Mountain Project Logo

Carabiners on Alpine Draws Rotating

Original Post
Gone Climbin' · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Aug 2013 · Points: 15

As a new trad climber I had an experience that concerns me a bit. After placing a piece of protection and clipping with an alpine draw, the rope moving through the carabiner causes the carabiner to rotate so the rope and sling switch ends of the carabiner. The photo shows pre and post rotation positions of the carabiner. What concerns me is at some point the carabiner is in a position where a fall could cross load it. Is it possible to prevent this or am I overthinking it and it is just fine?

If this has already been discussed, please point me to the thread. Thanks.

--- Invalid image id: 111725270 ---

Kristen Fiore · · Burlington, VT · Joined Sep 2014 · Points: 3,383

You're slightly overthinking it and while it certainely could happen, the chances are slim. If you are really concerned about it you could attach one end using a clove hitch.

Of course, someone will tell you that it makes the sling 3% weaker which makes the total breaking strength of your sling 21kn. Despite the fact that your pelvis shatters somewhere around 11kn people will still give you a hard time about it.

Clove hitched biner:

Miguel D · · SLC · Joined May 2014 · Points: 544

Hey Greg,

I don't think you need to worry about this. I've had it happen too but it usually isn't a concern because nearly all non locking carabiners are designed in a way that minimizes the potential for cross loading because the inside perimeter edge of the carabiner is mostly smooth and minimizes spots where the rope or sling could get snagged to cross load the biner.

Even if you were to fall in the exact moment when the carabiner is in a cross loaded position, as soon as the climber's weight comes onto the biner, it'll straighten it out along the main axis for the same reason I mentioned above.

You can go ahead and try it. Clip a rope and a sling to one of these guys and try to cross load it by pulling only on the rope and sling. I think you'll find it's hard to do even on purpose. Where the nose meets the gate might be a spot that you can get it to snag, but probably still highly unlikely to happen in a normal situation.

Cross loading mainly happens with locking carabiners, where the rope or sling can get caught on the edge of the locking mechanism, though some lockers have minimal potential for cross loading because of the smoothness of the inside perimeter. One such example is the BD Rocklock with magnetron gate.

So bottom line is don't worry about it. And Kris has a good point, that's always an option too

Steve Bond · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Sep 2006 · Points: 45

First: Kris, my pelvis does not shatter until 14kn, but its taken a lot of training to get there. Second: Greg: this is why I put in too much gear and double up biners on the key placements. I worry about this stuff too (too much?). Miguel's answer is spot on.

Kristen Fiore · · Burlington, VT · Joined Sep 2014 · Points: 3,383
Steve Bond wrote:First: Kris, my pelvis does not shatter until 14kn, but its taken a lot of training to get there.
Thanks for sharing. It's true and I should have noted that proper training can increase ones pelvis shatter threshold.
Em Cos · · Boulder, CO · Joined Apr 2010 · Points: 5

Yes, that will happen, pretty frequently. You're correct that if you get very unlucky, you could potentially fall with the force on the minor axis of the carabiner, which is a weaker orientation. Or the rope or sling could even become unclipped from the biner. Think of your gear placements as part of a whole protection system, if something crazy happens to one, the next one down is your redundancy. If you've got a "must not fail" placement, such as over a ledge or after a long runout, especially if the climbing is near your limit, you may consider using a locker on that piece. (None of this, of course, addresses the quality of the placements themselves.)

I recall reading an accident report not too long ago where I believe three pieces failed - one pulled and the next two both unclipped - so it certainly can happen, though you can also climb thousands of pitches without ever having a problem. Lockers are safer but heavier and take longer to place and clean, rubber keepers can keep the biner oriented properly but have their own catastrophic failure mode, clove hitches can open the gate if they slide onto it... As with everything in climbing, it all comes down to your risk assessment and cost/benefit analysis.

mbk · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Jul 2013 · Points: 0

I might be fooling myself but I think it happens a little less frequently to me now that I pay closer attention to how I climb past the draw.

(i.e., I think some fraction of the time it was my pants rather than the rope doing the rotation)

rgold · · Poughkeepsie, NY · Joined Feb 2008 · Points: 526

I don't think it is something to worry about too much. In either of the positions in the photo, the carabiner is properly loaded. Having the carabiner somehow manage to balance so that not only is the sling on the gate, but it stays there under a load is an exceptionally low-probability concern---something else is gonna getcha.

