UKC

What climbing gear, clothing or equipment did you think would never catch on but became a big success and widely used?

For myself it was definitely the belay glasses. First time I saw them being worn at a climbing wall I thought "What the heck are those, why on earth would you wear them? Just look up!"

A few years down the line, I can't bear to belay, especially on steeper routes, without wearing a pair. If I don't wear them I will have a sore neck after a short while and be stiff the next day. Obviously, that is a symptom of age, and decades of belaying, but they would have definitely helped prevent neck problems had they been available years ago.

An acquaintance was asked to review the early Friends for a shop chain. He was able to tell them that they would never be much use in the UK, as unlike the USA, parallel cracks don't predominate here. 

He has probably never lived that one down.

GPS.  I remember about 15 years ago many people would relentlessly take the piss out of anyone who bought one, as they were clearly a crutch for people who can't navigate.

These days the same people think you are negligent if you don't have one.

Bouldering Mats - What was wrong with a beer towel or a bit of old carpet

Approach shoes.

Mind you despite owning a pair, I'm still thinking trainers would do the same job 95% of the time!

But approach shoes' primary job is to be worn to the pub, so people will know I'm 'outdoorsy'.

They are training shoes, just with camouflage

Part of the driving test now too!! Imagine that!

Camouflage you say?  Is that why I can never remember where I put them?

I think most driving examiners would take a dim view of someone pulling out a yellow etrex, reading off the grid ref and finding themselves on an OS map while steering with their knees.

I have no evidence for this, just a guess.

They still are.

No, they are still cheating.

Good man!

Oh yes, I remember the pis takes as early gps adopters took it out of their sack and waited an eon while they got enough satellites for a position. Only for the battery to fail due to the cold. Meanwhile, all the analogueers had already sorted bearings, timings, pacings etc and moved off.

I had an early gps watch, 40th birthday present. It was the most useless piece of kit ever. Battery would fail after an hour of use, couldn't use it with gloves on, took a billion years to get a position.

Chalk.

Depends on where you are. Ben Nevis tourist track, ridiculous. Greenland ice cap, less so. Most places fall somewhere in between. I carry mine (switched off in my pack) most of the time in arctic Sweden, but only rarely in the Alps (usually only if there are complex glacier descents that would become tricky in a whiteout). Actual navigating is still with maps and compass, but a GPS can offer additional safety if the weather craps out. 

My nomination are boots with integrated gaiters. I laughed at them when they first came out, but would now not swap my Phantoms against anything else for glaciers and mixed stuff.

CB

I would argue that boots with integrated gaiters are just one of those things that are really useful in specific circumstances and rubbish everywhere else.  Whether or not you think they will catch on just depends on whether you do a lot of "that sort of thing".

High nordic ski boots and wellies are both the same idea and they have been around for decades.

Even though I started climbing in the early 80's, chalk was already a fairly accepted piece of kit. When I bought my first shoes; MB3's, from a shop in York, they suggested I needed a chalk bag as well. I asked, "Won't the chalk get wet when it rains?" No climbing walls near the North York Moors in those days. All climbing was outside, come rain or shine.

Obviously the Clean Hand Gang were not early adopters!

I was thinking of UK use.  I have to admit I have used one (or at least my partner did) in Greenland, but nowhere else.

There's a guy in my home town who was pitched a business proposal by a dutch guy in tbe early 90's: satellite navigation for cars. A guy came to him saying he worked making sat navs for sailing and he thought there was a market for using them in cars. He could do all the satellite stuff just needed a partner to pitch in some cash and help with the design. The guy turned him down as he couldn't see it ever catching on. The dutchguy went on to found TomTom and is multimillionaire and the guy I know props up the bar at The Castle and tells anyone who will listen about how he was nearly a millionaire. 

The Overhand Knot to join ropes together for abseiling.

If we are going to throw in things that are still controversial then I will have "The Escaper".

I reckon in 10 years either everyone will have one or they will be remembered as the product that sank Beal.

I held out for years until a late night encounter with the Kidderminster one way system when all I had was a set of printed directions.

I completely agree about belay glasses. I was initially sceptical and whilst I haven't bought any, but when climbing with one of my partners, I'll always now borrow his.

I'll also nominate jamming gloves as a potential future success. Another item that seems frivolous, but is actually very sensible for some people and is already on that journey from curiosity to common place.

My favourite are the guys walking down from some cable car station in the Bavarian Alps, typically on a service road, with a 50l backpack, GPS clipped to one shoulder strap and a big, fat satellite phone to the other.

Usually such people are from Berlin.

Fully kitted out in Bavarian style, with Haferl shoes, leather trousers, wooly jacket and felt hat, almost certainly from the US.

CB

Joining 2 ropes together with an overhand, now that's just shear lunacy!

