If your name isn’t Honnold, Bridwell or Caldwell, then it’ll more than likely take you two – three days to climb a 30 pitch (900m) route like The Nose on El Capitan. You’re going to want to find yourself somewhere for you and your partner to kip on the route. This is where portaledges come in handy.
For those who may not be aware: A portaledge is a platform that climbers are able to build and fix to the rock face when climbing routes that span over multiple days on steep rock faces.
Whilst you’d normally try to find a natural ledge to bivvy on, this is more than likely not possible on huge cliffs. The portaledge creates a platform for climbers to cook, chill out and sleep on during their downtime.
“It has smashed the £27,000 target and is now nearing £70,000”
Given the standard single person portaledge weighs in at just shy of 7kg, the all new G7 Pod by G7 Equipment barely tips the scales at 1.5kg. Not only does it inflate to a rigid platform that you can stand on and sort your gear, it also doubles up as a sleeping mat for when you tuck in for a night on the ledge.
Original portaledges are typically built from strong aluminium and extremely tough fabric spanning between the frame. This sturdy build has led to portaledges becoming fairly weighty and cumbersome – especially when you’re hauling it up a wall and more so when you’ve got hundreds of metres of climbing pumping out your arms.
Weight is key in climbing, particularly when you’re linking multiple pitches one after the other, over multiple days. So the G7 Pod from ‘G7 – Grade VII Climbing Equipment’ is onto a winner – so much so that at the time of writing this, it has already made £21,000 of the £27,000 goal on Kickstarter and it’s only been going for half an hour.
Note: It has now smashed the £27,000 target and is now nearing £70,000.
The G7 Pod has the ability to stack one on top of the other in a bunk bed configuration, or lay side by side next to each other for the double bed set up.
G7 may look like a new company to the climbing scene, but have been designing and working on their climbing equipment for some years. Co-founder, Nathan Kukathas has put up first ascents on big walls all around the world and designed climbing equipment for Arc’teryx and Sea To Summit – the kind of experience you want from the team designing your big-wall climbing equipment.
So before all of the ‘Inflatable, ledges suspended 1,000 on a rock face? Are you sure that’s a good idea’ comments come in, it does actually look like a nice bit of climbing kit to help you and your mates get a cosy nights sleep hundreds of metres high at your belay and one less thing to worry about when you’re standing at the base of a climb with 30 pitches of steep climbing ahead of you.
Good on the team over at G7. We’re always stoked to see innovation in climbing equipment.
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