Aid climbing - bring a “beak” piton
My partner and I were on the classic big wall route The Prow, on Yosemite‘s Washington Column. He was leading around the fifth pitch, which the route topo said had a few fixed heads. He was making pretty good progress, when the rope came to a halt and I heard a few mumbled curse words floating down.
“This friggin head has the cable broken off”, he yelled down. “Send up the pecker!”
I clipped it to the haul line, he pulled it up, and in a minute the rope started to thankfully move again.
When I was cleaning the pitch, I saw the spot that had stopped him cold. There was about a 8 foot section of blankness, with only a very thin crack and a copperhead with the cable broken off. The pecker saved the day - my partner had carefully looped it over the copperhead and stepped on through.
image: from the great aid climbing book “HOOking UP”, by Fabio Elli and Pete Zabrok
Even if you’re climbing an aid route cleanly, meaning without a hammer, having a “beak” style piton can come in very handy.
A beak piton (a shortening of the broader term bird beak) is a very thin piton with a V-shaped downward hook at the end. It looks a lot like a bird head, hence some of the clever names: Toucan, Tomahawk, Pecker etc.
Black Diamond Pecker piton blackdiamond.com
They’re designed to be hammered into extremely thin cracks, and have been a key piece of gear that have opened up many of the most cutting edge difficult aid climbs.
But, if hardcore A4 isn't your thing, having a beak piton with you even on a hammerless “clean” rated route (like C1, C2, etc) can be helpful.
Rather than hammering it into a very thin crack in traditional piton style, a beak can sometimes be gently hand placed in a very thin crack without a hammer.
In our case, hooking a beak over the top of the smashed in copperhead saved the day. If you come across this scenario even once on a route, it can stop you cold unless you have a way to get past it.
You can even place them in a shallow horizontal crack and use the tie off point near the head to minimize leverage. Granted, this is a creative and fairly uncommon placement, but it just might get you past that tricky part.
The Black Diamond Pecker is the one I have and it's great. It comes in three sizes, 1, 2, and 3. I suggest number 2. If you're going to be hammering them on a real aid route, be sure and tie a sturdy bit of cleaning webbing in the top hole. (Also, the steel cable that comes with the Black Diamond beaks is not very robust, so you might want to back that up with some webbing as well.)
The “Tomahawk” beaks made by Moses are another well regarded design. As you can see, these have a slightly different profile and a stout clipping loop.
image: http://mosesclimbing.us/home/tomahawks/
Finally, here's a great instructional video with some action photos and really nice animation showing how to use them in detail.
