
Climber Creates The "Anti-Cam" - A Fall Protection Device - ccoop
http://www.alpinist.com/doc/web10f/wfeature-maddaloni-anticam
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Isamu
I love reading subculture jargon I know nothing about. Plus this is all about
the problem-solving aspect of climbing, and about improvisation.

Was it the Innovator's Dilemma that pointed out power users as a primary
source of product innovation?

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joezydeco
This article was probably the most dense lingo I've never understood. Very
disorienting. Well done.

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weaksauce
climbing is very fun... worth learning all the lingo.

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joezydeco
My hands sweat just _reading_ about climbing. Thanks but I'll pass.

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weaksauce
That's funny, my hands sweat thinking about and watching climbing too! I don't
like heights but love climbing. Once you learn to trust the gear it's not
scary in a gym. Outdoors it's a different story because of all the unknowns
but manageable based on the route you try. You should give indoors a shot.

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joezydeco
I probably will. I just think it's funny that even picturing it my head gets
my palms sweaty.

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weaksauce
I think it's funny too. Watching videos make me sweat like crazy but actually
climbing doesn't do it as much. It makes climbing tougher but you can chalk up
and it helps a lot.

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twp
This was built for a specific route in BC, Canada.

The story of its development is told in the excellent web adventure sports
series "The Season": <http://www.theseasontv.com/>

You can see it in action in episode 21: <http://www.theseasontv.com/?p=454>

The whole series of "The Season" is fantastic and well worth watching if
you're into adventure sports. They follow a paddler, a mountain biker, a skier
and a couple of climbers through a season. Recommended.

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etherealG
thanks so much, that gives a great idea of how the whole thing happened. a
great episode :)

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liuhenry
Awesome concept, but from the pictures it looks to big to rack along with
normal cams - are there really that many routes with flakes?

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blackguardx
Flakes are common on granite routes. You can usually put cams or nuts behind
them, though. In this case, the flake is very loose and the gap between the
flake and the rock behind it is very wide. If he did manage to place any large
active pro behind it, it might pry the whole flake off in a fall. This would
probably kill him, his belayer, and any people on the ground below. This is
why it wasn't climbed by anyone until he invented this device, which won't pry
the flake off the wall.

One of the most famous granite flakes is the Texas Flake on the Nose route on
El Capitan. The gap is so wide that you can't place any protection and must
chimney up the 5.9 pitch with no pro.

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weaksauce
They put a bolt about halfway up it some time ago, but it must be climbed
free.

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jfager
It seems like there are a few climbers on here, could one of you please
explain how a climber goes about deciding that a flake is too dangerous to
apply a horizontal force to but safe enough to apply a vertical force to?

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oiuytgyuio
If the flake is 10m long it weighs many tons, adding 75kg of climber in the
same gravity direction is negligible. Putting a torque on the rock along the
breaking line is a different story.

(probably more like 50kg for skinny zero % body fat climber types)

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kscaldef
The forces involved are considerably more than body weight in a lead fall
(potentially tens of feet before you're caught; at one point in the article
they mention the possibility of a 70 foot fall). 10 kN (roughly equivalent to
1000kg static hanging load) is a typical rating for lead climbing protection
gear, and the only reason the force is that low is because the rope stretches
considerably, reducing the max force exerted at any given instance.

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mbyrne
I don't get it. It's a C-clamp. Why not just build an escalator? Why not just
tie yourself to a rope and have your Mommy pull you up?

I remember seeing footage of some French guy climbing a rockface a thousand
feet up swinging like a monkey, with no rope, no pitons, nothing. That is
climbing.

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blackguardx
Why the dismissive, acrid tone?

This is a piece of free climbing protection. This, along with the rope is used
just as a safety device in case the climber falls. If it was used for making
progress, he would be aid climbing. If you read the article, you will see that
there are still risks, however. His homemade gear could pull out. Or even if
it catches him, the traversing nature of the route would cause him to take a
huge swinging fall into a wall. These types of falls are very dangerous
because you hit with your torso and your legs aren't there to cushion the blow
to your internal organs.

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mbyrne
My tone might have appeared dismissive because I was being dismissive. Is that
not allowed? Are you the judge of how people should speak? Labeling and
criticizing my "tone" is just an ad hominem attack, so you lose. Why not just
answer my question, at what point do you stop? What is wrong with building an
escalator, that would reduce risk too, if that is the goal, and according to
you that is the goal of this device.

