OpenBeta Forums

So this happened today.

I fell off a route, rested a bit, and made my way back up. The rope was still under tension, and as I moved up and over, my belay loop brushed past the draw and clipped into it

Sounded like someone else clipping a draw so I didn't think twice about it, until I became stuck on the wall

My local gym is redoing their bouldering mats. Here's what that looks like!

It's not much, I'm just a sport climbing weenie, but here's mine!

A new favourite in the area, Bottle Glass has got some nice unpolished moderates away from the crowds at the main wall.

All you have to put up with is a floor covered in glass shards from the practices of local drunks, hence the name.

Okay, I did a thing.

Yesterday I briefly outlined my plans to build a set of practice anchors in my garage.

After a quick trip to the hardware store, I got what I needed and as promised, here are some progress pics and the final result.

Some notes

• The initial plan was to use tee nuts or threaded inserts, but I wasn't able to easily get those, so the fallback was to use regular nuts and to drill a recess into the back of the board so they'd sit flush.
• There was some splintering the first time I tried to use a spade bit. Practice makes perfect!
• I expected the studs in my garage to be 16 inches apart, but they were 21.5 inches. Measure twice, cut once!
• I was today years old when I discovered a 2x4 is not 2 inches by 4 inches.

Cost breakdown (Canadian dollars):

• Fixe 316 SS Bolt Hanger 1/2" (MEC, $2.93 apiece)
• Camp 8mm Oval Steel Quicklink (MEC, $4.95 apiece)
• 1" spade bit ($8.98)
• 1/2" threaded bolt ($3.85 apiece)
• 1/2" nut ($0.26 apiece)
• Free/on-hand items:
  • Scrap wood (2x4)
  • Power drill and drill bits
  • Adjustable wrench and socket wrench
  • Deck screws
• Total: $32.96 CAD

Not sure how active the rope solo scene is on fedi, but I figure I'd ask.

There's been quite a bit of discussion over the years about various systems, but the modern consensus seems to be to use two progress capture devices on a single (or dual) fixed line, with one suspended higher than the other via use of a neck strap or chest harness.

By far (at least in North America) the consensus seems to be to use the Petzl Microtraxion.

The Edelrid Spoc seems to be a good alternative, is both lighter and cheaper, and is also mentioned occasionally in discussions about TRS.

Brent Barghahn is seen in this photo in a double-Spoc setup:

Any potential problems I should be considering?

@dare@kamu.social I was climbing a neat free standing pinnacle at my local crag and was about to reach the anchors when I looked up and saw a turkey vulture's head peering over the edge at me.

Luckily there wasn't a nest at the top or anything, it was genuinely curious about this crazy human climbing rocks, and flew away soon after

Just test-drove the topo editor that @bohwaz@mamot.fr fixed up, and it's working great, nice work!!

Scaling is a bit off; I had to scale up pretty much everything (lines, marks, text) by 200-300%, but that's due to images being so huge nowadays.

Looking forward to updating my photos of The Crag Next Door with proper topos!

Looks like there's a new resoler in town for us Canucks.

Based out of Hamilton, Ontario, turnaround time of 4 weeks!

Any resole here usually goes to Mike Doody and his excellent team at Ontario Resoles. Nice to have some competition regardless.

Anyone know if they do no-edge? Heh.

https://www.instagram.com/reviveresoles/

@badgardener@mastodonapp.uk @mootparadox@fosstodon.org I think it's wild that there is such a strong trad ethic over in the UK.

Here it seems the alpine and outdoors clubs are a minority. The crags are mostly frequented by gym-first climbers venturing outdoors, mentored by local area guides and other gym climbers, and it is almost universally sport climbing.

... or maybe all the trad folk keep away from us sport climbing weenies for fear we might make them boulder.

Do you rock climb, and also use an Android device? Do you want to try an alpha to get some beta? (har har har)

... via the OpenBeta Discord... we're seeking Android users to test drive the upcoming alpha release of the OpenBeta mobile app:

I'm planning on making an internal Alpha release this week. If you have an Android device and would like to be included in this, please DM me your email so I can opt you in. We need at least 20 alpha testers to be eligible for public release so I encourage everyone to test the Alpha build if they can! — Vichy79

If you're interested, simply DM Vichy79 on Discord, or reply here and I will pass on the message!

