I had a pair of hand jammies shred after about five pitches on granite. The rubber tore like wet cardboard. Even if your jamming sucks, which mine is admittedly questionable, those things should be more durable than that. I've never come down from a crack with my tape all chewed up to shreds. I'm no math genius, but five pitches at 35 bucks vs. about 10-15 per roll of 4 dollar tape seems like a useless piece of gear. They saw me coming. Hand jammies get my vote.

www.motionfitness.com/Treadwall-p/treadwall.htm

I know a real estate twit in Vegas who spent his thousands on a treadwall. Still not a very impressive climber. Word is he had to pay people for belays at one point.

Proud moments in our lives.

I've recently decided both of these are fucking useless.

^^^I think that's a bit situational. Depending on where you're at on a climb, either of those could make a pretty rad bail anchor. I use a #9 hex quite a bit these days.

has anyone been saved from death/dismemberment by the proper use of a snow picket?

honestly curious

I've belayed off pickets before... I untied myself from the rope while he worked through the crux.

In 15 years, all the young punks will probably be wearing harness-shorts and laughing at the crusty old geezers that still use separate harnesses. They'll also climb 5.17 that are as hard as the 5.14 being done today.....which would be a 5.6 in the gunks.

Wow, I had no idea those harness/shorts existed. Honestly if they were, say, $80 or less, I would consider picking them up. But $200? Are you shitting me?

There's a pretty recent review of them here: www.mountainenthusiast.com/2012/09/mammut-realization-shorts>>>

The overall tone ends up being pretty positive, but some of the flaws he points out are:
1) Pockets are essentially useless.
2) Not a fan of the drawstring/cinch belt system.
3) Not enough gear loops.
4) He'd feel weird wearing it in a non-climbing situation.

So they kinda seem like shitty shorts (useless pockets, too ugly to wear in public) combined with a shitty harness (not enough gear loops), all for the low price of $200...yet he loves them! I guess you'd have to love them to make yourself feel better for spending $200 on them?

I don't know what cams you guys are using, but I recently switched out all my cams to UL Powercams.... which are all lighter than hexes.

Bail potential- I can see that. I'd take them as doubles, if I needed doubles and thought a big bail might need to happen. In fact, you guys just convinced me to keep my hex set for soloing... but hexes are NOT the big weight saver the old fuckers tout them as. Not anymore.

Ok, Ben, I got interested. Let's see some figures showing blue powercam being lighter than a number 9 BD hex. Whatcha got?

Sounds fishy to me.

Holy shit, ben, that is pretty wild shit! Guess I need to check out those ultralights, had no idea they'd shaved that much weight off!

psssh large hexes rock faces in Sierra Granite (Tahoe in particular).

Suprised nobody mentioned this