RRC Archives

so in 7 years of traditional climbing, i finally fixed my second cam, which just so happened to be the first piece of trad gear i ever bought.

about halfway up roadside attraction you'll find my uncooperative #3 camelsnot. she's a been a good soldier, so to whomever succesfully booties her, may she have many more good adventures.



doh!




tim

It will not be stuck for long. Here comes the booty hawk. hhhhaaaaaakkkkkk

I think it's already gone!

i'm impressed!

that cam and i had some good times together. in fact, here it is hanging from me harness while hauling the 2nd pitch of the dunn/westbay. ah memories, happy trails little fella, serve your new master well!

Was it stuck because the cams were closed down all the way, wouldn't come out because you couldn't make it any "smaller"? If that was the case, there's a good trick for removal.

I will bite. Larry, please enlighten us on how to make an over-cammed BD smaller.

OK, I'm an old fart, so my experience is with rigid stemmed Friends. But, here goes.

Typically when a SLC became fixed it was because it had walked deep into the placement and was overcammed. The problem of the cams being "completely" closed was compounded by the fact that the fixed piece was so deep in the crack that it was hard to effectively pull on the triggers. Somebody made a tool especially to address this problem, but I just couldn't see carrying a tool that would only be used on rare occassions. The functional equivilant of the tool was to simply girth hitch a 9/16" webbing sling to the triggers, then pull steady but hard on the sling, while pushing in on the end of the stem. This would actually contract the cams inward just the tiniest bit on a cam that was seemingly completely overcammed. With this approach the placement would always shift just a bit, then it was relatively easy to walk it the rest of the way out.

Eventually I found that the only thing that really mattered was the firm pull on the triggers. No need to bother with trying to push in the opposite direction on the stem. Only very rarely did I have to resort to the logical extreme of this technique, which was to clip another runner or two to the one that was hitched to the triggers, then stand in the bottom sling. This would always result in a rather loud "pop" when the piece shifted. After that removal was easy.

Of course, this more forceful technique required that the placement be pretty much cams up, stem down. If you can somehow attach a sling to the trigger of a Camelot, the same technique ought to work. I liberated quite a few "fixed" cams using this technique. They always found their way back home if I knew who they belonged to.

Warning! The triggers are not designed to hold body weight. If you bounce on them, they'll break. I saw a jerk do this to a Friend once. As he muttered "If I can't get this out nobody will" he jumped on the sling until the trigger broke. Dirtbag that I was, I was back the next day with wrench, socket, extension and ratchet. I had the offending piece apart in a couple of minutes, and a second #1 Friend on my rack for the price of a trigger set.

If you can reach the lobes with a nut tool, you can manually close them even further than pulling on the trigger will allow. Use two nut tools and do two lobes at a time, while wiggling it out. Tricky, but effective. Works best on cams with "teeth" on the lobes.

Another technique for small cams that have walked out of reach is to use two Stoppers or other wired pieces to fashion trigger extensions. Pass the looped ends of the wires over the triggeers. Then hold the stoppers in your hands and pull.

Alright day, maybe your not so crazy