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4-Jul-2012 10:11:44 AM
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Neil/Wendy, Old Gard 22 deserved 15 bits of pro.
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18-Jul-2012 11:25:24 AM
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I learned to lead trad at frog, and twenty eight years ago only had a set of wires and one rack of cams from .5 to 3 Camalot plus a set of five hexes to cover from hand sizes up to off width.
I climbed from 17 to 24 without too much terror, and found that if needed there were others to borrow gear from, no one has mentioned tape gloves , take tape, learn how to make gloves, and use them !
have fun, frog is awesome.
and someone asked about a crag with equal crack density and quality......Devils Tower is the bomb !
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18-Jul-2012 10:09:27 PM
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On 2/07/2012 nmonteith wrote:
>I didn't place a single wire on my last trip to Frog. Or a hex. Cams cams
>and more cams.
If you've got them you can use them. I cut my trad teeth at frog and quickly adopted the principle of placing nuts and hexes when you are standing on an awsome ledge or bodyjambed tight in a chimney so you can save or bump your cams when you're strung out and pumped. I really don't think it's revolutionary but nobody taught me that theory, it just became how I climb. Now I own a hundred sets of cams so I could just swan around like a yank with nothing but cams and colour coded biners on my harness but a few good bits of passive gear in a pitch always makes me happier no matter where I am. And placing a hex a day gives me something to talk about around the campsite each evening.
Also, does anyone hold any valid opinions or experience about the smoothness of frog cracks for cams? I've heard a bit of say about cams slipping out due to lack of friction. Res corner is the only one I can think of that could be That glassy inside. But seeing a video of the late Clint having a cam pop at the bottom of Erg was slightly disconcerting. He blamed it on the smoothness too. I think Araps is smoother
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19-Jul-2012 9:56:35 AM
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I've heard Malcolm (Matheson) espouse the theory that WC friends are better than camalots in smooth parallel cracks because of the camming angle. I've never popped a cam out of a good placement no matter how smooth or parallel the crack, but i have either had them fail or seen them fail when we knew they were marginal (usually shallow and flared).
On the original topic, i hear that a fireproof suit and rubber dingy might be good additions to the frog rack this winter.
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19-Jul-2012 10:28:47 AM
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On 18/07/2012 SteveC wrote:
>
>Also, does anyone hold any valid opinions or experience about the smoothness
>of frog cracks for cams? I've heard a bit of say about cams slipping out
>due to lack of friction. Res corner is the only one I can think of that
>could be That glassy inside. But seeing a video of the late Clint having
>a cam pop at the bottom of Erg was slightly disconcerting. He blamed it
>on the smoothness too. I think Araps is smoother
Wendy doesn't have cams pull out on her because; 1) she's very good at finding the most secure pro, and 2) she doesn't fall off all that much (except on rap placed, super bomber gear)
Both Araps and Frog are well known for spitting cams out of seemingly good placements. Like Araps, the rock at Frog varies a lot. For example, Conquistador and Black Light seem to have the roughest, frictioniest rock in the galaxy, but Res. Corner, the thin part of Child in Time, and that first bit of Erg are smooth as. Trying to decide if Araps is more smooth than Frog is a bit silly, both places have some rock which is way less cam friendly than sandstone or granite. Bungonia is the most cam-spitting crag I've ever climbed at, you really can't trust cams in parallel cracks down there.
Close to the limit of what can hold, the camming angle matters. That's why mastercams have such an annoyingly small range, the Metolius dudes pushed the compromise over towards something which will hold in slicker rock. Aliens should be the worst in slippery cracks but seem not to be (from a lot of unscientific experience).......I put this down to some weird effect of the soft lobes. Patto has a different view, but it's probably better not to get us started.
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19-Jul-2012 10:39:11 AM
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I once almost pulled the small blue Camelot C4 from the bottom of Thin Time. I thought it was an ok placement in some slick-ish looking rock. When I fell onto it it held but only because it was stopped from totally slipping out by a little tiny horn of rock. It had certainly moved from where I first placed it.
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19-Jul-2012 11:10:22 AM
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On 19/07/2012 One Day Hero wrote:
>Close to the limit of what can hold, the camming angle matters. That's
>why mastercams have such an annoyingly small range, the Metolius dudes
>pushed the compromise over towards something which will hold in slicker
>rock. Aliens should be the worst in slippery cracks but seem not to be
>(from a lot of unscientific experience).......I put this down to some weird
>effect of the soft lobes. Patto has a different view, but it's probably
>better not to get us started.
It's to do with quality control and the 3 sigma rating of WC cams. CCH Aliens just dont have the quality control.
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19-Jul-2012 11:26:28 AM
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if the cracks are a bit glassy inside I try to find a slight pod to place the cams or try for the deepest placement possible, but have had good cams slip at both frog and arapiles.
have good things about both Master cams and the Totem cams that can operate on a single pair of the four cams, the same company is reproducing aliens.
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19-Jul-2012 1:20:48 PM
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I had a small WC rip from the glassy diagonal bit on Horrorscope last year. I placed it in a fairly parallel section of crack, and wasn't happy with it, but it was backed up with a bomber wire a bit lower, so OK.
The nicest part of the whole experience was .. it wasn't me that fell on it. As it happened, someone else (Nick) flight-tested it for me when swinging leads. He managed to pull his (lighter) belayer about 2m off the ground in the process as well, so it was quite a crowd-pleasing fall in the end.
I preferred WC for years because of the higher camming angle for this reason, but now the Dragons are out I have the best of both.
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19-Jul-2012 1:34:31 PM
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yeah the wire is what I use, as it allows my fingers to lock in the crack before going into the iron cross move.
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20-Jul-2012 8:48:47 AM
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I thought Totem made some minor changes to the design (rounded lobe edges and flexible trigger wires) while Fixe was making something closer to the original.
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20-Jul-2012 4:21:08 PM
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as you put it "minor changes", a slightly rounded lobe is no major breakthrough, the flexible trigger wires is just plain good sense as is demonstrated by Black Diamonds resent shift in that direction, I have been changing out old stainless trigger wires for new flexible triggers on BD cams for years now.
but true enough that the other mob Fixe are doing a much closer copy of the original.
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21-Jul-2012 1:40:45 AM
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Nobody has mentioned RP's, but there are some climbs that really need them to protect the climbing, I can't remember the name but there was a twenty three down the far left end looking down that was all thin face climbing on a rounded arete and needed RP's to protect the climbing, Brown corduroy trousers and barbed wire canoe as well, but take a few just in case they don't weigh you down much !
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21-Jul-2012 11:41:58 AM
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No Return
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24-Jul-2012 11:20:16 PM
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sounds right
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