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  • Videos
  • Climbing Events 2022

Aliens!

By Jeff Smoot
I wrote a product review titled “New Adjustable Protection for Thin Cracks” that was published in the July-August 1986 edition of Rock & Ice magazine. As I noted in the article, even as of the spring of 1986, there was hardly a single piece of commercially available spring-loaded thin crack protection on the market. There were Friends (sizes 1-4) and the Metolius Slider nut, and that was it. You could buy bootleg mini-Friends and funky prototype TCUs from sketchy dudes selling homemade gear out of the trunks of their cars, but could you trust it?

But by mid-year, a gold rush was on and the market was flooded with all kinds of devices—Wild Country’s official half-size Friend, Wired Bliss’s original Three-Cam Unit, Metolius’s version of the TCU, and Colorado Custom Hardware’s Trigger Cam, not to mention several opposed-wedge devices including Sliders, Quickies, and the remarkable Rock ‘n Roller. Several gear manufacturers eagerly sent me a set of their new devices, hoping for a positive review.

​
You might be thinking, “You got a bunch of free gear. What a scam!” But no, I destroyed every piece of on-the-market gear they sent me. I was no scientist, mind you, but my friend, Matt Arksey, was an engineering undergrad, who was eager to help. He built a device he called it the “Pro-Tester” that used two granite blocks that could be adjusted to form a crack as narrow or wide as needed. Using the “Pro-Tester” and a Linius-Olsen Procap testing machine set for a 6000-pound range at a pull speed of one inch per minute, we tore apart a full set of every cam we received, charting their load-bearing and failure capacity. The testing machine graphed stress loads and failure points, giving us important data about the strength and weakness of each piece. The anticipation was kind of fun as piece-after-piece bent, contorted, and finally snapped under loads exceeding 2,000 and sometimes 3,000 pounds.
Picture
A Rock 'n Roller (left) and Quickie.
We also received some prototypes that were still in development, including one sent by Dave Waggoner that he thought would revolutionize big-wall climbing. Dave was the founder of Colorado Custom Hardware (CCH) and he sent us what he referred to at the time, the “Cable Cam” (later called the "Cable Pro.") It was a funky 10-inch long, four-cam metal-and-plastic device on the end of a floppy cable. We tried it out in a thin crack placement and it seemed okay, but it was so unique and, well, weird we didn’t know what to think of it. While we were field testing it, Matt cracked a joke that made me laugh, so I worked it into my review. “The version I saw looked like an alien sex toy,” I wrote. “It worked well in tight placements.”
Picture
An original prototype of the "Cable Cam" which eventually was called "The Alien" and the Rock & Ice issue with Jeff's infamous review.
Picture
Jeff Smoot's review of the original Alien in the July-August 196 edition of Rock & Ice magazine.

​I wasn’t sure how Dave and the folks at CCH would react to my “review" of the Cable Cam, but I found out quickly. In the next issue of Rock & Ice, Mark Rolofson, in a follow up to my gear review titled “More on Trigger Cams and Alien Sex,” defended the honor of CCH’s products including the Cable Cam. “Waggoner’s latest and most versatile design for thin cracks is the … Cable Pro (Alien)…,” Rolofson wrote. “They are not designed as sex toys, but it is up to the owner to decide how to use them.”
 
And with that, the “Alien” was hatched. Not right away, though. CCH persisted in calling it “Cable Pro” for a while, but eventually ads for “The Alien” started to appear in the climbing magazines. Why the name change? Maybe because Cable Pro sounded boring, whereas the Alien sounded, well, sexy. Whatever the reason, the name stuck and, as Dave Waggoner had predicted, the Alien soon became a fixture on the racks of wall climbers around the world.
Picture
Originally dubbed the "Cable Cam," "The Alien" name worked its way into ads and stuck.
Picture
The OG Alien

