Ray Jardine's Friend
Ray Jardine camming unit that he called the “Friend”. Ray used four spring loaded cams on a rigid stem. The spring loaded cams worked independently much like the suspension of a car. After he made the prototypes Jardine took them to Yosemite in 1974 to try them out. In secrecy he went on to climb some of the hardest crack climbs in the world at that time including the world’s first 5.13, Yosemite’s The Phoenix in 1977. In 1978 Friends became available to the public and were sold by Wild Country. They changed climbing forever.
Name/Title
Ray Jardine's "Friend"Entry/Object ID
2026.1.135Description
One of the first "Friend" Cam ever made. Designed by Ray Jardine in 1970s.Use
A spring-loaded cam designed to wedge in parallel cracksContext
This is one of the first versions of Ray Jardine's "Friend," a spring- loaded camming device (SLCD). Jardine's background in aerospace engineering, along with similar ideas from the Lowe brothers, helped him design this product in the late 1970s. Jardine partnered with Mark Vallance, who founded Wild Country in 1978 and began selling Jardine's "Friend." The early version here has a clip that was susceptible to falling out, leaving only the stem attached to a climber's rack. They also only included whole sizes, like the "3" here, which fit a three-inch crack. Later versions used a stronger nut to keep the camming device together, as well as manufacturing half-sizes.Collection
Yosemite Climbing Museum Permanent CollectionCategory
Climbing Hardware, Cams