RRC Archives

Well have you?

I like this thread already!

I've placed a few, even drilled a few holes and hammered angles into them, Colorado Springs style. But I've climbed past dozens of pins without clipping them just for the challenge of finding good "natural" placements. Climbing can be a funny game. Most of the pins I've placed have been in a winter alpine environment.

I've placed more than I care to admit in Yosemite... funny game indeed, with the clean-aid movement on El Cap, most folks actually like to obfuscate their pin tally rather than advertise it. That said, few things in this world are more satisfying that driving home a bomber piton way over your head while high-stepping on some horrifying hook or mank bashie... we got away with 4 on the NA Wall but I would have been happier with zero.

place them in the alpine all the time...

When I used to cave, we used them a lot to rig traverses and pits and the like. I still have a couple around here someplace. They were called "lost arrows" and Great Pacific made them until they changed their name to Black Diamond. You could almost tell by the sound if they were solidly in or not. There was a blade kind and a wide kind called a bong that was kind of like a steel taco folded over with holes drilled in it to make it lighter. With all the climbers around today the gorge would be reduced to rubble by now if they were still used. Honestly, I doubt if the rock quality in much of the Gorge would hold one for long if you took a modern-day fall. We didn't fall on them in caving, but we did hang on them a lot; everything was always static, static ropes, hip belays, and all that scary shit.

By alpine do you guys mean overhanging routes?

the pin on Central at Pebble

That' what I thought. Mostly old timers. I started climbing in 1971 (yes I am that old) right on the cusp of the clean climbing revolution. On of my first climbing partners had machine nust with the threads ground out on his rack. My experience back then was using pins for aid.

So Bill, my question is who pinned a route recently? I'm assuming the forest service or somebody found a shiny new one someplace and we got blamed and you are looking for info.