If you are a sport climber at heart, surely you have come across this situation:  beautiful route, high first bolt, bad landing.  Maybe you were too scared to climb up and clip it yourself; maybe you didn’t want to assume the risk of a ground fall.  Or maybe you decided to go for it, and you bared down hard on every hold and locker off every move until you clip that first bolt, wasting precious energy for the send. 

Although I have been sport climbing seriously for the past two years, in my heart I have an affinity towards trad climbing.  Ethics debates aside, I find it thrilling.  So when I showed up at the Red River Gorge- an area where the stick clip is commonly used- I thought, “God, what pussies.”  It was only when I had a conversation with my friend Ed- who had broken his back a couple of year ago in a fall before the first bolt- that I understood the reasoning behind it.  At sixty four, he has recovered from that injury and is climbing as hard as me- forty years his junior. Ed put it very aptly, “Look, this is sport climbing: if you want to prove how brave you are, go trad climbing.  Sport climbing isn’t about how brave you are; It’s about how hard you can climb- that’s why there’s fucking bolts in the first place.”


True, I thought.  And perhaps this sanitizes the sport, taking all the risk out of it.  But that’s the point of sport climbing, so have fun with it.  With this in mind, I would like to introduce you to a cheap, easy way to construct your own stick clip.  I believe Tom Grundy owns the dirt-bag patent on this little number, which means that anytime anyone makes one they must make an offering up to Jamba in his name- may the health food store dumpsters always be overflowing where ever he may be, lordhavemercy. 


This clip is made from household materials and costs very little.  Not surprisingly it is also the best clip I have used, because it is fairly stiff, yet can be bent to accomodate weird angles that sometimes make it difficult to clip. A picture worth thousand words: the following do-it-yourself guide illustrates the various steps to making your own stick clip.

The How To

Have you ever
watched McGiver?  Yeah- it's kinda like that.  What you need: a wire coat hanger, plyers, and a wire cutter- this pair does both. 
foto by © Andrew Burgoon


Cut both ends, so you are left with just the strait part of the hanger
foto by © Andrew Burgoon


Now begin bending the wire.  Start with the U shaped basket that will hold the carabiner open.
foto by © Andrew Burgoon


The second bend takes the wire down to the part that will support the bottom of the carabiner.
foto by © Andrew Burgoon


This is the first bend that creates the cradle that the carabiner sits in.
foto by © Andrew Burgoon


continuing to form the cradle...
foto by © Andrew Burgoon


once the cradle is formed, bend the wire down again to form the shaft that will be connected to the stick of choice. 
foto by © Andrew Burgoon


This is how the biner should sit in the device.  But you are not finished yet; tailor the bends to better fit your biner.
foto by © Andrew Burgoon


The finished product: notice on this model how the top holder and bottom cradle are on opposite sides of the down bar that connects them.  This is for greater torsion control and handling around tight corners.  Of course, the last step, not shown here, is to connect this device to a stick. 
foto by © Andrew Burgoon

And there you have it! your very own stick clip.