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Chockstone Forum - Accidents & Injuries

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The Tower - Ground Fall 9-Jan-2007 At 10:38:25 AM shiltz

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BigMike: I carry a mixture of PFH and RP plates. Climbing around Victoria you see a huge variety of bolt sizes and shapes. Sometimes the problem is getting a plate on at all due to a large bolt head or the head being very close to the rock. If one brand of plate doesn't fit I try another. In some cases I resort to a nut.
The opposite problem is small bolt heads. In this case, it is possible to manipulate the plate (correctly placed with a biner attached) into a position were it might come off under load. In rare cases you can even do this without loading. I think one of the bolts on Swinging? (17 on Castle Crag) is like this. There were also a few bolts at Camels Hump and the You Yangs that were undersized (I think these have now been replaced).
When the bolt head is small it is quite easy to clip an extra "spare" biner next to the first one. I've been doing this for a long time now. I was just interested to hear what others thought.