Troop 721 Milford, CT - Climbing
Climbing
There are two common types of monolithic protection:
tapered wedges and hexes. Both are made specifically
for climbing from lightweight aluminum. In use, both are
wedged into cracks in the rock so that they are difficult
to remove in one direction (usually down) and easy to
remove in another (usually up).
A tapered wedge, shown top left, is a trapezoidal piece
of aluminum (one to three centimeters across) attached
to a loop of steel cable.
A hex is a hexagonal tube of aluminum with a diameter
roughly equal to its length, between one and six
centimeters. A strong piece of cord is threaded through
two pairs of little holes on opposite sides of the hex and
tied into a loop.
A spring-loaded camming device (SLCD) consists of a
stem with an axle at one end holding four spiral-shaped
spring-loaded cams. When placing an SLCD, the
climber pulls a mechanism to retract the cams places it
in a crack with the stem pointing down, and relases the
Protection (Monolithic Protection and SLCDs)
mechanism, allowing the cams to spring back against the rock. When the SLCD is
pulled downward (say, because of a fall), the spiral-shaped cams are forced
harder against the rock, making it more secure.
SLCDs are much easier to use than monolithic protection. They can adapt to the
rock and hold themselves in place, making them usable in more situations. They
have allowed climbers to climb many routes that were too dangerous to climb
using other types of protection.
The main disadvantage to SLCDs is cost: $50 to $100 each is typical. However,
since each SLCD can adapt to a wider range of crack sizes than their monolithic
counterparts, so only four or five sizes are needed.
SLCDs also have the dangerous ability to ``walk.'' If not under tension, a SLCD
can easily move in one direction, usually farther into a crack. This can make it
difficult to remove, or more dangerously, move it to where it no longer holds.
Monolithic protection usually doesn't do this, since it is usually firmly wedged
into the rock.
Protection