Cambell Saddle Wedges

Does anyone remember Campbell (or Cambell) Saddle Wedges?
From my experience, they were the very best stopper type nuts ever sold.
They were available back in the early to mid-eightes.
They were anodized with colors ranging from dark red in the smallest size to silver in the largest size (dark red, medium red, orange, yellow, gold, etc).
How come no manufacturers have purchased the patent and reproduced them?
The only down side to Saddle Wedges was that they stuck so well they were often hard to remove.
I've only got a few of them left and I would like to have a full set.
Can anyone tell me who made them, why they are no longer made, and how I might be able to get my hands on a full set?

They were and are great nuts and they go by on ebay fairly regularly. They don't hold a candle to HB Aluminum Offsets - but they don't make those any more either (a set just went for $106 on ebay)...

I can vaguely remember climbing with someone who had them once back in the day (as the kids would say). I thought the idea was good but that they felt sticky. Too sticky for they’re own good, nuts get stuck enough I wasn’t interested in them. Perhaps that is why they never caught on and no one else is making any thing similar. Just my $00.02.

Tom Hanson wrote:Does anyone remember Campbell (or Cambell) Saddle Wedges?

We still have 3 of them (larger sizes), and recently re-slung them for the Nth time. Love 'em! When you find a placement for one of these babies, you KNOW you've got a bomber piece in.

I used to sell these when I worked at Forrest Mountaineering (do I win the back-in-the-day contest? :) ). A half-out-of-the-crack #4 SaddleWedge caught a buddy of mine in a 40-footer off the south face of the Matron, so I'm still a fan. (A nearly-complete set still hangs in our gear room.) Yeah, they stuck, but only if you really yanked on them. And you could feel better about a half-!%@ed Campbell than you could about anything else.

I've got about 6. They have an slot down the middle that locks onto bumps in the rock, they can be totally bomber but also hard to remove. I guess I should resling 'em as the perlon they are on is way old.

If anyone has a few of those old campbell saddlewedges for sale please let me know.

I have a #3 I could be persuaded to part with for a decent price.

Campbell Saddle Wedges and HB Offsets WERE the BEST. Try ebay. It seems DMM has secured the patent on Aluminum Offsets and begun to market these great chocks with an anodized finish.

DMM makes HB aluminum offsets

And both DMM and Metolius nuts have the longitudinal groove that was in large part responsible for the Saddlewedge's superior performance. The SW's were "short" compared to modern nuts; I think that's significant too.

I don't think they were short so much as they were wide, and so looked proportionally short. Although beautifully made, their width made them less than optimal for Gunks-type placements, which often require maneuvering a nut in a horizontal crack into a wide spot and then sliding it sideways to keyhole it. (Although not at all complicated, this type of placement is declining in favor of a generally less secure and less strong cam placement.) The SW's were too often too wide to fit through the available enlargement.

Another problem was with conventional vertical placements in relatively shallow cracks. The extra width of the SW required more crack depth than other nuts.

Have recently acquired an unused set of Campbell Saddle Wedges #4-#7. Been online trying to find out a bit more about them and came across this thread among others.

They are a lovely bit of kit but I'm not completely sure whether to hang on to them as rather nice collectors items (along with the handful of other historic gear I've got), sling them up for use on easy climbs and scrambles or perhaps look at selling them on.

Tending to go off the idea of actually using them as they are set up for 8/9mm rope and it'd suit me more to get hold of some of the later WC Rocks designed for 5.5mm dyneema cord.

There is probably not that much interest in them over here in England but I'd be curious to know if anyone would want them enough for it to be worth posting them across the Atlantic?

Yes, I still have a few left somewhere in the old gear bins. For some reason they sent me half a dozen sizes to try out, sort of gear testing the first batch back in the 80's. Sweet nut, with a great fit around nubbins. I never saw them as wired chocks, just self-tied up with a chunk of 6 or 7mm rope. They made both the smooth sided ones, and the favorite with the indentation (saddle) in the middle. I think they were one of the first nuts I had that was annodized too.

A full set...?

Bonjour Stéphane,

I think you have the complete set available for retail sale. I worked at a shop in 1992 that still sold them. We had an old wooden wine box with probably 200 chocks all mixed up in there. I used to put together sets and sell them for 20% off as a "set discount price".
I never came across a #1 of either the Wedgefast or the Saddlewedge and I don't recall ever having a size 8 Wedgefast except the 8N version.

I have most of a set of Wedgefast chocks but I'm missing a #7 (anyone want to part with one?)

Here's a link for the complete 1979 catalog and testing spec sheet.

Vertical Archaeology Campbell Information

Some trivia for everyone. Gaylord Campbell who was the inventor was rescued from the N. Face of the Grand Teton in the summer of 1967. His rescue is quite the story and was made into a movie.

thegrandrescue.com

Here is the trailer: youtube.com/watch?v=y1hkxbV…

Thank you very much Asby for your information. I must confess that I spent about twenty years to complete this collection. With no doubt your old wooden wine box full of Campbell chocks would have driven me crazy if I have had the good fortune to visit the shop where you worked…

I just want the two biggest, got any pics?

The shop was called Grandwest Outfitters and it was in Colorado Springs, Colorado. I worked there very briefly until it was sold to a much larger group of investors who turned it into a discount shit shack. Sad!
Grandwest had a few odd things about it. At one time they had a Denver location which occupied the old Forrest mountaineering location. The Grandwest guys inherited old hand carvers wooden signs and a huge cache of miscellaneous gear...pitons, copperheads, pin bin parts, ice axe heads and handles...stuff like that. I was given a bunch of it and actually used a bunch of 3 inch Chouinard bongs out in the Fisher Towers. I still have many of them. I also have a few Forrest bandoleers, all from that gear stash!
In 1992 they still sold Campbell chocks, soft iron ring angles, Betabiners, and other left over odds and ends. All brand new stock! Their catalog collection was amazing!

Jim, try eBay. I just saw a couple saddlewedges for sale. I'm not sure if they are still up or not. Also you can contact NoCo gear out of Fort Collins. They might have something.

NoCo Gear