My local gym is redoing their bouldering mats. Here's what that looks like!
devnull
Posts
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Ever wondered what gym bouldering mats look like inside? -
Show us your gear wall!It's not much, I'm just a sport climbing weenie, but here's mine!
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Practice anchors install (w/ pictures!)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
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September Forums UpdateHello 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:
- 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.
- 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!
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Practice anchors install (w/ pictures!)@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.
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Rap station in a garageLooking 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.
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DMM Pivot for lowering to ground via top belay?@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)
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DMM Pivot for lowering to ground via top belay?@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?
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DMM Pivot for lowering to ground via top belay?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.
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What does it mean when something is BlueSign approved?Does your gear have the "BlueSign approved" label on it?
My local gear shop put out an article about what it actually means.
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Practice anchors install (w/ pictures!)@mkroehnert@social.tchncs.de indeed, that video is exactly why I even played around with it
So now one more esoteric tool in my quiver.
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Practice anchors install (w/ pictures!)Today's faffery — Garda hitch shenanigans
Want a solution to a super contrived scenario whereby you have no belay device or HMS carabiner (for a munter hitch), but do have two non-locking carabiners and still want to haul something up with a makeshift progress capture device?
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Fill out the 2024 Access Fund climber's survey!@bean@uvix.cc me too! Although I'm in Canada and so I don't think any of my answers (or the prizes) apply
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Adam Ondra on 6th Place at Olympics and Feeling BitterSo Adam Ondra feels bitter about 6th place. One could argue that the nature of climbing pits one against oneself, and it was only via sport climbing competitions that we really began to see this "merciless" nature.
In fact climbers tend to be the most supportive bunch!
Keep in mind if you think climbing is merciless, tennis is much more so... only one winner, and everybody else is a loser. One can only imagine the mental havoc it wreaks.
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Disable swipe navigation when viewing routes?Is it possible to disable the swipe navigation when looking at routes? I've been in the middle of editing a route on my phone when I swiped a little too hard and lost all my changes (nothing crazy lol)