HUGE PROBLEM

[billcoe]

THE PROBLEM: If the internet rumormill is correct: the best Cam Hooks in the world, the Leepers, will no longer be made or available as Ed Leeper is retiring and will not be making them any longer.

 

Link to supertopo rumor

 

Link to Mt Tools description of same

 

Fortunatly, Climb Max still has some on hand...for now. Link to parts

 

[ivan]

how hard can it be for someone to step in and fill the void? cam hooks don't exactly look hard to make.

[billcoe]

how hard can it be for someone to step in and fill the void? cam hooks don't exactly look hard to make.

 

Ahhhh, then you should have no problem using the Pika cam hooks. Have fun, bring a parachute.

[JosephH]

ebay and I believe Theron who I'm working with on the A5 hammer project has been talking to Ed about picking up some of the products.

 

Ed's busy with other things these days:

 

 

http://silencingthefields.com/

[billcoe]

Thanks for the reminder JH.

 

A quick note for those young folks or others unfamiliar with Ed Leeper and his work. I have big, deep and wide respect for Ed Leeper, who was doing pullout tensile testing on pitons and bolts when I was pretty much still in diapers and I've been climbing for 36 years or so. He would post these tests in the now long gone Summit magazine and his efforts greatly contributed to our knowledge base as climbers. Later, long, long after he had stopped producing what many considered to be the finest bolt hanger in it's day, out of his pocket he paid for recall notices and full page ad's in magazines to watch out as a few of his high tensile black alloy 1/4" hangers which had been found to have developed stress cracks. His hangers had been imitated with a less quality product as well, he wanted us to know all this and really stepped up way above and beyond.

 

His Leeper pitons set a very high standard for holding strength to weight ratio that hasn't been matched before or since.

 

 

Classic Leeper hanger titled first bolt. (these are real old old hangers)

 

Hanger recall:

"LEEPER HANGERS NOW IN PLACE MAY BE DANGEROUS

 

Stress-corrosion cracking —The problem:

Over time (decades or less) a high-strength alloy steel bolt hanger can be weakened seriously by a crack that propagates slowly in the metal—eventually leaving a hanger that can be broken in a mild fall, or even by body weight. And such a stress-corrosion crack may be barely visible to the eye or hidden on the back side of the hanger.

 

Perhaps only one in a hundred of my hangers will have been weakened. But for a hanger in place, there is unfortunately no way to predict if and when such a crack may begin or how fast it will progress from a tiny to a major crack. It may take decades, or only years, depending on factors that are unknowable.

 

After several broken or visibly cracked hangers had been reported or returned to me, I obtained and tested 640 hangers that were apparently OK, from various rebolting projects. About 99% held around 3000 lbs. or more, but seven failed at substantially lower loads. This is an unacceptable risk. I want to see the potentially dangerous hangers removed—including the 99 percent that are not cracked, since there is no way to tell which they are. Or I want to see them smashed into uselessness as a poor second choice.

 

To say that climbers should just not trust those old bolt placements that use my hangers is an even worse choice. I have tried repeatedly to warn the climbing community, but climbers still often tell me they hadn't heard of any special danger.

 

The risk is there, and I need your help in passing the word and in getting those old hangers off the rock. Unfortunately, a cracked hanger may look sound; while many hangers that are seriously rusted or bent are almost as strong as new. Appearance can't warn us, and experience with other hangers of mine is not valid. If we see a long fall held, it's too easy to say, "Hell, these old Leepers are fine!" Indeed, most are fine; but some are dangerous.

 

Getting the word out:

If anyone has already been killed or seriously injured when one of my hangers broke, I would like to know about it, with details—so I can use the reality and sadness of it to help get the word out effectively.

 

In the future, if someone is killed or seriously injured, I would like to know about it right away, so I can participate in the analysis of the incident, if that's feasible. Please call me immediately at 303-442-3773. I don't want to see such accidents happen if they can possibly be avoided.

 

At present, I know of only one fatal broken-hanger accident, which is the triple-fatality rappelling accident on El Cap in 1978. The hangers were not mine, but the failure was of the stress-corrosion cracking type. A weakened hanger broke under the multiple body weight, plus gear. Unfortunately, the failure of just one of the two hangers dropped the party, because of how the rappel stance was rigged.

