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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Beatons - looks like a Chuck Wilts knifeblade made out of thick aluminum for later ascents of worn-out knifeblade placements
Bashies - a small cube of aluminum with a hole in the middle, to bash into a worn out placement for a tied off angle piton
Mashies - similar to a bashie, but a thinner rectangle aluminum shape designed to be mashed with the wide face into a hollow that never would have held a piton. Royal had me demonstrate these to Lionel Terray on a Camp 4 boulder. Terray scoffed that would never work. Then I placed one and he was able to stand on it in slings.
C-clamps - for thin expanding flakes, I took a small C-clamp and mounted a small block of soft aluminum on the bearing faces to widen the force applied to the rock to avoid cracking the rock. I made these for the first ascent of the hard aid route to the left of Midnight Lightening (later repeated by Bridwell)
URPs - similar in use to a RURP, only much smaller, about the size of a small postage stamp with a small hole in one corner.
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Ksolem
Trad climber
Monrovia, California
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Leeper Z-Nuts...
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groundup
Trad climber
hard sayin' not knowin'
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How about pin bins?
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groundup
Trad climber
hard sayin' not knowin'
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or Colorado nuts?
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Tacoma Hook
Rene DesMaison Rappel Hook
Pierre Allain Rappel Hook
Jumar Ascenders using the original rigging method
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johntp
Trad climber
socal
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Leeper nuts! Had several of those things on my rack. To be honest they scared me.
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Peter Haan
Trad climber
San Francisco, CA
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Ken. I don't. But Les Wilson does. He even has set up a site for them. Les-wilson@Att.net
I would think he would be responsive to having the museum have one. Let me know if you want help Ken.
Disaster, no we have had this crackjack stuff a bunch of times here. Use search for "crackjack" and you should get a boatload of posts. Also Go to the site I quoted to Ken.
In a nutshell, Les Wilson and I developed (1964-5) this turnbuckle sort of device with interchangable midsection tubes for sizes. The angle ends were floppy for variations in the rock and by rotating the body one end being threaded would extend in length, the opposite end just rotating in place. You slung the rotating end and if you wanted to tighten them extremely you used the tube sling and your hammer to rotate the unit. When even just moderately tight they rang like tuning forks and were really mighty strong.
In some circumstances you could place a unit with one hand too. Even hand-tight they were super strong. I have calculated that we could make them again now for about $125 and still make a little money.
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Peter Haan
Trad climber
San Francisco, CA
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More/ I am on my phone here: the more general point is that this device was kind an abomination to climbers of 1965 but now is vastly simpler than ordinary cams of today. By needing to climb cleaner smarter and quicker the game has really changed for hardware. A crackjack has about 12 pieces compared to dozens of a C4 or Linkcam.
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Salewa Cinch Blocks or whatever they may be called...Perfect for crevasse rescue duty with gloves on. Totally efficient little device.
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Salamanizer
Trad climber
The land of Fruits & Nuts!
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Wow Steve, those things look like a pretty cool, simple but effective little device.
Probably not justifiable to carry around for that "just in case" scenario, but for quick rescue work I could see their usefulness.
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MisterE
Social climber
Bouncy Tiggerville
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Peter Haan
Trad climber
San Francisco, CA
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Awesome Steve!! I was unaware of those too.
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Captain...or Skully
Big Wall climber
leading the away team, but not in a red shirt!
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Big tri-cams are clunky, sure, but I don't leave the ground without a pinky.
I have a big tri-cam. Well, it ain't that big. It's a * 5. It lives at home, mostly.
I like the Salewa blocks. Very cool.
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Ihateplastic
Trad climber
It ain't El Cap, Oregon
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groundup... While the PinBins are cool I am drooling over that fine example of a vintage Forrest sling! Those things were so nice on the eyes.
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MisterE
Social climber
Bouncy Tiggerville
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Peter, didn't you write about the Crackjacks on the Hourglass thread?
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Darwin
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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I think I wrote a story to the old rec.climbing about the day I picked these up from Porter's shop in El Portal(?). Since the story involved drug use by people other than myself, I'm not reposting it. I haven't found the rec.climbing archives. Are they out there?
Peter H.; is that your place where the crack jack picture was taken?
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Charlie never made enough of those to catch on! Nice!
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dogtown
Trad climber
JackAssVille, Wyoming
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Yeah Cap.
It was a moment. But it worked out as for the smaller stuff friends or stoppers filled the job for us.
Thanks and cheers, DT.
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dogtown
Trad climber
JackAssVille, Wyoming
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Those Salewa prusik blocks look pretty cool.
I second that! Never seen them before.
Thanks Steve.
DT.
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