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Rave About Your Rack Please do not post retail SPAM.

Topic Date User

GALIBIER B.B's climbing shoes 11-Oct-2020 At 5:44:01 PM Ithomas

Message

Some time ago Keith Bell and Mike Meadows replied to the author of this request. In order to fill in a few historical gaps regarding BBs I sent the following note to Mike and Keith.

“BB’s were the worst boots ever sold. Rick had them made as a sort of Australian Robbins Shoe; something that would be comfortable in etriers as well as being able to do the job when free climbing. They were never successful because aid climbing was going out of fashion and any other shoe, including gum boots or open sandals could perform better on rock than BBs. I had a pair at Buffalo and nearly shat myself on Caligula with Keith and John Fantini in the summer of 1973. The slippery off-camber layback was a horror to lead in BB’s! The funniest thing of all was the Galibier label that came with the boots. On all Galibier boots there was included a classy looking label which listed major climbs successfully ascended in the boots, you know the sort of thing - The American Route on the Dru, The Comici Route in the Dolomites and every North Face in Europe. Rick, ever the businessman, in his masterfully deceptive way, simply invented or renamed climbs and made them out to be enormously significant - the West Face of Mt French and the South Face of Glennies Pulpit come to mind! For years we rolled around laughing at the prospect of European climbers wondering about those climbs. Little did they know that Mt French was a 50m high cliff and that Glennies Pulpit was a 30m high crumbling rock pimple somewhere in the farmlands south of Brisbane!