Leaning to Climb Tradtionally Indoors

Do you know someone who has been wanting to learn trad..
would you be more comfortable with them learning at an indoor gym? I've developed a way to make this possible. Please visit to see how it works, and to help support the production of the device, so we can not only make learning safer but so that we can open up the dynamics of the sport and protect our natural climbing areas from over bolting.

igg.me/at/NativeHeightsClim…

I wanted to see how silly this would be, but my virus checky thingy says your site is unsafe...oh well.

This should be a treat

Dustin Stotser wrote:I wanted to see how silly this would be, but my virus checky thingy says your site is unsafe...oh well.

indigogo gets flagged as unsafe? strange.



It's just a bolt-on crack that lets you place and fall on cams in the gym. Strangely you have to contribute $5,000 to get a single working device, which (if indicative of the final price point) seems a bit excessive.

I mean honestly you could just make a non-load bearing version and skip the UIAA (repeatedly referred to as the UAII on the website) and get 90% of the instructional benefits for 10% of the cost.

climbing friend,

No.

I'm guessing EMacrame is involved somehow.

Aleks Zebastian wrote:climbing friend, No.

+1

It looks feasible.

Aleks Zebastian wrote:climbing friend, No.

LOL

+1

Yea... Not a chance. You'd be better off just building the cam placing part cheap and just have gyms bolt it on just above their existing draws, and charge like $20 instead. It's backed up anyway so why have it rated!!!? Ridiculous IMO

Any trickiness involved in placing cams is not going do be demonstrable with a flat-sided, parallel(exact) placement. There need to be flares, grooves, and bumps etc.(real rock) to deal with the intricacies of placing a cam.

This might be good to sell classes to newbies, though. However, as mentioned, the same could be accomplished for much cheaper.

This is a solution in need of a problem if ever I've seen one...

St00000000000000000000000000pid.

This would actually be great to have in gyms... Really get new trad belayers to see what happens when you have the rope too tight, leader falls, cam rotates during fall and rips out of perfect placement from belayer error.

Plus the gym could start selling cams to replace the ones you destroy for no good reason doing this.

Edit:
It would be helpful to have one of these in my gym in all seriousness to get new read leaders comfortable with the fact that their gear works.

Most of this has been said already, but here are the main issues I see:

A) First and foremost, there should be a barrier that has to be overcome to learn to place and climb over gear confidently. Climbing doesn't need another gizmo to dumb shit down for people anymore. It's already stupefied enough. This will only add to the idiocy. Idk about the rest of you, but I rather enjoy cragging and walking past the crowds of neon-clad gumbies thrutching up 5.10a bolted routes only to arrive at an area with 5.10 gear routes and hearing nothing but crickets.

B) This accomplishes nothing. What does it teach? How to place a single cam in a perfectly parallel-sided crack? What's to learn here? That two inches in a parallel crack is a yellow Camalot? If you need a device to teach you that, especially when perfectly legible and easy to follow instructions come with every cam, then I suggest selling your new cams and buying a rack of shiny new quickdraws instead and sticking to bolted climbing. What really needs to be learned is what makes a good placement for passive gear. How cams behave when the rope pulls on them on wandering routes. How to determine the rock quality around a placement. This is where most of the learning curve resides, and this device addresses absolutely none of this.

C) NO gym will install these. Insurance companies and their restrictions are only getting tighter, and premiums getting higher. This is movement in the opposite direction. Liability is too high and the cost to benefit ration is lopsided to say the least.

D) You can't just bolt this into a T-nut and expect it to hold a load. Gyms (assuming they'd allow the use of this device at all, which they won't) aren't going to drill extra holes in their frames to allow for load bearing for this device with a load bearing bolt just below it. Just ain't gonna happen.

E) There are already tried and true methods for learning gear placements outside, backed up by a top rope- all of which have been discussed in this very forum ad nauseum.

While I applaud the engineering that went into this, I would have spent the money on gear and learning how to use it instead. To echo another's statement- this is indeed a solution looking desperately for a problem.

Medic741 wrote:This would actually be great to have in gyms... Really get new trad belayers to see what happens when you have the rope too tight, leader falls, cam rotates during fall and rips out of perfect placement from belayer error. Plus the gym could start selling cams to replace the ones you destroy for no good reason doing this. Edit: It would be helpful to have one of these in my gym in all seriousness to get new read leaders comfortable with the fact that their gear works.

Gear can rip out due to belayer error?

All these years I thought it was my mistake. I'm gonna contact some of my old partners and tell them they owe me some beer...

I would imagine he could design flaring cracks, bottoming cracks, wobbly cracks, etc. But advertising it with just parallel cracks seems like a poor idea.

I just vomited.

Please- Just go outdoors and climb on real rock. Why does it all have to be dumbed down to the gym? for Fu&K sake!

Can't comment on this particular design, but when I took my trad climbing class (gasp!) I really enjoyed placing gear on artificial wall made from boulders - think retaining wall around 8ft high. It had a huge variety of cracks, pockets, and what nots. If one wanted to have an almost real life experience, they could hang off the wall and do one handed placements.
Of course, no falls, but body weight testing was OK.

Hilton Bennett wrote:...and protect our natural climbing areas from over bolting. igg.me/at/NativeHeightsClim…

Who bolts cracks?

neat idea, but id rather pay a stone mason to come in and lay up a 30ft tall {or whatever} stone column with features built in to put gear into it .....