Share Your Improbable Aid Placement Photos

I'm still here but in terms of the forum and my participation in it, at a certain point you have to ask

Okay, guys maybe the scary aid placements got to our heads here a little. Pound a pin drink a cobra and feast your eyes on a bomber beak! As well as this Dekays found at the base of the aid route this beak was on! 

BEAK BEAK CAMHOOK FREE MOVE!

Marc801 C wrote:

While we're at it, does anyone know what happened to FrankPS?

Marc, I emailed FrankPS to ask and here's his reply (posted with his permission): 

I got suspended from MP for "causing trouble." They said I could be reinstated if I agreed to certain rules.

In the relevant thread, I was not profane or ugly, I was a naysayer, though. 

I won't agree to their rules since I was already civil. I've seen this before, where if you take a contrary point of view, your comments are deleted without a trace or you get a Rule #1 violation.

Better for my piece of mind to stay off the forums and not agree to their rules.

We should have both a good guy and an asshole rating on our profiles.

This way other inquiring Karens can look us up and see that we are complicated beings who sometimes wake up and just have to piss in another's Wheaties.

Other days we are pleading for peace, love and understanding.

Cie la guerre.

Hi Frank! Hi Kev!

hillbilly hijinks wrote:

We should have both a good guy and an asshole rating on our profiles.

This way other inquiring Karens can look us up and see that we are complicated beings who sometimes wake up and just have piss in another's Wheaties.

Other days we are pleading for peace, love and understanding.

Cie la guerre.

Hi Frank! Hi Kev!

Frank would correct you: it’s spelled “C’est la guerre.”
We miss you, Frank and Kevin!

This placement, yesterday, wasn’t that dicey, def not improbable, although it had to do after I had already used my red Tricam. Because the placement is shallow, irregular, and slightly flaring, the Tricam might not have worked as well.

I was relieved to get this one in, a couple feet higher. 

This Roller seemed barely ok for a downward pull, although it was better than the yellow Alien that blew out of the flaring placement after bounce-testing and about three seconds of weighting it. Maybe I was shaking too hard. I couldn’t make a pink Tricam stick. Shoulda brought Totems or offsets. The blood stains are mine.

George Bracksieck wrote:

Frank would correct you: it’s spelled “C’est la guerre.”
We miss you, Frank and Kevin!

lol thx Georgie!

Used our bosuns chair to get past a short off width because we didn’t have a #5. It flexed a bunch but nothing slipped. 

That’s rad. ^^^

It was kinda sorta in the crack

Steve Bartlett wrote:

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During a first ascent near Bigwater, Grand Staircase Escalante NM. Softish sandstone, flared, bottoming crack. The idea here was a combo of filling the slot and optimal leverage. It worked!

Now that’s an awesome stack.  Looks intimidating with the way the LA is loaded partially in tension.  Bonus points for including not one, but two versions of the Pika Toucan.
Don’t see many examples of the original angular version around.  Apparently the later, rounded style, was adopted because they were easier to produce - according to Josh.  

Snow stake. No snow in sight ...

Brian R wrote:

Bonus points for including not one, but two versions of the Pika Toucan.
Don’t see many examples of the original angular version around.  Apparently the later, rounded style, was adopted because they were easier to produce - according to Josh.  

Interesting, thanks. After A5 marketed their Birdbeaks, I recall Toucans were the first commercial pitons to use the same hooking concept but scaled up (I wonder if Middendorf would have done this too had he not sold A5 to North Face?). I bought a bunch of them and still have a few. I sometimes bring one or two along. The blade stays super thin the whole length so they are great for working alongside brittle calcite seams and for thin, deep seams in fragile rock where a fatter/more tapered blade would fracture the rock and break out chunks. They are hard to clean when buried (the earlier version, based more closely on the no-frills Birdbeaks, almost impossible and I assumed that was why with version 2 they made the anvil part stick out more). Cleanability is one area where the Moses Tomahawks really shine.

Steve Bartlett wrote:

They are hard to clean when buried (the earlier version…almost impossible and I assumed that was why with version 2 they made the anvil part stick out more). Cleanability is one area where the Moses Tomahawks really shine.

Good point about the upgrade to the second version, the protruding anvil.  That must have been a welcome change, especially for anyone who regularly utilized them (or their partners who had the job of cleaning them).    
Have you seen any without the “left” or “right” bend?  I have a unique pair without the bend (short  length).  Never seen any others   

The Tomahawk design is a thing of functional beauty.  It sounds like a great deal of care and refinement went into arriving at their finished form for each size.  The old photos of Bryan Law’s aluminum “mud beaks” that show the seed the design that he came up with decades ago are really cool.