The little fella with the purple rope was listed on his own back in 2008 without any provenance so we’ve found a couple of pals for company with a bit of history too.

The American company, Seattle Manufacturing Corps (SMC) developed these Camlocks back in the early 1970s, one of many innovative designs created for protecting rock climbs, all following on from the early 1960s wedges, chocks & hexagonals, most of which you’ll find elsewhere in the collection.

A lot of American gear didn’t travel too well ‘across the pond’ and it doesn’t seem like many Camlocks made it to the UK, so they are a bit of a rarity. We did hear that they tended to ‘fall out’ of vertical cracks and were difficult to place properly. Friends arrived on the scene soon after, providing a much safer option albeit a more expensive one.