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The Chief wrote:

Vitaliy M. wrote:Did any of you encounter many large size (dark red 3.5' for example) Metolious cams stuck places? I have seen more than a few and one of my friends had the same observation...

Tell us where! Anyone with a Leatherman or serrated knife can retrieve them and have themselves some booty very easily. 30 seconds and whalla. Boooooooooty!


Surprised that with your deep experience you do not have more than a few booty'd #10's on your rack.

You do at a min of course have a serrated knife on your harness.... correct?

Yes, a very small one. Could be useful in self rescue. Never used it for trying to booty a cam, maybe when we climb you can teach me some of these old school tricks.

The Chief wrote:

Never used it for trying to booty a cam... maybe when we climb you can teach me some of these old school tricks.

That will never happen. If you aint got the sense with all the deep experience and knowledge as how to disengage a trigger wire on a cam of that large size with your knife in order to scarf up some booty, then no way am I even gonna think about tying into a rope with ya.

That is one solid DAH!

What a bummer.

Vitality / Chief - You guys dating or what? Bad break up?

joking, and I appreciate all of the posts thus far. It's helpful to get different perspectives. Little things like starting a rack with ultra light biners and thinking about fast and light as a tool in alpine climbs helps me out ... and likely avoiding OP link cams.

I'm cutting my teeth this winter in Jtree getting used to crack and trad leads. This coming spring I want to hit a bunch of moderate alpine climbs, below my max, and get them dialed so I can push limits down the road. FA's are definitely something I'm interested, I've been pouring over past issues of the AA journal, but need more experience first ... and also a rack.

Speaking of FA's ... what are the ethics? Aid counts?

All that shit don't matter grampa, it doesn't matter if its 10 days walk away or just behind the police station, if you are first to climb it first its a FA.

For east buttress on Whitney we brought:
radios (very useful on the climb)
70m rope
Alpine harness
2 Metolius offset cams (orange/yellow, yellow/blue)
BD cams (1x0.3-3, doubles in 0.75 and 1)
2/3 of a set of nuts and 1 hex (used only for a few placements)
10 double-length slings (probably too many)
4-5 extra non-locking biners
cordalette

That's 11 cam's, but we don't climb that hard and the route is fairly sustained. For easier stuff we would bring significantly less.

I wouldn't bring link cams on an alpine climb. Aside from looking fragile, they are heavier. You usually have a variety of crack sizes available, so 2 link cams might weight the same as 3 BD C4 (don't have the exact numbers), but the BDs are more useful since you can have a longer pitch.

Tricams. Light, versatile. I don't leave home without my 3.

The rac changes depending on the root

but I NEVER leave behind the following three items

Pink Tri cam

#9 hex

yellow tcu