Carabiners on Alpine Draws Rotating

20 kN wrote: 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. ... yet for one reason or another it happened anyway.

That's all nice and everything, but it doesn't really have a take away other than "if you f*ck up, then you might die or get badly hurt"....which of course we all know. Because someone fails to tie their figure 8 correctly and then dies, it doesn't mean that you should stop using that knot. And likewise, just because someone f's up and double clips a sling with a gasket on it and sucks dirt doesn't mean that everyone else should stop using gaskets.

...and for the record, citing a guide or a "pro" climber as a pinnacle of safety doesn't hold water in my book because to be honest, hands down the dumbest and most dangerous things I have witnessed in the hills have been done by someone who was a guide or a pro. There is very little correlation between climbing talent and safe practices. In fact, if I might be a dick for a second, I would argue that a lot of pros are not exactly geniuses that I would want judging my climbing practices. On the flip side, you are right that even those pros -- or anyone for that matter -- who are sharp guys (like Todd), can still f up. Indeed the complacency that can come with being a guide or a pro can be a real danger for those folks, and unfortunately for Todd -- who certainly knew what he was doing (and was a super nice guy to boot) -- that meant that he let his harness go for too long. Still, that doesn't make for a good argument for stopping to use 'X' piece of gear.

You could use these on the rope end? But it would be nice if companies made a light weight version of these in both lockers and non-lockers.

The chance of crossloading would be very low then.
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Jfriday1 wrote:You could use these on the rope end? But it would be nice if companies made a light weight version of these in both lockers and non-lockers. The chance of crossloading would be very low then.

I wish it were that easy.

In a world where people set up draws like this

Draw setup in fatal fall

Someone is bound to rig your dream biner like this:

Because they can

Grivel has a new non-locker that captures the sling and isn't vulnerable to the scenario in the above illustration. Pretty heavy, though.

grivel.com/products/rock/ca…

Noah Yetter wrote:Grivel has a new non-locker that captures the sling and isn't vulnerable to the scenario in the above illustration. Pretty heavy, though. grivel.com/products/rock/ca…

Ya saw those, too bad its made out of steel and heavy.

Gunkiemike wrote: I wish it were that easy. In a world where people set up draws like this Someone is bound to rig your dream biner like this:

that is come crafty MS Paint skills right there...

I just had slings made for me that are like long quick draws. MET also has long draws that can be racked like a regular alpine draw.

KrisFiore wrote: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:

Clove hitches reduces the strength of rope by about 35-40% people, i think we need bear breeder to talk to you about race car accidents.

Rob Warden, Space Lizard wrote:I just had slings made for me that are like long quick draws. MET also has long draws that can be racked like a regular alpine draw.

The Metolius Rabbit Runner seems a good solution.

Rabbit Runner

Ryan Hill wrote: The Metolius Rabbit Runner seems a good solution. Rabbit Runner

These things are awesome i wish they sold them in the uk.

I think the Rabbit runner is too bulky for making tripled draws.

Metolius makes something that would work tripled, (the longest one in the picture is 20 inches)

but, unfortunately, they insist on selling them with their carabiners (yeah, I asked if they would sell me ones without the biners---answer was no.)

rgold wrote:I think the Rabbit runner is too bulky for making tripled draws. Metolius makes something that would work tripled, (the longest one in the picture is 20 inches) but, unfortunately, they insist on selling them with their carabiners (yeah, I asked if they would sell me ones without the biners---answer was no.)

I'm sure Caccia Equipment can make mini Rabbit runners like that. Your choice of colors, and no biner purchase required.

Misty Mountain also.

bearbreeder wrote: 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 ;)

YES. I have been thinking about this for a while now, trying to find a good and safe way to secure the rope-end carabiner on alpine draws, for two reasons:
1- As J. Albers described, often the carabiner moves around in a way that could cross-load or risk the gate pressing against a rock or something;
2- And because I have several trad draws with DMM revolver carabiners (those fancy ones with the built-in pulley), for use in reducing rope drag, and if the carabiner flips around, the pulley is useless.