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  • Writing
    • All Writings (List)
    • Editions >
      • Themed Editions >
        • Adaptive Climbing Edition >
          • Adaptive Climbing Photo Feature: Paradox Sports
          • Advocating for Deaf Climbers: Sonya Wilson
          • Amputations: Leg Prosthesis for Climbing
          • Blind Ambition Builds a World Class Climber: The Story of Jesse Dufton
          • Climbing with Type 1 Diabetes
          • First Paralyzed Ascents: Rand Abbott
          • Mixed Climbing: My Answer to KT Syndrome
          • Paraclimbing Competitions: Althlete Interviews
          • Rock!
          • The Unreasonable Man
        • Belaytionships Edition >
          • Featured Photographer: Charlie OlGrady-Kessner
          • Belaytionships: Maggie and Charlie Odette
          • Zac the Interloper
          • Book Review: Uncoiling the Ropes
          • Belaytionships: Drew-and-Sarah
          • Belaytionships: Jeantique and Natalie
          • I Am My Father's Son: Layton Bridwell
        • Big Wall Edition >
          • Book Review: Paul Preuss: Lord of the Abyss
          • Featured Photographer: Matt Spohn
          • Grading Commitment
          • Hanging with the Monkeys, and Getting the Monkey Off My Back
          • It Was His Time: Brad Gobright Interview May 2019
          • John Middendorf : A Big Man for a Big Stone
          • Sébastien Berthe Free Climbs the Nose From the Ground Up
          • Shit Happens – Or, Why You Need a Walkie Talkie
        • Developers and Guidebook Authors >
          • Developer - Mitch Lehman
          • Andrew Penny - A Blue Mountaineer
          • Kevin Powell
          • Rock Star Groupie
          • Tony Calderone
        • Exploring Our World >
          • AUSTRALIA - Photographer - Diego Perez
          • AUSTRALIA - Profile - Julie Anderson
          • Book Review - Climbing Rock
          • CHINA - From Yangshuo, to Getu, to Liming
          • FRANCE - Verdon in Winter
          • GREECE - Meteora
          • ITALY - Dolomites
          • MEXICO - La Huasteca
          • SPAIN - Artist - Karmelo Onate
          • UTAH - Maple Canyon: This One Makes You Taller
        • Firsts... and Last >
          • A Tale of Oso Madre
          • Clayton Herrmann - Featured Photographer
          • Rysavy Ridge >
            • The Migrant Pom on Rysavy Ridge
            • Throng of Roland
            • Fast Forward - Rysavy Ridge Revisited
          • The Three Sisters
        • Honoring Diversity >
          • ARTIST: Shawn Lee
          • A Shift on Moonlight Buttress
          • Claiming a Space on the Mountain
          • Colorblind
          • Feature Photographer: Bryan Sillorequez
          • Is Diversity in America Diverse?
          • MOVIE: People of Climbing:
          • Profile - Favia Dubyk
          • The Lineage
        • Joshua Tree >
          • Bouldering: JTree Made Me Do It
          • Improv at JTree: Bad Bolts
          • JTree: Bolting Pressure Cooker
          • Joshua Tree: Heinous Approaches
        • Overcoming Adversity >
          • Acopa Outdoors
          • Anoushe Husain
          • Expanding the Circle
          • Failure is Part of the Price: Rand Abbott Attempts the First Adaptive Lead Ascent of The Nose
          • Overcoming a Brain Tumor: WeighMyRack Founder Interview: Alison Dennis
          • Rising
          • The Mountain Path Book Review
        • Overcoming Boundaries >
          • Photographer - Brook Anderson
          • Profile - Louise Shepherd
          • Profile - Megan Banker
          • Profile - Shawn Axelrod
          • Rock Type 1
          • The Tape Job
        • Women's Edition >
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          • Climbing is My Art
          • Mt. Logan Solo
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          • Profile - Caitlin Schokker
      • Non-Themed Editions >
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    • Topics >
      • Adaptive Climbing >
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        • El Capitan: Enock Glidden
        • Failure is Part of the Price: Rand Abbott Attempts the First Adaptive Lead Ascent of The Nose
        • Quinn Brett Interview
        • My Journey to Adaptive Rock Climbing
        • Planning for Mt. Rainier: Adaptive Climbing
        • Resources - Adaptive Climbing
      • Alpine & Ice >
        • A Chamonix Initiation
        • California Still Has Untouched Climbing Wilderness
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      • CC Profile >
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      • Equipment (writings) >
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      • Facebook Feature >
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      • Mental-Physical >
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        • Travel Stories >
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              • Nowra Photos and Beta
      • Mexico >
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      • United States >
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        • Arizona >
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        • Nevada >
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          • Ten Sleep
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