I was the one that originally placed the "fixed" biners on the chains at Gallows last year. I used a mixture of steel hardware store clips and aluminum carabiners, just using what I had around my gear room. Certainly steel biners are best but more expensive. Aluminum biners wear much faster (especially if people are routinely TRing through them rather than using their own draws to TRing until the last person lowers) so perhaps those aluminum biners wore out to the point of being scary and someone removed them on account of safety. I'm cool with that. What amazes me are climbers like the one Chris was climbing with who are either too thick-skulled or too cheap to realize that biners on chains aren't just there because someone forgot them or someone has loads of money and leaves biners each time they lower and that it's OK to remove them. I plan to purchase some steel biners and fix them to the chains with bailing wire at Gallows Edge. Certainly the bailing wire is not a real deterrent to those that are determined to score "booty" biners but at least the wire will signal to those that are clueless that the biners are meant to be there for the safety and convenience of everyone that climbs the route. Actually, I was recently given a box of new hardware for anchor replacement as a part of the Climbing Magazine's Anchor Replacement Initiative (ARI) and perhaps Gallows is a good candidate for these. What do you think?
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