My father has been getting interested in ice climbing after hearing about some of my adventures. He bought a lot of 10 of these screws off Ebay for $2 a piece. They apparently come from a guy who sells primarily military surplus items. They are stamped only with "CAMP 194." Anyone have any experience or information on these things? I don't plan on climbing on them, but they're interesting.
Possibly CAMP Vertige screws? I'm guessing that those are pretty old surplus pieces. If you google "vintage ice screw" a lot of things looking like those come up.
If the military is still using those....we won't be winning any alpine wars anytime soon.
Safe? If they were kept in proper storage, probably. Best choice? Far from.
For kicks take a couple out and try placing them when you are out. Preferably standing on the ground. You will find out why people don't use these. I started climbing on those bad boys. They take forever to place and you usually have to use a tool to place them...
These screws appear to be based on the old Salewa ice screw of the late 60's and early 1970's. They were the state of the art back then, but not today. There are a couple of major problem with these screws. First, the teeth really aren't that sharp so to get them started you really need to peck a hole in the ice.
Secondly, the diameter of the screw is very small which means that it is very easy for the ice in the core of the screw to freeze and be almost impossible to remove. If the core freezes it is almost impossible to place the screw because it has to bore out such a big hole while it screws in. BITD, climbers carried these close to their body inside their jackets in hope that their body heat would loosen the ice in the core.
By the new stuff. It works so much better than this old stuff it is definitely worth the money!
Went and played around with them today with pops. Brought my modern screws with to show him the difference. As everyone has stated, and I expected, they were very difficult to place in hard brittle ice and froze up quickly. If I didn't get them in right away and the core froze at the tip they were useless.
My main concern was could 2 or 3 of them even hold a fall as a TR anchor. I have one pitch of ice in the backyard I've been planning on drilling an anchor for, but I'd prefer using these rather than bolting it. Sounds like that's about all they're good for. I still think I'd rather make a v-thread for a bail anchor, and I'll likely be giving most of them away to my ice fishing friends as tent stakes.
I did get to teach Dad my golden gear rule I heard somewhere along the way "buy nice or buy twice" especially when it comes to life saving equipment.
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