And a good way to activate that "something else" is to try to keep the rope-end carabiner properly oriented with a clove hitch in the sling. I think the clove hitch increases the chances of a catastrophic failure enormously, because if that clove hitch manages, by virtue of loosening slightly, to slip over the gate, you'll be guaranteed of carabiner failure. This particular solution is orders of magnitude worse than the problem it purports to solve.

The problem with loose carabiners bouncing around at the end of slings isn't that they'll be loaded against the gate and break, rather it is that the complicated dynamics of rope motions under an impact might somehow cause the rope to unclip. This isn't hypothetical; mysterious unclipping incidents occur periodically in climbing accidents.

The rope motions seem to be especially turbulent when a higher piece pulls; the rope then instantaneously "snaps back" and high-speed photos show something of a corkscrew-like configuration that looks as if it could promote unclipping.

Another problem that isn't related to which way the carabiner is oriented is gate bounce: if the carabiner smacks into the rock, the gate can bounce open momentarily, and if this happens at the time of high loading the carabiner is in a gate-open state and can break.

The cure for both unclipping and gate bounce is to either have some sort of locking carabiner on the rope end of the draw or else install two carabiners with the gates opposed. You can't (or wouldn't want to) do this with every draw, but it is prudent to do it with mission-critical pieces whose failure would obviously result in something terrible. This seems particularly appropriate if the mission-critical piece is the "anchor piece" below a chain of dicey placements, one or more of which might blow.

Some people carry a "Jesus draw" that has locking carabiners at both ends and is intended for those "must not fail" placements. Others climb with a bunch of superlight lockers that they swap out onto critical draws, and still others climb with enough free ordinary biners to double up when needed. The common thread for all these approaches is a recognition that certain pieces should perhaps be reinforced, combined with a situational awareness of when reinforcing might be called-for.

Jfriday1 · · Golden, CO · Joined Jun 2012 · Points: 40

I carry 4-5 trad draws with super light lockers on the rope end for the "must not fail placements."

Its really not much more weight or time placing or cleaning when you think of it.

Linnaeus · · ID · Joined Aug 2011 · Points: 0
Miguel D wrote:... it usually isn't a concern because nearly all non locking carabiners are designed in a way that minimizes the potential for cross loading because the inside perimeter edge of the carabiner is mostly smooth and minimizes spots where the rope or sling could get snagged to cross load the biner. ... Where the nose meets the gate might be a spot that you can get it to snag, but probably still highly unlikely to happen in a normal situation.
While I agree with Miguel for the most part, I do think it's worth noting that some carabiners are much more prone to this than others. I.e the Mammut Moses is known to have nose hooking issues, and I find the Camp Photons also prone to snagging. Other carabiners are much smoother at the gate/nose transition, such as the Wild Country Helium, DMM Spectre, Thor (and most of DMM other carabiners), original BD Hotwires, etc. There have been discussions on this topic, as well as the rope side paradoxically unclipping itself. Bear breeder has some good posts in those threads.

For some climbs, it might be worth carrying some longer quick draws i.e. 25cm, which will have a rubber keeper to keep the rope side biner from rotating. I often carry 3-6 light quickdraws on my trad rack and not just alpine draws, unless I'm alpine climbing. On critical gear placements, I have started using a longer quick draw to alleviate any rope side biner problems. YMMV.
Noah Yetter · · Lakewood, CO · Joined Jul 2015 · Points: 105

Tangentially related issue: how much of a problem is the pro-end biner rotating? If you have a biner that's been clipped to a lot of bolts, or wires, and it rotates, metal burrs could start eating the sling. Is this worth worrying about?

Ted Pinson · · Chicago, IL · Joined Jul 2014 · Points: 252

No. First of all, the bolt/pro end rotating is much less likely, as most rotations occur due to the rope passing through the biner. Secondly, if the burrs were really bad enough to potentially cut a sling, the biner should have been retired years ago. This is why sport draws generally have rubber stoppers only on the rope end biners.

rgold · · Poughkeepsie, NY · Joined Feb 2008 · Points: 526
Linnaeus wrote: For some climbs, it might be worth carrying some longer quick draws i.e. 25cm, which will have a rubber keeper to keep the rope side biner from rotating.
Yikes no. Rubber keepers on open slings are dangerous.

vimeo.com/4138205

There has been at least one associated fatality when such a sling was used as a tether.
Ted Pinson · · Chicago, IL · Joined Jul 2014 · Points: 252

I think he meant regular quickdraws (long form) built on a dogbone, not alpine draws.

