Booty

I went rock climbing with my friend and we noticed four of these things hanging on a very difficult climbing route. Likely whoever was climbing managed to get only part of the way up and had to abandon the climb because they were too tired or because of bad weather.

In either case, it was strange that they did not collect all of their equipment. Each of these pieces of gear, called quickdraws, cost $20. These climbers left a whooping total of $80 worth of booty on the wall for someone to collect (climber slang for equipment left behind for others to find).

My friend and I were up to the task. After some rope work and sketchy rappelling, I was swinging on my rope over the wall, taking down each quickdraw one by one. It was a team effort after all, so we split the gear: two each. :)

Quickdraws are very versatile and are typically used to connect the climbing rope to the rock in order to protect the climber in case of a fall.