Climb Design by a climber and a maker

This is also a climbing blog for random interesting things from the great swirling morass of the internet.

I make a bunch of stuff for myself either to improve the design or because I can’t afford a real one! Some of these things I tried turn into products and to make a business with inconclusive success! Actually I just like the process of designing and prototyping.

In returning to climbing after many years I’ve discovered learning is not about climbing with a mentor or listening to stories and opinions around the camp fire anymore. It’s stories around the online forum and all the great resources on the web (flickering light on enthralled faces in both instances). New ideas, arguments, many alternatives — it’s hard to decide what will work for you in all this. This blog will offer some of the things I’ve sifted out.

In-between the climbing parts of my life I gained a degree in Industrial Design and spent a bit of time mucking around with boats & wooden sailing ships. A fascination for sail rigging and general rope stuff forms part of my climbing gear obsession; another part of the obsession is that the new gear is so shiny and beautifully engineered…  though I still love my old rigid stem SLDCs but they now reside on a 28 gram wire-gate carabiner!

The problem solving side of climbing resonates with my design thinking. How you arrange protection or an anchor with what’s left on your rack and a random rock feature, it’s like a puzzle you solve with gear and knowledge, a puzzle that your life depends on. I find myself dreaming up solutions long after a climb where I resolved a problem unsatisfactorily.

Design, production, and distribution I have experience in through our business usethings which was established in 2004 and offers our own designs for furniture, fittings, and home-ware.

Use comments to add your perspective to the articles or the contact form above to get in touch.

Cheers, Tim