Titanium pitons, how much would you spend?

[BillA]

It seems like it's gotten really hard to find ti pins. Just out of curiosity, what's the most people would pay for a titanium KB or LA?

[robpatterson5]

Last year these guys had them (and the angles)

http://www.silvertipmountaincenter.com/silvertipmountaincenter_g43.html?catId=335368

 

http://climbinggearinc.com/ushba-alpine-pitons-p-495.html

http://sicksport.com/rock-climbing-climbing-bolts-hangers-c-48_52/ushba-ti-alpine-piton-3-p-475

[billcoe]

It seems like it's gotten really hard to find ti pins. Just out of curiosity, what's the most people would pay for a titanium KB or LA?

 

That's not a fair question Bill. See, I got old and fat, and currently have more money than brains or skill. Coupled with poor conditioning, I'd easily trade money for the weight: and lots of it - if it was needed for a project....well, you can see where I'm at. I see them come up for sale on occasion, and they are not near that price linked above. I bought a few in Oz few years back for $ 7 each, which seemed cheap. They are incredibly light, and for the route like you and Marcus did up in Alaska, peak 11,300? - you don't want to be carrying any weight if you could help it, let alone a bunch of Chouinard old school chrome moly steel. If you get up on a rock band someplace, a couple of these in the right place if you had N. Wall Hammer to wham em in......might save your life, reduce the time needed to bail or protect a deadly runout vergalased rock section. $30 still seems way high, $10 seems low (BD/Chouinard chromemoly pins are more than that now even used usually.) So someplace in between. If you are planning on heading to any of the international places where Russian go, (Tibet/Nepal/Kyrzkstan/Someortherstan) they might have sold some to finance a trip and you or a buddy could score big if you took a few extra bucks.

 

Of course, I still can't conceive that someone paid $143 for a single USED Green Alien, so again, I'm probably a bad one to ask. Do you have a project coming up?

[powderhound]

you can usually find them on ebay for less then $10 each

[OlympicMtnBoy]

Yeah, it looks like someone on ebay has been cutting pins out of u-shaped titanium channel and selling them for less than $10. No idea how they actually perform though. The USHBA ones are super nice and shiny.

 

If anyone is headed to Moscow, Russia I'll give you directions on how to find the various mountain shops. They were like $3 for the less shiny knife blades and stuff and $10 for the Ural Alp/Ushba shiny cool lookin ones, but that was a few years ago.

 

At $30 I'd better have a real good and hard project for em to justify the cost, I still don't take the few I own out very often since I seem to end up fixing them for rap anchors and stuff sometimes.

[billcoe]

http://outlet.libertymountain.com/shop/product.asp?p=2890&pg=3&c=2149&o=1&s=5

 

Semi-reasonable. As the dollar declines these will cost us more.

[crackers]

text me if you want me to follow up on this with liberty tomorrow...

[BillA]

Thanks for the info guys! I agree Bill, $30 seems like too much. The prices you linked to on the Liberty outlet site are actually pretty good I think. It seems like a lot of places claim to carry the Ushba pins, but if you contact them they don't actually have them in stock. No specific projects planned, just looking around for general alpine use. Graham, a text is on the way...