Tricam-uary Challenge

Tal M. You're right, not me. While I have been known to say things like that, its been a long time since I was mistaken for being in my early 20s. You never know what you're going to find at N Table, except a new #1 camalot stuck in the Big Dihedral roof, you're always going to find that. 

T Lego. Weather be damned, don't forget that tricams work in dirty wet cracks! Seriously though, that's a good looking tricam rack, hopefully the weather will turn nice and you'll be able to put some miles on them. 

Trad Man, You're right, and you're making my point. You couldn't realize the weight reduction you proposed with their current manufacturing techniques, so they'd need CNC to move forward $$$. 

Mitch Wilson. Nice climb and an outstanding report! Bonus points for combining racks to get it done on one of your very first leads! 5.7 is nothing to shake a stick at when you've only been on the sharp end of trad gear four times, even if you were weren't restricting yourself to tricams. Great job man. Those all look like good placements. The thin bridge above your pocketed pink placement looks a little dicey. The good news is it is on the wide side of the range where the camming angle is larger and the outward force is therefore reduced, though not enough to make me feel confident that rock bridge wouldn't explode if you whipped. Its hard to judge your last placement, but assuming the head isn't half hanging out of the crack, it looks like a decent nut style placement. If it is 0.125 white though, you should know that they're only rated to 2 KN (~450lbs) and are an aid only piece that I wouldn't want to fall on. 

Garry R. Tricams don't use a constant camming angle, it varies from 12-17 degrees which translates into 118% to 80% of the force generated by your average 14 degree SLCD. I haven't had any rock failures with tricams, but at these loads I don't see why they'd be appreciably different than a SLDC. In fragile rock the tricam's advantage is in it's nut style placements where there is considerably less outward force applied to the rock. 

Let's keep the Tricam-uary hits rolling!

J.Frostwrote:

T Lego. Weather be damned, don't forget that tricams work in dirty wet cracks! Seriously though, that's a good looking tricam rack, hopefully the weather will turn nice and you'll be able to put some miles on them. 

Man, I wish I could still make it out but my less adventurous partner decided to bail because of some morning rain in the forecast. You hate to see it! Soon enough...

Heidi Hi at North Table goes just fine on some tri’s!  Full disclosure - I did have a single rack of cams on me for the onsight but in the end just as training weights.  The feat was repeated by Bobby shortly thereafter.

For its weight, that might be the most useful rack in existence. 

Disclaimer: The following post does not meet the criteria for Tricam-uary Challenge!

The cracks and pockets of this face were packed with lichen when I climbed it last summer but 2 blacks, 1 pink, and a red kept my whimpering to a minimum.

A good top-down clean unearthed a lot more options for my friend Ryan, pictured here.

I won’t be able to get out this weekend so I darted out for an hour after work to break in a new pair of shoes and try to tick off another tricam only lead.

Nurse Shark in Golden (5.9+), from the ground up it took brown, brown, violet, red, violet, pink, and light grey (see picture).

I’m a pretty terrible crack climber to begin with and the new shoes loosened up considerably on me while on the wall, so I have to admit there was some hang dogging going on, but I finished. In the process, I weighted (for rest) all but the first and last piece and I fell outright onto my first violet placement. However, contrary to popular belief the route was cleaned top to bottom in less than 90 seconds. The violet one I fell on needed a quick prod with the nut tool, but everything else cleaned one handed just as quickly as a SLCD would have. That violet placement was a little overcammed to begin with so a third brown would probably make it easier to clean, but a little trickier to place overhead. Compromises.

I hope the rest of you nuts are able to get out there this weekend and have some safe tricam laden fun. Enjoy the second half of Tricam-uary everyone! 

C Wwrote:

Heidi Hi at North Table goes just fine on some tri’s!  Full disclosure - I did have a single rack of cams on me for the onsight but in the end just as training weights.  The feat was repeated by Bobby shortly thereafter.

figures you would find this thread... 

If anyone is thinking about picking up some new tricams, they are currently 25% off on backcountry.com

Might be a bit late considering tricamuary is getting close to being over though.

It's the final week of the inaugural Tricamuary Challenge! Of course you should continue to place your tricams all year long and share for the rest of us. 

The arctic blast no doubt put a damper on many a climbing outing, but you have one more weekend left! Get out there and send it tricam style!

I managed to get out for a couple of hours at North Table Mountain again to follow up on Tal M.'s suggestion to do the Big Dihedral, 5.8. It went very nicely and cleaned without the nut tool in no time. 

