New Bigwall Gear Guide on Yosemitebigwall.com

Hi Gang,

I'm working on a new How-to Guidebook, so put together some basic pages about bigwall gear. There are two new links on the lefthand menu on yosemitebigwall.com: Personal Gear Guide and Bigwall Equipment Guide. Check em out and give me your feedback!

yosemitebigwall.com/erik-sl…

yosemitebigwall.com/erik-sl…

Woot!
Erik
erik@yosemitebigwall.com

Under the gear list I dont see any recommendations for Cams or Nuts. There were recommendatinos for offset cams and offset nuts but not regular cams and nuts. Maybe it was assumed that they should be brought with you (might be a long route with just offsets;). What brands, how many sets, how big and how small to bring etc.

cody

Hi Cody,

Thanks for your question. Bigwall climbing is usually an extension of your trad climbing experience, so most folks are coming to this arena with a basic amount of, and understanding of, basic cams and nuts. As for nuts I only use the offset micro(brass) and offset regular nuts - they work best in Yosemite.

For sure each topo tells you how many cams you need to bring. In my experience all of the major brand cams work fine, and as a simple climber I'd hate to suggest to folks that they buy different cams just because they are considering a bigwall - there is already so much unique equipment to acquire!

I use the BD cams because of the strength of the dual-axel design, which allows them to be placed, so to speak, as nuts(totally extended) and still hold a fall. On the wall, where you are sometimes reaching blindly for placements, this extra safety factor in the range of the cam is reassuring; but to be clear I"ve never met someone who had a different brand cam that said 'If I had only had a dual-axel cam', haha, so I encourage each leader to find the set of regular cams that seems to work best for them.

Woot!
Erik
erik@yosemitebigwall.com