Stuck cam on Crash Position TWall

I had to leave behind a fairly new .5 C4 Camalot on Crash Position at TWall yesterday. If anyone out there knows of some cam trickery to free that puppy, I would certainly appreciate your help. We could negotiate a suitable exchange for those individuals feeling like being a good Samaritan.

Were you climbing in full sun, in the heat of the day? Go back up there in the cold morning with two nut tools and a patient belayer. Often the cold metal is easier to remove than warm. Cue the science nerd response here. Dunno the explanation, but it has worked for me at TWall.

Can't speak to the cold part, but the two tools thing really helps. Also getting yourself set up so you are in a good comfortable position to work on the piece, maybe by placing another piece or pieces and clipping straight into them. There are also various threads on here you could search for that offer a ton of beta on getting out stuck cams. Good luck!

Metal expands when it is heated. Shrinks when it is cold. Metal is a good conductor and that us why you notice this trend. It helps to manually manipulate the lobes. Your fingers or nut tools can close the lobes more than the trigger will allow. Also watch when you stick the cam in warm water seepage, the same heating occurs, but way more rapidly.

I was climbing at the end of the day, just before sunset, wasn't cold but definitely not very warm either. I performed all the tricks I know, i.e. using a nut tool to manually manipulate the lobes, hooking the wire of a nut around each side of trigger while trying to manually manipulate lobes with the nut tool. I did not have any luck and had no lobe movement whatsoever, even when trying to push the lobes with the tool. The head of the cam is probably five to six inches into the crack. However, today is considerable colder than yesterday so maybe I will hike up there for another retrieval attempt. Thanks for the pointers, initial offer still stands!

I've heard that using water as a lubricant between the lobes & rock works incredibly well.

jon apprill wrote:I've heard that using water as a lubricant between the lobes & rock works incredibly well.