Rubber McCheatey Gloves

For a short primer on giving me shit, take a look at these comments. Thanks for sticking up for me Dom, but I wish your proof reading skills matched your analytic ones. But what could you hope to do against old friends being a pain in the ass, as always. Without those douche bags, I'd have such an inflated ego. How horrible that would be, me having an inflated ego, how horrible, how horrid.

So I believe some words are in order. I'll begin, like Lewis Carroll, at the beginning. Randy Leavitt FA'd Dihedron in the 90's using rubber palm gloves and fixed pins. I've always loved the idea of rubber gloves, and after I'd tried the route a few times, I had to have it. My first attempt was a bit of a failure: I bought a pair of hand jammies and turned them around so the rubber was on my palm. Take a look, stylish no?


The real problem is that hand jammies are made to pull out of the crack. When you palm the force goes on the fingers, not the wrist. The elastic around the fingers simply stretches away, or in more practical terms, you fall. That's not good when your pro consists of RPs, so something had to change.

Back to the store, but this time I was looking for something a little more mundane. A pair of leather fingerless weight training gloves. Kevin at Five Ten added green rubber to the palm, you know, green rubber, the stuff on the toe of the Jet 7. I little snip snip to the rest of the fingers, and this is what I ended up with.


How nice these feel! They save the palm while making it stick better. What more could a brother want?

That's it for the background, now time for the defense. These are the reasons to use gloves on this climb, in descending order of importance. I'll number them for ease of commenting:

#1 - Style! Black leather glove on the left hand only. I could even add rhinestones. 'Nuff said.
#2 - Save those palms! J-Tree is so rough on the skin, and this climb can rip holes in the unprotected palm unless you wear protection. And I always do.
#3 - The FA! Gloves were worn on the first ascent, so there is a precedent. Speaking of precedent...
#4 - Kneepads are permissible! People wear kneepads for two reasons, to save the skin and to make kneebars more secure. I'm wearing palm gloves for the same reason.

There you have it. What says the masses? You've seen what they can do, you've seen how stylish they are, they were used on the FA, and they are entirely analogous to using sticky rubber in other places (oh my!). Bring on the controversy.