Sea cliff climbing is like the best pure climbing in Britian. It’s like mountain routing, but bigger, steeper, close to the road, more committing and addictively enjoyable. However the sea cliff environment does have a few difficulties that come with it. You exchange the long walk in for salt corrosion, an easy walk off for a committing abseil in. A milder microclimate for harder route finding (if you hadn’t guessed I was talking about Gogarth mainly). All of these things add to the challenge of sea cliffs, which you must meet. The route finding, walk in (and off) abseiling are things you must deal with on the day but one aspect of sea cliff climbing is done afterwards…cleaning.
I’ve climbed on routes where I’ve had a full body soaking by the sea and by the end of it my cams have started to seize up already and the screw-gates are a little stiffer. I thought when I read the advice that you should wash off your rack with water after each route on a bad day was ridiculous or overkill. At the end of the day it actually quite hard to do this, and then you have to climb with a soaking rack. But after everyday or weekend you should clean the sea salt of out of your rack.
The sea cliff environment is a harsh place to climb. Peg’s can rust in a few months and be gone after a couple of years. Fixed gear doesn’t really stand a chance (unless its nice DMM eco anchors with marine grade stainless steal). Polish on rocks is kept to a minium as erosion keeps things nice and clean, you have to forgive some loose rock for this lack of polish however. The air can be thick and heavy with salt and moisture on humid days which will get into every nook and cranny in your gear. Never fear it can all be saved!
Whatever you do, don’t just leave your gear in a bag! Salt corrosion is actually quite bad for your gear! And anyway cleaning it isn’t actually that hard. Firstly put everything into a clean bowl of water. Make sure the bowl hasn’t been used for bleach/turps/cleaning fluid of any sort, or give it a good wash out before hand. Then submerge the whole rack in water. Leave it for a a couple of hours at least, usually overnight. You don’t have to include your ropes in al this, but I do wash all my slings. If your rack has had a heavy soaking (of sea water) then maybe change the water half way through. All your really doing is dissolving the salt from your gear and washing it off.
Cams themselves need a little extra work. Here a toothbrush is useful to clean out around the axel and remove any dirt and munge at collects there.
Now you need to dry it all off. Current advice is not to put all your stuff on a radiator as it may damage the gear. I usually squeeze out most of the moisture from all the webbing and slings and shake/towel dry everything else. Then hang it all up to dry either high above a radatior or just on some form of drying rack. I find if you leave it over night then you can have it dry by the morning. Then you can start putting everything back together.
The final part of all this is oiling. Now I use WD40 because it has been known to have no effect on other parts of climbing gear (webbing etc) so I’ll use a small amount on the axle of each cam and on the screws and hinges of my ‘biners. I know the use of WD40 is frowned upon by many people, but I can see the point in spending £4 on some cam lube when WD does the job. I’ve heard the argument that it attracts dust and gets gummed up but personal this sounds silly. If you use your gear enough then it’ll need cleaning regularly so using WD doesn’t matter.
Whilst your doing this you can usually take the time to check all your gear over as this should be done at least once a year and maybe once every 3 months if you use it week in week out. Look for frayed or damaged wires or slings, broken cables on cam triggers, burs on ‘biners (can be carefully filed away or retired) and stiff or broken gates. Just remember that this is your gear which you use, but normally you share a rack when climbing so someone else is going to be relying on your gear, so keep it in good working order.
If you do retire anything see it as an excuse to go shopping for more gear.
No comments:
Post a Comment