J. Albers · · Colorado · Joined Jul 2008 · Points: 1,926
rgold wrote: Yikes no. Rubber keepers on open slings are dangerous. .
Come on senor Gold. You are amongst the most knowledgable and evenhanded folks on the forums (really, I always read your posts for good perspective)...but...you should know better than to make an absolute statement like this. In this case, the DMM video gets a big shrug and a "duh" from me. If you are stupid enough to set your rubber stopper up like that -- or "double clip" through the runner in practice -- then of course its going to fail. So will double clipping a standard daisy. Or say, not backing up a jug on a traversing pitch can lead to your jugs popping and you plummeting. That doesn't mean those pieces of gear are verboten. The lesson here is always to know your gear and to know its limitations etc. And in this case, I think that there are plenty of good reasons to put a rubber gasket on the end of a draw if you do so in a safe and knowledgeable manner.

I used to only put rubber gaskets on the rope end of my sport draws for the obvious reasons that most sportos to do. I never did it on my alpine draws, largely because I was taught from a school of mentors that felt that one of the important features of putting a two foot sling on a piece of gear was to allow the rope and draw to "float" as much as possible so as to not disrupt or reorient the gear (or worse have a nut pull as you and the rope move upward). However, over the course of the last 15 years, I have come to a slightly different conclusion.

I cannot tell you how many times I have looked down at my gear and observed the draw on the rope end hung up on the nose or gate of the biner (many different brands and models of biner so that ain't the problem). The problem of course is that falling on a biner in that orientation can break the biner, an issue that is most certainly documented in the literature (read through some accidents in NAM from past years). I have found this issue to occur much more frequently with my one foot runners than with my two and four foot runners. In fact, once I started really paying attention, I noticed it so frequently with my one foots that I have fixed the rope end of those lengths of my trad draws with rubber gaskets.

Now of course there is a flip side to this in that there are big potential drawbacks to a stiff draw too. That is, I get the sneaking suspicion that some accidents where the rope has magically come unclipped from gear were the result of using a stiff dog bone. For e.g., if I recall correctly there have been several accidents in the gunks the past few years where a leader fell and decked yet their gear was still in the rock with a dogbone draw hanging. My thought here is that the stiffness of the dogbone causes the rope to detach in a manner similar to what occurs when you back clip on a sport route. Thus too much stiffness is also a negative in my opinion. That said, I am open to the possibility (which I am still internally debating) that on longer draws where stiffness is not an issue, fixing the rope end is a good idea because it completely eliminates the possibility of cross loading in the event of a fall. Of course on crucial placements -- say before or after a long runout, or on a crucial piece that will keep you off the deck -- then I just go nuclear and use a long runner with lockers on each end.
Linnaeus · · ID · Joined Aug 2011 · Points: 0
rgold wrote: Yikes no. Rubber keepers on open slings are dangerous. There has been at least one associated fatality when such a sling was used as a tether.
I'm not referring to open slings, but sewn quick draws. Basically all commercially available quick draws today have some type of rubber keeper to stop the rope side biner from spinning.

dmmclimbing.com/products/sp… for instance. 25cm long is often a good length for extending trad pro (more so than 10cm draws), but with the noted advantages on the rope side biner compared to an open sling.
rgold · · Poughkeepsie, NY · Joined Feb 2008 · Points: 526
J. Albers wrote: ...you should know better than to make an absolute statement like this. In this case, the DMM video gets a big shrug and a "duh" from me. If you are stupid enough to set your rubber stopper up like that -- or "double clip" through the runner in practice -- then of course its going to fail. So will double clipping a standard daisy.
Well, this is a beginner's thread and many beginners might not be aware of any of the nicities of rigging and clipping that you have to know in order to avoid fatal situations. Someone was in fact "stupid enough" to die because either she didn't know about this problem (and by the way, it has nothing to do with how the rubber stopper is set up, it is common to all such keepers), or else somehow a loop of her tether sling got clipped through the carabiner and she didn't notice it. (And with keepers that wrap around the carabiner, if the loop gets a little bit of tension and pops through, then the sling will look normal unless you inspect it carefully at close range.)

So yes, you are right, its all a matter of understanding your gear. But I don't think it was a terrible thing to give an absolute answer in this situation. (And yes, I misunderstood the actual context, which was not an open sling.)

J. Albers wrote: I cannot tell you how many times I have looked down at my gear and observed the draw on the rope end hung up on the nose or gate of the biner (many different brands and models of biner so that ain't the problem).
In this regard, you experience is vastly different than mine. I have never once (in what is now 59 years of climbing) seen a closed carabiner on a flexible sling hang up on the sling after the carabiner has rotated. I guess if that happened to me much I'd be thinking about keepers too.