In the meantime, here's a screenshot of what the image viewer looks like in-app. Pretty slick!

You can also join our OpenBeta Discord here.

P.S. Did you know we just did a volunteer spotlight on Vincent? Check it out!

So excited to announce that the OpenBeta mobile app for android is available to download on the google play store! A huge thanks to our many volunteers who worked on this important part of Our project

We are still in beta testing mode looking for app feedback- provide any improvements via the play store or DM us!

Hello and welcome to the OpenBeta Forums' September update!

It's been a pretty wild couple months here as @bean and I try to set things up here.

To give you a bit of history, before these forums were re-branded under the OpenBeta banner, it served as a news aggregator for climbing news publications. I was finding that I was missing certain important events (related to the 2024 Olympic qualifier series, mostly) and wanted one single place to check for climbing news. To achieve that, I turned to my old friend RSS (remember that?) in order to proactively pull in content from all sorts of publications, @Gripped, @climbing, @HowNOT2, etc...

All of that still remains, and can be viewed in the @news and @videos categories.

By August I teamed up with @viet and @bean to re-brand the forums to expand OpenBeta's social reach. The idea of running a forum paired very nicely with OpenBeta's mission to advocate for a free exchange of beta and ideas, as well as an underlying current of maintaining freedom of content ownership.

We want the OpenBeta forums to be your one-stop shop for climbing-related news and discussion. Help us make it happen by joining the conversation today!

A couple new items this month to introduce:

1. You don't need to actually visit the site to be kept up-to-date. You can register your for push notifications and receive updates straight to your device. This works in-tandem with the in-app notifications, and email notifications/digests.
2. We updated the main homepage to a more "feed-style" concept, which highlights content more than a traditional category/topic layout. There are obviously many opinions on whether this is preferable or not, but in the meantime, the original category listing layout can be found at /categories.

N.B. The NodeBB team has generously provided hosting for OpenBeta, and in exchange, we get to test our brand-new functionality before it is released, win-win!

@rayko@mastodon.raykoworld.com ah that's good advice! Ironically the weakest part of this board is the actual attachment to the studs.

I need to buy longer screws and put four more. That'll be "super good enough" hopefully, as a certain someone says.

@bean no flex, although I also haven't fully weighted the board just yet. I've only practiced a top belay setup so far.

Looking to set up a belay/rappel station in my garage just for practice, trying out new things, and general faffery.

I'm not super handy but can work my way around simple power tools.

Anyway, my current plan is to:

• drill holes into a piece of 2x4
• install tee nuts at the back (or maybe threaded inserts at the front, or failing that, nuts at the back.)
• install the hangers using M12 bolts (as per hanger specs)
• screw that unit directly into wall studs in my garage using deck screws
• slap on some quicklinks to the hangers and call it a day

Thoughts?

Hanging a picture frame is one thing, but supporting body weight is another entirely! I suppose it doesn't have to, but it'd be nice for it to be able to.

@jcmchammy@mountains.social thanks, I wish I'd thought of that over the weekend!

I will admit that lowering on the grigri (after redirecting the brake strand upward) was very convenient. I guess I was hoping to find a silver bullet from among the surprisingly vast field of belay devices.

(Ontario is grigri country heh)

@jcmchammy@mountains.social thank you so much for the detailed response, that's very helpful!

Let's say you're in a single pitch context where your follower wasn't able to get past a crux, etc., would you then switch to a redirected belay to lower? 3:1 haul?

Last weekend I took a couple friends to the local crag for their first time out.

Since I was the only one able to clean, others led and set the anchor, but on occasion if the leader were unable to reach the anchors, I would set the anchor and belayed the others up from the top using a grigri. That worked pretty well, though I'm aware that Petzl doesn't recommend using the grigri in such a manner (a redirected belay is preferred.)

I did notice that the DMM Pivot set up in guide/auto-blocking mode had a dedicated method for lowering — using a second biner to adjust the angle of the device. Are there concerns with doing so for lowering a second climber all the way to the ground?

Whenever lowering is mentioned, it's always in the context is lowering the second "a few feet" or so.

Would you fix your own shoes with this DIY shoe repair kit?

Supposedly it is for when you wear away part of the rand with foot dragging, or poke a hole in the rubber on sharp rock.

@jcmchammy@mountains.social your auto belay routes have fixed draws on them? That's a little peculiar