UKC

What is your best/most inventable placement ever?
Would these work?
http://i.imgur.com/n5Wiz.jpg

In reply to shumidrives:

After running out of gear at Shorncliffe one day (the place eats nuts!), hanging the pokeing end of a nut key out of a narrow pocket with a quickdraw attached to the other end. Probably wouldn't have done much, but it stayed in and worked as psychological gear!

In reply to shumidrives:

A couple spring to mind but possibly the one that stands out is chipping a Rock #5 placement in 1cm verglass! A good job I didn't fall off

ALC

In reply to shumidrives:




that looks quite good if it held when the cam was tugged I think it would work

In reply to shumidrives:

Ivy runners on Limestone when nothing else could be found. Working on the Psychological runner Principle, and the hope itll at Least slow you down.

An offset half wedged in a horizontal slate break behind a wobbly block on gnat attack at Bus Stop Quarry. It popped as soon as I clipped the bolt, but it worked for the head.

In reply to Alex Riley:

If that's the block I'm thinking of, once upon a time it wasn't wobbly and I thought the placement was fairly good.

The OP one looks fine too.

I took my first ever leader fall on a Baby MOAC placed sideways, which I thought was well dodgy until it stopped me.

In reply to shumidrives:

Looks bomb proof to me

In reply to shumidrives:

I know a bloke who has demonstrated abseiling from a frozen rabbit buried in snow. The same bloke has abseiled from a plastic bottle wedged in a crack.

With abseiling its all about the friction though, with (hopefully) no dynamic forces.

In reply to Chris Sansum:

A friend of mine fell on one of those bad boys once, and somehow it held. Admittedly he had placed it in a manner more similar to that of a peg, but still...

Also, another friend placed an Easter egg (put a sling around it) on an easy lead. Admittedly more for fun than as any form of serious pro!

In reply to roperat:


A frozen Mars bar also does a good job.

In reply to shumidrives:

Placing wires on either side of a loose chockstone and clipping both to the same draw... in theory both wires and the chockstone should stay in place. Never tested it though!!

In reply to shumidrives:
In reply to shumidrives:

I took a sixish metre whipper off barbarian at tremadog onto a nut key placed as a piton?

In reply to shumidrives:

I think this was done a while back.

In reply to neuromancer:

It was you I was referring to further up...

In reply to ianstevens:

Teach me not to read the thread properly.

In reply to shumidrives:

do nut keys actually have a rating?

In reply to shumidrives:

Frozen malt loaf with sling wrapped around it. The only thing that will get you out of trouble when your number 9 Rockcentric is too small.

In reply to shumidrives:

http://i.imgur.com/PckzkXv.jpg

Was bomber!

In reply to alexcollins123:

but you could have got several other hex placements in that crack including by the looks of it that hex sideways (like a fist jam) and the hex pretty much as its it but loaded against the side the nut is touching ( ie the wider of the two normal ways of placing a hex (rather than a sideways placement))

In reply to CurlyStevo:

Oh yeah, how could I forget... I know, instead of going for the bomber placement by turning my hex sideways, i'll just stack a dodgy nut ontop of it....

It didnt fit that way.

In reply to alexcollins123:

Perhaps you didn't have the right size hex but I would definitely have got a non stacked hex placement in the crack one way or another and looking at the wear on the crack it looks like a lot of other people have too for many many years!

In reply to CurlyStevo:

Maybe he'd already used the appropriate-sized hex in a better placement lower down the pitch...

In reply to shumidrives:

Actually dodgiest: No idea really, probably something that would have brought debris down on me and the rope had I fallen on it, cams behind blocks, loose spikes and threads or something that causes the rope to run over/into something sharp or pinchy. There've been a few but one I recall clearly is a nest of nuts and hooks behind/over a blocky shale ledge I was stood on. The ledge seemed somehow wrong and it spooked me, I whimpered for a rescue and bailed. A year later with roles reversed Aly was stood in the same place in the same situation with the same gear when my suspicions were confirmed, the ledge disintegrated and took a dive bursting on the rocks beside me. Luckily Aly stayed put as most of the gear came down with the ledge.

Stacked nuts look unorthodox but are often solid so long as they're set well and left undisturbed.

I'm not convinced by stacking hexes against cams, I'm sure they can be persuaded to stay put for aid or fun but I'd not waste my time placing them for protection.

jk

In reply to jkarran:

"I'm not convinced by stacking hexes against cams, I'm sure they can be persuaded to stay put for aid or fun but I'd not waste my time placing them for protection."

never say never I think it all depends how far away your last gear was, how far away your next gear is and how likely you are to get a better placement with the gear you may use in the stack.

In reply to shumidrives:

A DMM 3CU , the smaller one (blue), with only 2 of the three lobes touching anything. In fairness it was safe stuff, a borderline UK 5b/5c move (tricky for me!) but just above a nice grassy ledge.

A tri-cam, I think the brown one, where the bulk of the body was out in the air, there was a bit of the "point" and a tiny bit of one of the curved "rails" making contact. I may as well not have bothered, but we were having tri-cam fun The irony is that the route (in Gozo) was graded VS but had been retrobolted but we didn't know this and I kept pondering "why is there a bolt there?" instead of just clipping them. There's ethics for you!

Oh and the infamous "Tall Clare lying in a shallow ditch" as a belay anchor on Trungel Crack at Shining Clough.

In reply to shumidrives:

I suppose you could say worst could be any peice that didn't hold

In reply to alexcollins123:



A thing of beauty. I'd have been proud of that.

In reply to digby:

Great in theory but I would like to see someone rigging that while hanging on for dear life with one hand

In reply to GridNorth:


Why would you be hanging on for dear life? It's obviously a ledge of some size and a belay placement!

In reply to alexcollins123:

Where is that placement? I'm pretty sure I recognise it, and if it is where I think it is you can place a purple size 9 hex sideways and it holds beautifully.

In reply to shumidrives:

Early this year my mate had a tape around an ice column less than an inch thick to do the crux move as he only had one screw left to keep for the belay.