UKC

We all have that special piece we can't wait to use again. Mine is the number 5 wallnut or the gold dmm offset... For some reason they seem to go anywhere and always gives confidence. Second to those would be my blue totem basic, just seems to be the answer whenever nothing else will fit!

I'm mighty looking forward to trying out my totems I bought over lockdown though! 

This is an extremely geeky thread... I like it!

Good choices. But, I think: no.4 wallnut, purple 0.5 c4, green alien. Or... possibly the pink tricam!

I've lobbed onto my pink tricam a few times, so it gets a lot of points. But, my feelings about my beloved purple c4 are best summed up by Dylan:

My love she speaks like silence
Without ideals or violence
She doesn't have to say she's faithful
Yet she's true, like ice, like fire...

A technical Friend 1.5 placed in a horizontal break.

Mine is a "Tight rope"

Red offset or red number 6 nut seems to go almost everywhere

This winter iv developed a fondness for 13cm ice screws

Shitty rusty gogarth peg.
Even though they're crap and mostly worthless, there's not much else that brings the same sense of relief.

My MOACs which I have been using for approx 55 years. I do change the string in them quite frequently! I also have an old clog from the same date but that does not get used quite as much because crack shapes have reputedly changed over this time span!

Not a stainless steel peg? 

I wish I went rock climbing enough in the last few years to have a favourite piece of gear... 😭

Nah. They only show up when it's going well. When you're run out and terrified it's always a rusty one.

Dmm gold offset

Pink tricam 

The offset esp is such a well used nut i should double it up. 

Any  well fitting rockboot at its optimal best.

Just broken in but not yet sloppy.

Trouble is I know it won't last

Number 4 wallnut.

Unless a clump of heather counts as gear?

Gold Dragon: there's just something really satisfying and reassuring about slotting it into a perfect grit crack or break. The black Totem probably comes second: it's surprisingly reassuring for its size and is usually placed when there's otherwise no decent gear. Pink tricam gets an honourable mention too.

The pair of rock shoes that are old enough to have stretched, but still stiff enough to edge. That are old enough to have a few seagull puke- stains but new enough to still have the heel pulls. And old enough to have odd laces but new enough to only faintly smell of rotten feet.

Getting in the gold or - even better - "Big Blue" - well... you're dealing with proper gear then! None of this faffy little stuff. Every time I place Big Blue I say to myself: "y'could hang a bloody house off that!"

Though, to be fair, there's a grim satisfaction in running it out above micronuts. I don't think I've ever got as much satisfaction from placing gear as from Columbia (E1 5b), where the top slab is all micros, ideally placed in pairs, before a sprint to the next good foothold.

I love my blancos, they are on the second resole and one day they will be looking down upon me from the place where good shoes go when they die 😢 

Prussiks

Where do you get them resoled out of interest? I've not found anywhere that does c4 resoles...

The answer's obviously Moac Original

However I've taken my only ever factor 2 fall for want of a pink tricam which go in quarried shotholes

You're only ever allowed one pair of a good five-ten shoe. When you try to buy it again they've made it sh&t. That's how it works. Even if it's only the next week.

I got them resoled at feet first in the unparallel rubber hard. Honestly I think the RH performs in the same way and just as well as the C4 did and is a perfect replacement. I think most resolers have the unparallel stuff 

Seeing a few people expressing preference for mid sized nuts with which I agree. Big enough to inspire confidence but not so big as to be awkward to place. I find larger nuts often don't sit as well as they sit on bumps within the crack.

A gigantic hex of course, for the beautiful music it makes when clanging against half a dozen other gigantic hexes. 

Dinner jacket and bow tie

My rope has saved me from a few scrapes over the years

Hmm, mine's changed quite a lot over the years, there was a time when it would have been my no. 2 RP, then my 24V Bosch cordless drill...now it's my armchair...

Not sure, I hesitate between a Hex 6 & a MOAC, both among the first bits of climbing gear I ever bought.

A red dmm half nut which was crag swag taken several years ago on Stirling Bridge. I think it belonged to the one arm climber guy if you're out there. It fits in bloody everything 👍. Let me know if you want it back.

Give it time.

Petzl Shunt.

Infinately more reliable than a partner turning up.

DMM hexes any of them. That hex clanging noise and feeling when they sit just right. Of course the extra magical move of extending the sling if needed.

And an old school fig 8

For everyday satisfaction, it's got to be either a Rock 3 or a blue Alien.  I wouldn't dream of climbing without them, even if i was doing an offwidth ).

