Pageviews past week

The cold world of skimo & alpine climbing

The cold world of skimo & alpine climbing

Thursday, January 5, 2012

Gotta love TURF sticks!

The really fun stuff starts at around 25 minutes in.


Alpine Cragging At Ptarmigan Peak, Alaska from Ephay on Vimeo.

6 comments:

Bruno Schull said...

Hi--Nice to watch. Always interesting to see how other people do things, as well as the "mechanical" workings of an alpine trad climb. What kind of grade does that route get? It's hard to tell from the video.

Obraz said...

Hi,

The description on Vimeo tells that:

"The route shown here is an unnamed M6 dihedral that Carl Tobin and friends pioneered a while back. The ledge we start the pitch from is actually two pitches up a trade route M7, thus making what’s seen here the 3rd pitch."

http://vimeo.com/34240706

This climbing looks pretty similar to one in Polish High Tatras :)

Anonymous said...

Question from an rookie. From about 26 min to 29 min he places a nut, a cam and a pin in one spot, each on its own sling. Wouldn't it be stronger to "equalize" the 3?

noahhaber said...

While equalizing would be stronger, the climber wasn't likely concerned with strength. The concern is more whether anything will hold at all given the icy conditions. If it does bite and hold, any one of those pieces would probably hold the full amount.

Equalizing, therefore, won't really result in any safety gains, but does increase the complexity of the system and therefore the amount of time the climber needs to spend playing with things.

Anonymous said...

Shoo, Thanks for the reply!

Anonymous said...

rookie: As you said these three pieces are not equalized. However, as you proposed, equalization does increase the holding power also on marginal pieces. However, as in this video you usually don´t want to hassle too much with slings or knots when it is cold and you have your gloves on.
But there are some easy ways to equalize pieces with speed if situation allows it. Like using double ropes. By using double ropes you can somewhat divide load to two pieces if you clip own ropes on these protections. Of course load does not equalize 50/50, but still it loads both pieces same time.
If using single rope, and you have two parallel cracks, you can put nuts etc on same level. Using quickdraws of suitable lenght, load is divided between two protections if these quickdraws create V-shape and lower biners touch the rope at same point. Using either of these techniques you can share the load between protection points without unnecessary clutter.

And if possible, do not use single crack only. It could be detached block , and if it moves, all the protection can fall out same time. This has happened to me with six foot high block.