normally i wouldn't take more than 15 draws on
>a trip - lucky for me someone told me how many to take!
>
>Araps and the Grampians are quite unique in the fact they take bomber
>gear of almost any sort.

You only need to take one look at only one line at the desert (indian creek is the prime example) to realise you're going to need more than doubles. In a similar way, you only need to take one look at a photo of araps to realise that it's very featured, and that, as you say, gear of almost any sort will probably do.
When you turn up to indian creek everyone puts in gear and you choose multiple cams of the sized crack you want to do. If you needed esoteric or multis are araps or the gramps, i'd assume it to be the same. Along the same vein, it's fair, then, to say that you could bring the mids of one of everything and double up for those that are already there - "assuming you'll be climbing with a partner".
IF you were coming solely to climb with your brought-along partner in random crags taht noone ever goes to then yes, perhaps you'd like to ask about esoteric pieces that may be needed.
Otherwise, i stand by my comments, thousands have been coming for decades from all over the world well before the internet was able to hold infoarmtion about what dicky little pieces you'll need, i don't see what will have changed since then :-P