 

It is true that various hangers made by others, in ways that are similar to the methods and materials I used, have developed similar low-force stress-corrosion cracking after various life spans, and have in some cases cracked sooner than mine or with more certainty. These include some unlabeled hangers that look very much like mine but were apparently made by individual climbers. Certainly every hanger maker has expected or hoped that his practices would avoid any such problems.

 

But not talking about these cracked-hanger failures won't make them go away. There has been too much silence about all this. I hope we can spread the word. With your help, please, since full page ads are not really in my budget.

 

Other factors:

Catching heavy or frequent falls does not cause such a crack to start or to progress. At the end, though, when the hanger finally breaks in two, that can happen in a fall.

 

A loosely gripped "spinner" does not indicate a larger risk of failure (though it makes it inconvenient to clip in). On the contrary, steady, long-term stress is part of the process that can lead to crack propagation; and that stress can arise from the hanger being held too tightly against the rock so that the metal is slightly "dished." A non-spinner may actually prove more dangerous. And tightening a spinner may be counter-productive.

 

Corrosion and weather are factors in this cracking process, though cracked hangers have been returned even from the arid Southwest.

 

But trying to predict which hangers one encounters will not be weakened at any given time in any given climbing area is a long-odds crap shoot—and a deadly one.

 

Use them anyway? Back them up!

Don't count on a single hanger, without arranging a backup of some kind that will catch you if it breaks.

 

Obviously situations arise where we cannot instantly replace a hanger or a row of hangers, when they're encountered on a climb. Although 99 out of a hundred may be safe, most of us wouldn't want to take a one-in-a-hundred risk—or at least not too often. It may be that many of the chock placements we use have such risks, which we accept as better than having nothing; but we usually back them up somehow. In a similar way, no kind of bolt anchor warrants trusting it totally by itself.

 

A one-in-a-hundred hanger risk creates a bolt placement that is too risky to be used alone. Fortunately, a one-in-a-hundred anchor backed up by another one-in-a-hundred anchor becomes a one-in-ten-thousand anchor, and three of them makes a one-in-a-million anchor.

 

This kind of "safety multiplication" is at least as important as the load equalization people often talk about. One bolt will generally be strong enough, except in some extreme fall. Instead, the real risk is that a single anchor, by itself, may hold almost nothing, if something has gone wrong with that bolt or bolt placement, or its hanger.

 

It is important to realize that most of these cracked hangers may eventually reach a stage where body weight alone can break them.

 

But even if you guard yourself by using backups, the next climber may not. Too many of us trust bolts too much. I certainly have done so. Often. Please take that hanger off the rock for the sake of us who are uninformed or unwise.

 

Thank you.

 

 

Ed Leeper,

6112 Fourmile Canyon,

Boulder, CO

303/442-3773"

 

[kevbone]

What is a cam hook?

[billcoe]

What is a cam hook?

 

Ha ha ha ha....wait....are you kidding or serious?

[kevbone]

Uh.....serious.

[fenderfour]

It's for fat old guys who aid climb.

[billcoe]

Uh.....serious.

 

Cam hooks are the greatest thing since sliced white bread was invented in the 50's. Borrow mine and go send the first pitch of the West Face, North Face or East Face of Monkey and you'll be a believer.

 

 

It's simple but ingenious-- an 'L' shaped piece of metal. You put the short end into the rock and stand on a sling attached to the long end. The levering force holds it in pin scars that will often not take any other gear or is marginal at best. You need to be careful to use the larger sizes at Smith or you'll chew up the fragile tuff from just body weight. Granite won't move.

[billcoe]

It's for fat old guys who aid climb.

Uhhh, well, true dat, but I thought he wanted the long version:-)

[ivan]

Uh.....serious.

cam hooks are awesome at beacon - i found them critical on pipe-dream and fresh-squeeze

[mike1]

they look easy enough to make. Just cruise down to a local fab shop with some examples and I bet you can have them made by the dozen, maybe even cheaper than the originals.

[Buckaroo]

I doubt they're easy to make, that's chromoly, specialty item, expensive material, difficult to work

 

these should be possible to find used

 

it would cost way more to have custom made than finding them used

 

 

[mike1]

good point.

[G-spotter]

Get a fabber and some bronze-infused iron powder and print your own!