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Re: [larryd] WHY use hexes?:
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dingus
Dec 7, 2007, 3:52 AM
Views: 12649
Registered: Dec 16, 2002
Posts: 17398
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Hexes played a role in the development of sport climbing in America.
Consider:
Ron Kauk discovered the Separate Reality Crack
after doing the FA of Tales of Power, which he led using passive pro.
Seperate Reality presented a challenge - how to hang out long enough to either bang pins or place hexes in the hand crack out the roof. The game was clean climbing so I doubt pins were seriously considered.
The roof isn't thick and the crack splits it to the top. So Kauk laid down on the slab and preplaced a couple hexes with long slings that hung down from above through the roof crack to hang out the bottom. He then went back down and led it through for the FA. Bachar and others said the lead was tainted.
Jardine was next and Kauk once told a tale about watching Jardine on an attempt at a bottom up lead of Separate Reality with these new fangled secret devices he'd used to slay Crimson Cringe.
Jardine led out, placing cams as he went. He eventualy sagged onto a piece, ushering in the new wave concept of working a route, a well developed sport climbing tactic.
Kauk was amazed at both the cams and the hang doggin. He was put off by the non-trad ways of Jardine but clearly he evolved considering his subsequent sport climbing achievements.
But back in the late 70s hexes were the state of the art and the limitations of the gear itself were an obstacle to progressively harder routes.
Friends changed all that and changed it fast.
Its not so much being able to place them without thought. Personally I think cams take a lot of thought. Mine seem to anyway.
But they can be fast, and they fit in places where nuts don't.
Anyway, interesting conjunction of events there on Separate Reality and a good name for the route. Hexes, cams, hang dogging, working a route, ground up, top down, trad climber sends some of the hardest sport routes on the planet, Jardine gave up climbing because it no longer challenged him.
Weird. Maybe there was a hex on them all?
DMT
(This post was edited by dingus on Dec 7, 2007, 4:01 AM)
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Edit Log:
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Post edited by dingus
() on Dec 7, 2007, 3:56 AM
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Post edited by dingus
() on Dec 7, 2007, 3:58 AM
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Post edited by dingus
() on Dec 7, 2007, 4:01 AM
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