Jamming gloves - the new gimmick for climbers who already have all the gear they need!

Mind you, I've seen some pictures of, albeit probably sponsored, climbers on very hard crack routes wearing jamming gloves.

Surely you mean the ring road?

Buggered if I know.  I haven't been back since.  It was quite a long time ago.

I agree, but go to the boot room of any hut in the Alps, and half of the boots will be in that style (maybe not quite, at least yet, and the rest are LS Nepal Evos).

I would therefore argue that these boots have indeed caught on, largely replacing plastic doubles, even though I would have never guessed this 20 years ago, which is what I think the OP was after.

CB

Heretic!

Jamming gloves are great, and not particularly new.....

CB

Must say, missed that one when it came out.

Will make for exciting long abseils where it's hard not to bounce a little bit.

Climbing shoes as opposed to climbing boots.

The one way system in Kidderminster is very simple. The one way is away from Kidderminster.

Seriously though, great town, lovely, erm, roundabouts.

Selling £400 nearly waterproof anoraks to skinflint climbers

Marketing and advertising are remarkable dark arts.

I don't, and they can shove theirs in the same place they can shove their spot beacons.

Bolts!

A few years ago now, while scrambling around the base of a hot, sunny crag in Sardinia, I came up with the idea of sticky rubber approach flip-flops - I even had the name down. I told my mates I was going to try and flog my idea for Stealth C4 'Grip-Flops' to 5.10, they laughed and (because I really was only joking) I thought nothing more of it. Within a couple of seasons I started seeing them, albeit made by Mammut, in the shops...

Still don't know which of my so-called mates did the dirty on me!

Rock shoes that were not EBs.  Everything else was inferior.

Then EB decided they could make them cheaper by injection moulding them, and that was the end of that.

Walking poles.

How we used to laugh, as fit young fell runners, when we first saw them becoming popular in the lake District.

25 years later I always use them myself on rough terrain, or when carrying a heavy pack, and the range of them in outdoor gear shops is bewildering.

Kiddy doesn't have much one way, but it does have an inner ring road which is dual carriageway and has continual two lane roundabouts on it. Supposedly this made the Kiddy test centre the hardest one to pass at in the West Midlands, meaning all if us who did pass there were very proud of our driving skills!

I thought leashless ice tools would just be a competition thing...

Have you ever thought it odd that of the two old timer UKCers who know Kidderminster well, we both ended up living in Scandinavia? It's almost as if we were trying to escape or something...

Escape is a very good way of putting it!

I am amazed that lycra has got a second look-in after the fashion horrors of the 80's & 90's

Carrying your own protection (nuts, cams etc). In the 1950s/60s you put a sling around the odd holly bush or rock spike that you passed, otherwise, as leader, you just didn't fall....although there were rumours that some people were carrying pebbles or drilled out engineering nuts in their pockets.

I remember reading an anecdote in "The Villain" about Don Whillans getting a certain amount of stick for being an early adopter of nylon rope.  Apparently it mostly ended when one of the hecklers decked after his tried & true hemp rope broke.

If I'm honest my memory is a bit hazy but the bits I do recall involved approaching the same roundabout from different directions about 3 or 4 times, and signs that looped back on themselves...  No escape.

From then on I have taken a slightly longer route to Snowdonia that doesn't involve the K word.

Clip sticks. A completely ridiculous idea that seems to have become very popular ...

and very useful

Another thing was bouldering as a sport in it's own right. You might do a few moves on boulders near your base camp on a rest day, and Font was known for it's circuits which were regarded as long horizontal climbing routes. As someone said above no bouldering mats, just a beer mat attached by a long bit of string to your waist so that you could pull it up when you had done the move rather than walk back to collect it. It's purpose being to keep your plimsoles clean from sand.

Yeah, hemp rope and runners were not a good combination, particularly if the runner sling was also hemp. Little more than psychological protection because hemp had no give in it and would snap if shock loaded. It also had a tendency to freeze solid in winter.

I'm just waiting for flares/bell bottoms to return. You had to shake your leg before placing it, because the flare hid both the hold and your foot

Another case of  'the lost millions'[ story. Many years ago I was offered the chance to invest in a company making early trekking poles. Oh how I laughed! Who on earth would ever want to go round looking like a pillock who had misplaced his skis, I chortled.  I now have two pairs of poles....but sadly no millions

Surprised the hecklers didn't get decked by DW for giving him stick....

I have been amazed how fleeces and down jackets have become so trendy!!! 

You can walk down Oxford Street in London and see no end of Rab, North Face etc. jackets. Worn by many people  who have probably never been near a mountain!!

I remember Helly Hansen fleeces (had one in the late 80s) that made you look like a woolly mammoth (with a bum flap) and massive down jackets that made you look like the michelin man!!! No way fashionistas would wear them!!

