Introduction

Passive protection is the backbone of every leaders rack and at the heart of its modern history is the Wild Country 'Rock'. This was first curved nut, and the one that with this simple but incredibly effective modification, moved the game on and allowed faster and more reliable placements with a bite that old 'flat sided' nuts couldn't compete with.

Obviously if you weren't there when this transition occurred it is difficult to imagine the impact this had on climbing but with old fashioned straight sides, nuts would 'hook up' or swivel in placements, often not giving the confidence needed to keep going.

The Rock ended this lack of confidence by triangulating the forces involved essentially by giving three points of contact as the diagram shows. This increased the stability of the nut and the speed of placement making smoother and better placement and massively improving the chance of the nut holding in a fall.

A diagram showing how the forces react on a curved sided nut

Due to this unique place in climbing history Wild Country has always prided itself in producing the finest Passive units in all shapes and sizes and has consistently hit the target to make a superb range of protection for all climbers and across all seasons.

This was once again proved correct when in 1998 Wild Country pulled of the same trick as with the Rock by creating the Rockcentric - essentially a much lighter curve sided Hex - that was an instant success and once again created a lasting impact on the racks of climbers of all grades.

Our current range has been recently overhauled to give our most advanced collection yet with an emphasis on light weight and ease of identification. So whichever you choose from Mini-Rocks, Rocks, Superlight Rocks or Rockcentrics, they are all complementary and designed to be used together to cover all options.

One unique feature for 2006 is that the anodising for all Protection of the same size is co-ordinated so that it's so much easier to tell what you have on your rack and how many of the same size are left e.g. Superlight Rock 6, Rock 6, Friend 0.5, Zero 6 are all Red and all fit the same size placements.

So for more details of all the different offerings and the full tech-spec please go to the left column…

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