The name of a piece of climbing equipment invented by
John Bardeen in the
1970's. At the time he was an
engineer for
NASA. He also climbed frequently in
Yosemite which is filled with
offwidth cracks. Bardeen designed the first ever Sprung Loaded Camming Device (
SLCD) which worked amazingly well in the offwidth cracks. He didn't want his fellow climbers to know about his invention untill he had climbed as many routes with them
as he could.
On one climbing trip his climbing partner wanted to know if Bardeen had brought along the special equipment. He asked "Have you got our friends ?", the name stuck and this original design is now being produced by the company Wild Country. Bardeen went on to leave NASA and take up climbing full time.