Everything climbing and the outdoors.
Chris Weidner describes in detail how to make a tape glove for crack climbing. Whether learning how to jam cracks or cruising 5.13 testpieces, tape gloves will prevent the back of your hands from turning into hamburger. Not only will this help you avoid needless suffering, it will allow you to climb exponentially more than […]
Rick from Cremnomaniac has complied a nice list of trad climbing techniques, tricks, and tips. Trad climbing has lost some of its appeal, or is a smaller blip on the radar. I still know plenty of folks that prefer trad, but there was a day when there was only trad. Trad climbing may be analogous […]
Pimpin and Crimpin has a hilarious post up on the accessorized trad climber. Check it out and I guarantee you’ll laugh! Duct Tape: For some reason that I will never understand, trad climbers have an affinity for duct tape that is almost as creepy as a mustachioed man winking at five year olds. What they […]
Trango is recalling some #5 Big Bros because approximately 100 of the devices manufactured March through October 2008 have improperly aligned inner tubes. Through an error in CNC machining, the inner sleeves on these units are rotated slightly to the side. This rotation causes the ends of the unit to be slightly out of parallel. […]
The American Alpine Institute points out a series of videos by Canadian climbing guide Mike Barter on the pre-equalization on anchors: There is a little bit of controversy over pre-equalized anchors. Some feel that one leg of the anchor will get more force than another, which means that such an anchor could never be fully […]
Echo Wall is an upcoming climbing film by Dave MacLeod focusing on cutting edge trad climbing on the north face of Ben Nevis in Scotland. The following is a trailer of the film due late October 2008:
Omega Pacific recently released a notice instructing owners of their Link Cams to look for a potential defect: In May 2008, we became aware of situations in which axle nuts were not properly and permanently fixed on the axle assemblies permitting the cams to potentially become disassembled. Upon receiving the units, our Quality Assurance department […]
Climbing video of a new 30 foot 5.12+ hand crack, My Little Pony, in Chekamus Canyon, Squamish, BC via the Backcountry Blog. There’s a part 2 coming and hopefully we’ll get to see the lead (and maybe some big whippers off that crack?)
ChossMonkey.com points us to The Nuts Museum where enormous amount of old climbing gear is displayed in a slideshow. Along with tons of pictures of old gear, the article that accompanies the slideshow contains a history of nuts and other types of pro. In 1961, a blacksmith from Sheffield, John Brailsford, then a teacher of […]
You can never have too much insight from great climbers on their technique. Steph Davis has an article on her blog, High Places, discussing her techniques for climbing cracks (via splitterchoss.com). The key to pure crack climbing, as with every type of climbing, is the feet. I like to start from the basics, which with […]