But for best ever satisfaction, it's got to be my trusty Stopper 12.  It held my first proper fall (Fingernail in Wilton 1).  But i can't afford to lose it, so there's a dilemma, do i carry it or not?

BD Cobra, for the aesthetics and balance

50cm sewn sling that I carry as a quick draw shortened with three turns. Multiple uses from providing an easy to grip 'cheat pull' to something to sit on at the top of each sport route while threading the chain. 

Do you mean a wild country superlight? DMM halfnuts only came out last year I think?

Originally my fave was a Chouinard no 5 stopper, brilliant little nut - long gone. No 6 was nearly as satisfying - I may still have that one.

But this was replaced in my affections with a (crag-swag) Chouinard double curve nut - no idea what they were properly called, was after rocks arrived but this one was curved on the narrow faces as well - about a rock 6 size, brilliant, fitted loads of places. Unfortunately it fitted rather too well one evening many years ago at Goblin Coombe.

I think my favourite piece now is an offset flexible Friend 2.5-3.

My rarest piece is a rigid Friend half, not many of those around. Was only available for about 6 months before flexible Friends appeared, and has 3 different metals (titanium shaft) so I understand many of those ended up getting jammed by electrolysis/corrosion.

Not only 5.10, most manufacturers and this also applies to running shoes.

You find the shoes that fit perfectly, really happy with them, but you neglect to get a 2nd pair that will stay in the box in a cupboard - because forking out £60-£100 for something to sit in a cupboard seems like an unaffordable extravagance.

The shoes wear out; I'll have another pair of them you think. After fruitless searching you find that they aren't made anymore and nobody has any old stock left in your size. Adverts proclaim "here's the improved replacement model"; improved my arse!

I have fallen into this trap many times over the years and I'm 100% sure it'll happen again ☹

It's no accident that I have 2 pairs of untouched 2019 scarpas at the back of the wardrobe.

Oh. Probably😂.

My old DMM Anka. Bought in the mid 90s when the people I climbed with tended to use such things as belay devices and I knew no better then. As far as I know I've never abseiled on it, and it's way too big and heavy for me to consider using it today, but I like the shape of it and it makes a nice paperweight.

The actual gear that I'd rack now is just gear. I don't really understand this "favourite wallnut" business, but each to their own...

Yes, for me, definitely my original MOAC, bought 54 years ago and re-slinged twice.

Likewise...

Yeah, my first one is exactly like that: very rounded. Later ones had sharper edges.

I have two, no longer in use. I much prefer my first - with the rounded edges you mentioned (caused by systemic abuse on the rock over a period of nigh on 50 years!)

Yes, I have several hanging in my archived collection but... I just found that a Rock 7 on a good length of rope works even better.  Hard to believe, I know.  I had a lucky one of these for ages but, as is in the nature of super useful bits of gear, it was eventually sacrificed in an epic retreat. 

Very fond of my ancient set of RPs.  Indispensable on the culm slabs, where the rock is soft enough not to damage them too much!

Like everyone else, I have recently been seduced by my black Totem. 

You say that you had a 'lucky' Rock 7. But that's the whole point about the original MOAC - it was always dual purpose: 1. to provide bomber protection, 2. to bring luck. On many occasions at or near a crux I've been superstitious about using a MOAC. If it doesn't go in, I'll fail, but conversely - more important - if it does, the route hasn't a chance. Strangely enough that always worked for me.

Yes, it's mostly psychology - and I'm misremembering, it was a Rock 9 of course, which was pretty much MOAC-sized but a significantly better shape.  I guess you also became pretty good at spotting the right sized cracks too.

The length of the rope it was slung on was also crucial; if it was the right combination of length and weight you could swing it much further than you could reach and more often than not it would just drop in perfectly.  I think this is a bit of a lost art!

Ah, the art of placing nuts before wires were invented ... nostalgia ...

Starting out it was a Moac.

In my prime it was a thank God RP or Chouinard wire.

In my dotage it’s my clip stick.  

From the clip stick it's only a relatively small step to the armchair.

No chance Gordon, I’ll be back out on the grit as soon as I can...... Remember “don’t let the old man in”

Grivel Quantum Techs or Scarpa Phantom Guides

CB

And in stark contrast to the lovely Moac, I could never get on with these blighters - especially the brass ones...

My MOAC all the way!!

Definitely know the feeling though u described

Mine has to be a Moac.

Based on the fact that the MOAC was invented before the crags, which it always fits, the MOAC wins.   

A 12mm bolt, or even better a glue in. Preferably on gritstone. Ideally Stanage.

Andy F