Sitting in the Summer sun today I was asked by a caver why a Snoopy Loop is called a Snoopy Loop. I was stumped!  Does anyone know why and where this unusual word for a rubber ring/car inner tube for caving comes from?

Hannah

Howdy, Baps! I asked the same question once on the CDG forum and nobody (not even the really, really old school chaps) knew so suspect you're onto a loser....  Why not make up an answer and see how long it takes to become gospel?!

xx

Joel Corrigan said:

Why not make up an answer and see how long it takes to become gospel?!

Click to expand...

Look around Snoopy's neck!

http://images2.layoutsparks.com/1/39604/smooth-jazz-snoopy-music.jpg

...that'll do for me!

Jules.

My understanding was that Norbert Casteret's dog, 'Snoupi', had to be castrated after biting the village blacksmith who was making some ironwork for an early exloration; the vet proceeded to tie the 'sac off with a thin band of innertube from a pushbike as a tourniquet before doing the deed - Casteret had a lightbulb moment and fashioned some bands to seal his cuffs and boots from a motorcycle innertube a few days later, just prior to the exploration of Cigalere.

He probably said something like " Zoot Allures, ?a id?e c'est les chiens testicules". 

OK, here's (a large part of) your answer. About 30 years ago Julian Griffiths & Rob Shackleton started doing some trips to go cave diving in Greece. In those days it was relatively uncommon for overseas cave diving trips to take place by CDG members, so contact with foreign cave divers didn't happen too often. They came across the use of inner tube loops as line belays by other cave divers, realised it was a superb idea and started using it here in the Dales. Around then Geoff Crossley started diving with these two and I'm pretty sure it was Geoff who came up with the name. (Shortly before Geoff used this name Clive Westlake referred to it as the "Crossley inner tube ploy" in a CDG Newsletter.) So - the most likely way you can get to the bottom of this is to ask Geoff if you ever bump into him. These days you're more likely to meet him flying around the Dales with a parapente than swimming about in a sump.

Of course it wasn't long before inner tube loops were being used for other purposes by cave divers; "dry" cavers soon cottoned on to their usefulness (see an article by Dave Elliott in a BCRA publication in the 1980s) and the rest, as they say, is history.

Oops: just done a search on the CDG site and it seems that it wasn't that recently that I asked the same question: it was 2003! Not only that but I got a reply from Pitlamp back then, too, that explained it.  My memory is even worse that I'd realised..... 

Dave Morris called them that years ago if my memory serves me right.  Even at that time everybody thought it was a  daft name. Martyn Farr should be able to confirm.
However i do like the cod definition regarding Norbert's dog. A refined might be that before the op he crossed it with a wolf hence Snoupi-Loup

Some names catch on, some don't. Back in the day some cavers called "cowstails" "claude loops". I have a feeling, though I don't know, that the name originated with Nick Reckert (sp?) then of CUCC.

Pete Glanville is right. Dave Morris came up with the name. Rob and Julian had seen them in Greece in the early 80's and I started using them here. I actually called them IT loops (as in inner tube - not information technology which came later!)
Dave called them snoopy loops one day at Hurtle Pot. I asked him why, and his explanation was that they 'snoop' round boulders! I thought it sounded a bit daft, but the name stuck and that was that. Mystery solved!

Thanks, Geoff. Glad I got my facts right!

graham said:

Some names catch on, some don't. Back in the day some cavers called "cowstails" "claude loops". I have a feeling, though I don't know, that the name originated with Nick Reckert (sp?) then of CUCC.

Click to expand...

Blimey - the things that can turn up when one's daughter casually Googles her dad's name...

Yes, guilty as charged. The name 'Claude Loop' stems from August 1970 when I joined the first exploration of the Gouffre Lonn?-Peyret with a pair of French cavers, Jean-Claude Dobrilla and Jo Marbach. Those two were at the cutting edge of SRT, and later wrote 'Techniques de la Sp?leologie Alpine', which I think was probably the first book on the subject. We were underground for three days, and the trip was a real eye-opener for me - and not just for their SRT kit; every piece of their caving gear was innovative. I'm sure Jean-Claude had a more suitable name for the loop, but I didn't know what it was and so it became a Claude Loop when I started trying out this funny new-fangled SRT stuff in Britain (16 December 1970, Marble Steps Pot, my logbook says).

Thanks for the memory!

The explanation I was told - back in the late 80's when I asked the Rock Steady Crew! - was simply that they looked like Snoopy's ears.