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Many great climbs were established in this way, the protection being,
at that time, mainly rope slings on natural threads, behind or around
flakes and spikes. During the forties and fifties, most if not all
the routes followed natural lines. In England, climbers used to
select well-rounded pebbles of various sizes and shapes lying at
the bottom of the crags and carry them up the climb in their trouser
pockets. They also collected granite stones from Wales and took
them to the Derbyshire gritstone or limestone « edges »;
a ticklish enigma for the geologists of the future when they will
discover these alien rocks. Closer to us, in 1954, Joe Brown and
Don Whillans used chockstones in the very difficult crack of the
West Face of l’Aiguille de Blaitière. The French climbers
Paragot and Bérardini did not know this technique and thought,
during the second ascent, that the English were mutants! Climbers
at this period used hawser laid rope which was available in sizes
of quarter-weight (roughly 5 mm diam.), half weight (roughly 7 mm
diam.) and full-weight (roughly 10 mm diam.). To make them stiffer
and easier to thread around the chocks, these line nylon slings
were sometimes dipped in sugar water and boiled.
In the mid fifties, the Stone Age melted away and a new era was
born : the Iron Age. The technique of using inserted chockstones
was greatly extented by the introduction of artificial metal chockstones,
particularly normal machine nuts.
Hughie Banner thinks that Jack Soper is responsible of the idea
of jamming machine nuts. John Brailsford believes however, that
it is extremely difficult to credit anybody with the first use of
machine nuts because, as with most of these things, it was the spontaneous
practise of many people with the engineering background that was
so commonplace in UK climbing circles at that time.
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