Technical Tip: Camming Pro Comparison

You have decided to go to Indian Creek and climb the endless number of splitter cracks in the sandstone there.  The weather is perfect, the camping is cool, and the vistas are fantastic.  Thumbing through the Indian Creek Climbs guide book and in short order Generic Crack is a must do.  The recommended gear: eight 2.5 friends in addition to other stuff!  That's a lot of same size cams and that's only one crack.  Scrounging gear from friends is the only way to handle this.  Unfortunately, most of us use a variety of stuff and some of it overlaps and some of it doesn't.  Even if you aren't on your way to Indian Creek and wish to build a rack with duplicates of certain sizes, it sometimes makes sense to cover these sizes with different style camming devices.  This means different manufacturers.  The following table was put together to cross reference Friends to Camalots and the Metolius four cam series.  The Metolius FatCams were also included.  These are good on sandstone and are sometimes referred to as "desert cams".