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spacecowboy
Jul 27, 2006, 4:38 AM
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While i'm still nursing a weird injury in my left ring finger I've been doing a lot of reading of my climbing library in hopes of using the downtime to my advantage. I was tooling around in Climbing Bigwalls by Mike Strassman and was confused by a section in the chapter on placing copperheads. It not only described the final step as 'if they stink, get off!' but also pictured it in a diagram with a person smelling it.
I've never placed a copperhead, but don't understand how smelling the placement would help assess it. Does malforming the metal by hammering release a chemical odor, and why would hammering it properly release different odors as opposed to a poorly placed copperhead?
Help and idly curious and involuntary arm-chair climber out.
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manacubus
Jul 27, 2006, 4:56 AM
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I love rc.com! :lol:
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kman
Jul 27, 2006, 5:03 AM
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In reply to: I love rc.com! :lol:
:lol: Nice response :lol:
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far_east_climber
Jul 27, 2006, 6:22 AM
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Well, I actually remember someone mentioning on supertopo.com there were a few individuals out there who smelt their copperheads. Whether or not this is fully believed this/was a joke, I don't know... but just letting you know your question isn't stupid.
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lambone
Jul 27, 2006, 8:52 AM
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one for Mythbusters!
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svilnit
Jul 27, 2006, 10:28 AM
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Just don't smell the East Coast variety of Copperheads... they have big fangs and they are poisonous!
:righton:
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sbaclimber
Jul 27, 2006, 10:56 AM
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In reply to: Just don't smell the East Coast variety of Copperheads... they have big fangs and they are poisonous! :righton: |
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whitribj
Jul 27, 2006, 4:34 PM
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In reply to: one for Mythbusters!
I think we could come up with enough for a whole climbing myths for the show.
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skinner
Jul 27, 2006, 4:44 PM
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In reply to: Well, I actually remember someone mentioning on supertopo.com there were a few individuals out there who smelt their copperheads. Whether or not this is fully believed this/was a joke, I don't know... but just letting you know your question isn't stupid.
In reply to: Smelt From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://www.afprotein.com/smelt1.gif For other uses, see Smelt (disambiguation). Rainbow Smelt, Osmerus mordax Scientific classification Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordata Class: Actinopterygii Order: Osmeriformes Family: Osmeridae Genera Allosmerus Hypomesus Mallotus Osmerus Spirinchus Thaleichthys Smelts are a family, Osmeridae, of small anadromous fish. They are common in the North American Great Lakes, and run in large schools along the coastline during their spring migration to their spawning streams. The family consists of some 16 species in six genera.
I can only assume by *smelling* they are referring to how it "appears" when you get your nose right in there to check your pasting job prior to clinching your sphincter and actually standing on the placement.
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paganmonkeyboy
Jul 27, 2006, 4:56 PM
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i was told if they smell burnt you have overworked the metal...means the placement is even more suspect than a happy bashie...
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iamthewallress
Jul 27, 2006, 5:04 PM
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I was going to insert my Vertical Limit nitro copperhead joke here, except that I wondered the same thing for years after I read the same advice. :oops:
In reply to: i was told if they smell burnt you have overworked the metal...means the placement is even more suspect than a happy bashie...
I've heard the same. Not sure if I believe it.
Better than looking at it or smelling it is probably doing your best to rip it off the wall, and if you fail to do so, then it's probably going to hold your body weight.
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caughtinside
Jul 27, 2006, 5:19 PM
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John Middendorf (coauthor of Big Walls) made up the sniffing thing as a joke. The steps to heading in his book were 1. place it. 2. paste it. 3. 'X' it. 4. sniff it for metallic odor.
The sniffing thing was a joke, but this was one of the first time a 'how to head' thing had been put in a book, so people who didn't know, read the book, and started sniffing heads.
Now, you all can think this is really dumb/obvious, etc, but Middendorf later mentioned that his instructions, including the 'sniff it' test were later reproduced in an edition of Freedom of the Hills!
Anyway, this is a synopsis I picked up from a thread in ST where Middendorf posted.
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marc801
Jul 27, 2006, 5:49 PM
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ARG!!! Of all the days that I can't rate posts it has to be when this appears!!!
:roll: :roll: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
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lambone
Jul 27, 2006, 7:55 PM
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In reply to: i was told if they smell burnt you have overworked the metal...means the placement is even more suspect than a happy bashie...
first,
no
second,
you can't "overwork" a head.
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stymingersfink
Jul 28, 2006, 1:37 AM
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In reply to: In reply to: i was told if they smell burnt you have overworked the metal...means the placement is even more suspect than a happy bashie... first, no second, you can't "overwork" a head.
i might respectfully suggest you can, if by "overworking" a head one means to imply damaging the integrity of the (placement,) cables or the swage.
FWIW, the sniff test... that's just the turtle snapping at your back door. If you're not careful, the impending fall will cause him to poke his head completely out to see "what the F^@K is goin' on out there!?"
edited to add "placement" in clarification, a response to the post below
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stymingersfink
Jul 29, 2006, 9:50 PM
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In reply to: ^^^ Hehe, Sty. They key part of the sniff joke isn't such a joke: "If it stinks, get off it."
Agreed, thus the reference to shitting one's pants at the thought of stepping onto the smelly thing.
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mdude
Jul 29, 2006, 9:55 PM
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Cheese Wiz!!!
Troll!!
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deadhorse
Jul 29, 2006, 11:10 PM
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yeah i don't know anything about your copprheads- but what i think of is a very poisonous waterdwelling snake- and on a related note At the crag today we were going to go for a swim and saw not 1 but 3 copperheads... 2 that were full grown. one got damn close to a calf muscle bite of one of my boys.
i wouldnt smell one of those for $10
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ratmnerd
Jul 29, 2006, 11:17 PM
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^^^^^^^^^^^^^ :wtf::wtf::wtf::wtf::wtf: :lol:
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brianri
Jul 29, 2006, 11:51 PM
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Copperheads do in fact smell like cucumbers. See: http://www.ca.uky.edu/agc/pubs/for/for46/for46.htm
However, I've never used them for pro. I suppose they could get very nasty if you tried to jam them in a crack and I bet they would bite you for sure if you hammered on them.
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russwalling
Aug 3, 2006, 3:16 AM
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AFAIK, the first time this came up was long time ago on Hockalito on El Cap. Doug McDonald and myself were running low on heads, but had plenty of broken wires. We were thinking that we could make "shiit heads" by using our own feces and applying it to the numerous broken cables we had and letting them bake in the sun. The joke being, if it stinks, get off it.... meaning it was not "set" yet.
The x'em paste 'em rock 'em and sniff 'em was hatched around the same time in camp 4 as we (JM, me, Doug, Billy Russell, Charles Cole, and many others) practiced placing heads in a boulder in the rescue site, seeing what would hold and what would pop.
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jaybro
Aug 3, 2006, 5:12 AM
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Strange but true. Good ones smell like air cooled VW engines. '63-67.
Bad ones have a kind of Hindenburg/Tacoma bridge odor
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