Whatever happened to Ron Hills

I remember saying that walking poles were 'just for old men and cripples'. 

I'm surprised nobody's mentioned leashless tools yet.  I remember seeing the original Quark Ergos (circa 2003) in the shop and thinking "what a stupid idea". less than a year later, I had a pair. 

My first fleece was a Helly and, yes, it made the wearer look really odd. I remember turning up at Stanage wearing it proud as punch and even other climbers looking at me strangely. 30 odd years later....

Exactly, what if you drop one? How do you rest without leashes? Bloody stupid idea that'll never catch on!

Nonetheless, by 2006 I was firmly in the leashless camp - oh but of course having dropped one first high on an ice route in La Grave.

In the early 90's there was a communal clip stick at Malham. It was made of, guess what, a stick. A real stick from a tree. It was left there and everyone used it for high first clips.

When the first commercial stick came out, again, I thought, "Hmm, may have some success with that, but won't be a big seller, too specialised and not enough climbers to make it really profitable."

So many years later, there are now at least 2 commercial clip stick sellers, the original is on a revamp and the chat for a day out sport climbing usually includes "Who's bringing a stick clip? Most in the team will have one and too many won't fit in the boot of the car!

You can still buy them on the dark web

Ron Hills and Bitcoin feel incompatible somehow.

Internet discussion forums for climbers...

Yes , you have to be able to program and follow instructions from a satnav.

amazing!!

It seems sensible to make sure new drivers know that turning down the dirt track with the "unsuitable for motor vehicles" and "danger!  cliff edge!" signs just because the talking box told them to is a bad idea.

If nothing else then failing people who can't learn this keeps a few idiots off the roads.

In a way it reminds me of my multiple choice driving theory tests.  The 4 options all seemed to be:

- I can't read the question.

- I am a psychopath.

- I am an idiot.

- The right answer.

Anyway, back on topic: I for one was very dismissive of soft shells when they first appeared.  What did they offer that a standard fleece didn't?

Very compatible, I'd say.

My only gripe with my trusted Ron Hills is their lack of decent pocket for keys and coins - so virtual coins are much better suited.

Wind resistance, up to a point?
CB

There was already windproof fleece, which was mostly crap.  I assumed this new stuff would also be mostly crap.

Moon boards/ LED walls. They are appearing everywhere.

One of our walls now has a 17m high LED wall, complete with autobelays. I do wonder how long it will last before the gimmick wears off though.

To add to that... autobelays. They seem to have sprung in from the outdoor activity centre world and straight into your average climbing gym.

One for the mountain bikers - dropper seat posts

When my mate told us he'd got a remote control for his seat post we all took the piss, and thought we'd be able to use a TV remote to drop his saddle whilst riding. Once I tried on I realised there was no going back.

Been there done that, lol! }:-D (sort of!) 

Slightly off tangent but I visited Pembroke on a family holiday in the early 70's, I think, and dismissed it as a heap of choss waiting to fall down.  We were staying at Lydstep so I suspect it was Mother Careys I saw. At the time Colin Mortlock and Jim Perrin had put up a few routes.  In my defence my experience of limestone was limited to Derbyshire and Yorkshire a lot of which was loose and chossy at the time.  If only I had had a little more imagination and taken the trouble to investigate a little more thoroughly

Al

I'm certainly sympathetic to that. I'd like to think I would have the imagination to see the potential of some new venues, but would probably just dismiss them as well.

Having climbed with a few real visionaries, they are a different breed.

Disappointingly for thrill seekers the Escaper is pretty safe since a stopper knot on the device prevents any untimely release for the first man down.  Meanwhile the second person checks that there is no slippage and that the rope is retrievable.  It does however still have an integral length of shockcord as a reminder of its more exciting DIY bungee/fifi hook predecessor. 

Surprised no one has mentioned a Grigri. They're everywhere now, but I didn't like the idea when they came out and I still don't have one.

And yes, belay glasses, bouldering mats, walking poles, car GPS, DMM Predator ice tools, mono-point crampons, velcro on climbing shoes, climbing jeans, helmets, zipped pockets on pack waistbelts...

Not to mention the original Amstrad....

"Have you ever thought it odd that of the two old timer UKCers who know Kidderminster well, we both ended up living in Scandinavia? It's almost as if we were trying to escape or something..."

That tells me everything we need to know about the Kidderminster one way system.....

Water bladders with drinking tubes. Looked a gimmick / excessive (its Scotland, not the Sahara) and the tube gets in the way. 

What's wrong with a bottle?

Sunglassses: they scratch easily. How did they ever replace a piece of wood / bone with a horizontal slit

http://www.messagetoeagle.com/first-sunglasses-were-used-2000-years-ago-by-...