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raganwald
_Labeling and criticizing my "tone" is just an ad hominem attack_

Factually incorrect. An Ad Hominem fallacy is suggesting that there is
something wrong with _you_ and that therefore your argument is wrong. You are
entitled to any opinion you like. We celebrate iconoclasticism here, HN is all
about people doing things most people do not like.

However, if you attempt to redefine the word "climbing" in a way that is
entirely at odds with how everybody else uses the word, you can expect to
encounter resistance. If the only climbing you respect is free soloing, have
at it. I've free soloed, I respect it, I won't argue with that.

But if you're going to argue that everything else isn't climbing, well, that
doesn't strike me as intellectually constructive. There is already an
established vocabulary of terms for the various styles of climbing, and there
is no visible need for throwing it all out and starting from scratch.

Now to address your second point. It's an important one, and a little research
into climbing history reveals that this is a divisive debate going back over a
century. Some people feel that risk is an essential component of the climbing
adventure. Some do not.

There is a gymnastic pursuit that is carried out on plastic and on rock called
climbing, and in modern times it can be carried out with little or no risk. So
can cycling. You can decide for yourself whether it is worth doing if there is
no risk of injury or death.

There is also a thrill-seeking or adventure pursuit carried out on rock and in
high, cold places. Proponents seeking adventure deliberately place themselves
in harms way through free soloing, fast and light alpinism, and through
placing protection that is of limited utility. Risk is not a black and white
decision, most adventurers manage their adventure to expose themselves to a
perceived tolerable amount of risk.

These two pursuits are both called "climbing." If you strongly prefer the
latter to the exclusion of the former, you are not alone, but you also aren't
in the majority.

So your question of why not build an escalator is easy to answer. The
escalator removes the gymnastic element of the exercise and for those who seek
adventure, removes too much risk.

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mbyrne
Saying that I think a guy who can swing from rock to rock like a monkey is an
attempt to redefine the meaning of the word "climbing" is ridiculous. I
actually have no opinion about what climbing is or is not. I was expressing
admiration. Like if a quarterback throws a huge pass and the receiver dives
across the goal line and catches the ball with one hand for a touchdown. Now
that's football. I'm not saying everyone one else on the field isn't playing
football or shouldn't be allowed on the field. Maybe I should have written my
comment with three exclamation points...Now, that's climbing!!! Boy Howdy!!!

Also, I don't care or judge whether people climb with or without risk. But to
your point, you actually could make an escalator the width of a gymnastic
balance beam and with bumps, so that it would have adventure and risk, for
those who seek that from escalator climbing. I am sorry to have commented
because clearly I inadvertantly hit a nerve with a subset of climbers who
apparently feel some kind of insecurity or something, when compared to awesome
free soloists.

Anyway, I have get going, I can't stay here in the basement typing on my Dad's
computer, I have to get back to middle school for the afternoon assembly. But
thanks for spending all your time chatting with me.

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aplusbi
Saying that I have some sort of insecurity is an ad hominem attack. Just
kidding!

No one is saying you can't admire a guy who free solos. What you did say was
"Why not just tie yourself to a rope and have your Mommy pull you up?"
Followed by "I remember seeing footage of some French guy climbing a rockface
... with no rope, no pitons, nothing. That is climbing." That seems an awful
lot like redefining climbing to not include trad climbing (climbing with this
sort of protection), and also seems a lot like judging whether people climb
with risk or not.

You aren't getting down-voted because you expressed a controversial opinion,
it's because you expressed it in a way that appeared to be rude. If you merely
said:

>I don't get it, how is this different from a C-clamp?

>I remember seeing footage of some French guy climbing a rockface a thousand
feet up swinging like a monkey, with no rope, no pitons, nothing. I admire
that.

No one would have down-voted you. They would have explained that it is not a
C-clamp (it's dynamic so it gets tighter when you fall) and that free soloing
is certainly an exciting form of climbing.

Edit:

>But to your point, you actually could make an escalator the width of a
gymnastic balance beam and with bumps, so that it would have adventure and
risk, for those who seek that from escalator climbing.

Yes, they certainly could do that, and it may very well be a very exciting new
sport. But it would not be rock climbing. It wouldn't even be similar to rock
climbing. The most similar thing I can think of is perhaps via feratta
climbing.

Ultimately you brought up the question of "Why do anything?" Why should you go
outside when you can just watch TV? Why do you go to school when you can just
lay in bed all day?

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mbyrne
I want to apologize to anyone I offended with anything I said in this thread.

