Offset Fiends

[Zenolith]

Anyone have experience with these? I can think of more crack climbs with flared cracks than paralell so I imagine they might be rather useful, especially in the larger sizes. Black Dome is having a big sale on these $32 apeice, and also on rigid stems and 1.5 tech friends.

[Dru]

borrowed a friends once and i would say they are most useful for aid, or in particular sizes for particular routes. in 10 yrs. of climbing at squamish i can only think of one place on one route where they would work where nothing else will (for free routes anyways). pretty much a specialist piece IMHO.

[forrest_m]

Dunno if they're "specialist piece", more depends on where you climb. I have a couple of small offset aliens and I use them a lot. Plugging them into pin scars, which you do a lot at old-school granite areas (index, squamish, etc.) you can often get a half size bigger than if you have an even sized cam, ie. the blue-green alien instead of the blue tcu. One or two in the smaller sizes, anyway, is pretty useful. I've also found that they often can be placed well even if a non-offset cam would also work, so they make a good alternative to doubles in certain sizes.(They're also considered more or less essential for a modern aid rack.)

$.02

I do think any offset piece bigger than the yellow tcu would probably not be that useful.

[This message has been edited by forrest_m (edited 05-16-2001).]

[Dru]

pin scars are for tri-cams. for the narrow scars that's where you need home made 0.2s and 0.3's on wire

[Retrosaurus]

I use the HB offset nuts and truly love'em. They often degrade a R/X route into the realm of sanity.

[erik]

a consideration of the wild country line, the stem length. if have been climbing long you probably notice how many wc cams are fixed. these cams might have a "patented" cam angle offering unparalled strength, but if this bad boy walks even a bit you are screwed! granted you should probably place the cam tight, to alleve this issue. but in a non-perfect world we can't always do it.

plus aleins just for some reason seem for superior.

later zeno.

p.s. no shit talkin here ole boy!

[Zenolith]

Thx for the info Erik. I have never noticed that about friends since I don't know anyone who uses them (I use some rigid stems but have never had a problem like you describe). I don't aid climb (yet) so I dont really have much use for offset cams. I do think they may be handy for a lot of columnar basalt climbs where the larger cracks are more weathered on the outside and thus don't take a regular #10 Metolius as well as I'd like. That inspires me to start a new thread...