cheery spring, Nance
The following article about the Jumar and the man who invented them appeared in the Fall 1970 issue of the Southwest Texas State University Grotto Newsletter.
THE JUMAR FACTORY by Brian Peterson
This summer while traveling in Switzerland, Keith Heuss
and myself decided that we would try to locate the factory in which
Jumar ascenders are manufactured. After examining our Jumars, we
finally found a label still intact and managed to pick out the name
of a town, Reichenbach, Switzerland. After about two hours of
looking over a map, we located a tiny dot symbolic of the town.
Quickly we jumped in the Volkswagon camper and proceeded to look for
it.
Could this small town be the home of a great factory?
The name of the town did correspond to the name on the Jumar, but
there were only about thirty chalets. We stopped at a store and I
got out with a Jumar. Speaking no German, I proceeded to wave my
arms, roll my eyeballs, and shove the Jumar in the proprietors face.
He quickly got the idea and sent me on my way down the road.
However, he did provide us with a map.
Obviously, he was somewhat less than proficient in the
arts of geography because by using his map we got completely
confused. We decided that we would ask the help of other locals.
After talking to several housewives; many of whom thought we were
trying to sell them the Jumar, we arrived at still another chalet. I
knocked at the door and a man came out. When I showed him the
Jumar and asked if he knew what it was, he replied, "Yes, I make
them." Quietly picking myself off the ground, I began to explain why
we had come. The man, Julius Marte, was very receptive and asked us
inside. He speaks only a few words of English so he called a friend
to translate. When the friend arrived we went down to the factory
which is in Mr. Marte's basement. Jumar parts were everywhere! Wow!
Fantastic!
Mr. Marte opened a drawer approximately three feet long,
two feet wide, and one and one-half foot deep. It was completely
filled with right-hand Jumar jaws. He said that he originally
designed these ascenders for use in climbing down to eagle nests to
band baby eagles. This was back in 1958. Mountain climbers quickly
saw the value of these devices and then later cavers started using
them. The recent change in the alloy of the cams was necessary due
to the grit and mud encountered in caves.
We rigged a rope in his yard and showed him various
methods of prussiking with his devices. He then showed us the method
which is enclosed with the Jumars. He saw the value of our methods
but joked with us by saying, "I can understand why you don't know how
to use them, I have never translated the instructions to English."
We all laughed. We also demonstrated various rappell devices and Mr.
Marte was quite interested. He requested that we collect and send
him pictures of different climbing methods using his ascenders and
any recommendations or improvements that we may have.
Sotano_de_Huitzmolotitla.doc
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