I got two other leads in, a flash of Pee into the Wind, 5.8-, and a clean trad lead of Politicians Priests and Body Bags, a 5.10a route that starts trad and ends with four bolts. Both ate tricams nicely and cleaned without tools as quickly as any other trad gear. 

Shame on me for not getting any pictures of the climbs, but I do have something for you tricam lovers. 

While waiting for my partner to arrive at the crag, I placed and vigorously bounce tested a very special piece I whipped up while avoiding the bone chilling temperatures last week. This little gem made from 7mm accessory cord and the ancient wisdom of the Bavarian hardmen. Behold! The Tricam Knot!!!

The sling comes off the far right side of the placement (bottom side of the knot), and while it can't be used in a parallel crack by any sane individual, it did make the cammed stopper placement "stick" in the slightly flared placement in a way that seemed to indicate that there was some significant camming action going on, a lot like a hex. A weird, freaky, tricammy-hex made of cord. I bounced all over that thing while backed up on a bolt and it held solid and remarkably didn't deform. The down sides are 1) it's pretty challenging and time consuming to tie, and 2) it's made of freaking cord!!!! The upsides are...well, there are none, but it's still kind of awesome.  

Let's get some more of the great tricam only reports posted up this week and finish strong! Happy Tricamuary everyone.

I wasn't able to get out there as much as I had hoped, but with a single day of tricamuary left I finally managed to get a tricam only send (and even if it was on an easy climb). I lead a variation on The Cragmont Crack that starts lower and is slightly more difficult (maybe 5.7/+ instead of 5.6) and had a nice mix if placements. From pods that'll take nothing but a tricam to nice cracks that will take anything you can fit in them. Here is a picture of the route after I lowered off (gotta love the fact the android app doesn't allow you to attach images). If I remember correctly, I placed a black, red, violet, red and brown tricams in that order. (I definitely missed one, but I'm not sure what it was.)

I also tried to send the route next door, cragmont undercling, but it didn't go on my rack since I didn't have large enough tricams for the top and I wasn't confident enough to run it out the 15 feet to the anchor and so ended up plugging a few cams.

Elaine Gilstromwrote:

I wasn't able to get out there as much as I had hoped, but with a single day of tricamuary left I finally managed to get a tricam only send (and even if it was on an easy climb). I lead a variation on The Cragmont Crack that starts lower and is slightly more difficult (maybe 5.7/+ instead of 5.6) and had a nice mix if placements. From pods that'll take nothing but a tricam to nice cracks that will take anything you can fit in them. Here is a picture of the route after I lowered off (gotta love the fact the android app doesn't allow you to attach images). If I remember correctly, I placed a black, red, violet, red and brown tricams in that order. (I definitely missed one, but I'm not sure what it was.)

I also tried to send the route next door, cragmont undercling, but it didn't go on my rack since I didn't have large enough tricams for the top and I wasn't confident enough to run it out the 15 feet to the anchor and so ended up plugging a few cams.

Nice job Elaine! All tricam-only sends are awesome sends!

I also managed to squeak in a couple of last minute climbs to end Tricam-uary on a high note. Sorry, no pictures. I usually leave my phone in the pack for fear of dropping it. Anyway, on Saturday my intrepid partner and I got an early and brisk (25 degrees) start at Eldorado Canyon SP. I strung together the first two pitches of Wind Ridge placing a host of tricams along the way (0.25-7). I even got a chance to place the tricam knot in a perfect constriction halfway up, at the start of what would normally be the second pitch. We were concerned about the sketchy "4th pitch" walkoff on the east side of the wind tower ridge-line given the amount of snow on the ground, so we decided to walk off the slightly less snow covered ramp to the left of the cave belay at the top of pitch two. 

We had enough time for one more pitch, so I got to run up the first pitch of Calypso too placing another 10 tricams on the way up.

It was a super fun and mellow day. I really enjoyed capping off the two month tricam extravaganza by climbing these two Eldo classics on nothing but tricams while feeling super secure and confident the whole way up. 

Congratulations to those awesome people who joined in for the Tricam-uary Challenge! 

Bonus points to:

Andy Eiter for tricamming his way up a mixed ice route!

Mitch Wilson for going full tricam on his fifth ever trad lead!

C W and Bobby for combining tricam racks to knock out a tricam only send. 

and 

Elaine Gilstrom for good tricam bargain beta and a couple of nice tricam only sends. 

The tricam-uary challenge may be over, but don't let that stop you from knocking out a tricam only send whenever the mood strikes and updating this thread accordingly. 

Have fun and stay safe out there... with tricams!