J. Albers wrote: The problem of course is that falling on a biner in that orientation can break the biner, an issue that is most certainly documented in the literature (read through some accidents in NAM from past years).
It is true that carabiners have broken. Why they broke is never known, and there are possibilities other than the one mentioned here.
bearbreeder · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Mar 2009 · Points: 3,065
rgold wrote:I don't think it is something to worry about too much. In either of the positions in the photo, the carabiner is properly loaded. Having the carabiner somehow manage to balance so that not only is the sling on the gate, but it stays there under a load is an exceptionally low-probability concern---something else is gonna getcha. And a good way to activate that "something else" is to try to keep the rope-end carabiner properly oriented with a clove hitch in the sling. I think the clove hitch increases the chances of a catastrophic failure enormously, because if that clove hitch manages, by virtue of loosening slightly, to slip over the gate, you'll be guaranteed of carabiner failure. This particular solution is orders of magnitude worse than the problem it purports to solve. The problem with loose carabiners bouncing around at the end of slings isn't that they'll be loaded against the gate and break, rather it is that the complicated dynamics of rope motions under an impact might somehow cause the rope to unclip. This isn't hypothetical; mysterious unclipping incidents occur periodically in climbing accidents. The rope motions seem to be especially turbulent when a higher piece pulls; the rope then instantaneously "snaps back" and high-speed photos show something of a corkscrew-like configuration that looks as if it could promote unclipping. Another problem that isn't related to which way the carabiner is oriented is gate bounce: if the carabiner smacks into the rock, the gate can bounce open momentarily, and if this happens at the time of high loading the carabiner is in a gate-open state and can break. The cure for both unclipping and gate bounce is to either have some sort of locking carabiner on the rope end of the draw or else install two carabiners with the gates opposed. You can't (or wouldn't want to) do this with every draw, but it is prudent to do it with mission-critical pieces whose failure would obviously result in something terrible. This seems particularly appropriate if the mission-critical piece is the "anchor piece" below a chain of dicey placements, one or more of which might blow. Some people carry a "Jesus draw" that has locking carabiners at both ends and is intended for those "must not fail" placements. Others climb with a bunch of superlight lockers that they swap out onto critical draws, and still others climb with enough free ordinary biners to double up when needed. The common thread for all these approaches is a recognition that certain pieces should perhaps be reinforced, combined with a situational awareness of when reinforcing might be called-for.
put an elastic around the clove and on the biner ... or one can simply do an extra wrap around and use an elastic

solves both the clove moving and the string self unclipping

;)
Ryan Lynne · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Sep 2015 · Points: 1,615

Here is a video that shows how easily a carabiner will explode if loaded incorrectly.

rockandice.com/weekend-whip…

I have been meaning to buy a few Grivel Twin Wire Gate carabiners and try them out as alpine draws (rope end only). A twin gate or a locker is much less likely to explode if loaded in a weird way.

andrew thomas · · Orcas island · Joined Jan 2015 · Points: 105
Ryan Lynne wrote:A twin gate or a locker is much less likely to explode if loaded in a weird way.
doubt it
20 kN · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Feb 2009 · Points: 1,346
J. Albers wrote: If you are stupid enough to set your rubber stopper up like that -- or "double clip" through the runner in practice -- then of course its going to fail. So will double clipping a standard daisy. Or say, not backing up a jug on a traversing pitch can lead to your jugs popping and you plummeting. That doesn't mean those pieces of gear are verboten. The lesson here is always to know your gear and to know its limitations etc.
Except climbing is full of professional climbers and experts far more experienced than you or I who have made mistakes as stupid as the one you described, and they paid dearly for it.

John Long - Failed to tie in properly, decked
Lynn Hill - Failed to tie in properly, decked
Todd Skinner - Knowingly climbed on a damaged harness, died

Then there are tons of everyday climbers who have been injured or killed from everything ranging from getting dropped on an ATC, to suffering serious head trauma from not wearing a helmet.

cruxcrush.com/2014/05/20/th…

bestcounselingdegrees.net/1…

The list goes on and on and on. There are hundreds if not thousands of climbers at the elite level that have made "noob" mistakes that have nearly gotten themselves killed. Everyone from the best of the best to the noobies of noobs have made mistakes on the same level of noobness as the situation you are describing. Everyone in every example I posted above was aware not to do the thing that got them injured, yet for one reason or another it happened anyway.
Guideline #1: Don't be a jerk.

Climbing Gear Discussion
Post a Reply to "Carabiners on Alpine Draws Rotating"

Log In to Reply

Join the Community

Create your FREE account today!
Already have an account? Login to close this notice.

Get Started.