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.
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.
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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. 