I'm well aware about the danger of trad draws with a keeper, where the sling can be clipped back through the carabiner and remain attached by nothing but the rubber(or tape etc). It's a huge risk that every climber should be aware of, and it's easy enough to miss that I personally think this method should be avoided even if you're aware of the danger.

A while back I read about the technique Bearbreeder describes, about wrapping the sling around the carabiner twice (aka 'a round turn' in knot terminology), and securing that with rubber band or O-ring of some sort. This avoids the danger since if the sling gets clipped back through the carabiner, only one of the turns is unclipped, essentially it's back to being a standard draw (in a fall you'd break or stretch out the rubber). This seems like the ideal solution, and also preserves the full strength of the sling, but very few climbers seem to know about it, and it hasn't caught on. Sorry this if I'm not describing this well, a while back someone posted photos of the method, but I can't find it right now.

Currently I use clove hitches for my draws with revolver carabiners, but I've been meaning to switch to the above method for a while. The clove hitches are kinda messy, they still get a little loose, and especially after seeing the comment about the clove hitch potentially getting caught on the gate (although it's never happened to me and I've been using these for a while), I'm motivated to stop using them.

The only reason I haven't switched to the double-wrap and O-ring method yet is that no climbing stores sell such rubber O-rings(a Petzl string would be vert difficult to set up over the double wrap), and I'm not sure what size I would need, and I couldn't find that info anywhere online.

Anyway I'm going to take my best guess and use trial and error to find the right size- I just ordered these 36mm (1.4") ID silicone O-rings, worst case I'm only out $5: smile.amazon.com/dp/B00AH8D8E0

I'll post an update and photos once I see if these work (or not).

Ryan Hill wrote: The Metolius Rabbit Runner seems a good solution.

I have one 'Rabbit Runner' of a different brand (Bluewater Titan, a shorter version they apparently no longer make- ~44" I think) setup as a trad draw, with a locking carabiner on one end. While it sounds like a great idea on paper, in practice it doesn't work nearly as well, and I'll probably stop using it eventually.

You'd expect that the small opening would be less prone to the carabiner rotating, and it may be. But I've found that sometimes the carabiner can still get in a cross-loaded position, and the small opening means it's more likely to stay stuck that way. Also, when extending the sling, the stiff sewn part of the loop sometimes gets caught in the carabiner when it tries to flip through the opening, so it's a bit more fussy..

On the bright side, the single strand does seem a bit less messy, and the material is very burly (it's only rated to 15kn, but that's more than most gear I'm clipping).

I think rabbit runners are great for some things, just not as trad draws. I keep a 12' one on my harness as a compact second cordelette, which is also useful for things like extending an anchor or anchor piece, slinging a large boulder, or setting up a 3:1 hauling system (static material really helps there).

Bluewater Titan Rabbit Runner

I played around with keepers on alpine draws a bit and decided against them. Some of the drawbacks:

• Partners used to ordinary alpine draws hated them.
• I prefer not to have a dedicated rope-end carabiner on an an alpine draw. So now do you install keepers on both ends?
• Extending the draw becomes a bit more complicated and sometimes results in extra turns around a carabiner.
• One of the advantages of alpine draws is that they can be instantly disassembled and reassembled; that flexibility is lost with keepers.

I'm still highly skeptical about a free rope-end carabiner crossloading. I think it is going to move into one of the two appropriate positions as soon as loading begins. (If you are using those roller thingies, that's a different story, and a rabbit runner is more likely to trap the carabiner in a bad position.) And unlike others, I've never seen nor until this thread heard of the nose hanging up on an open alpine sling.

As I said before, the real problem is the rope somehow coming unclipped, and I don't think fixing the carabiner to the sling does anything significant about this---you have either have to use something that locks or two things that don't lock for this problem.

rgold wrote: As I said before, the real problem is the rope somehow coming unclipped, and I don't think fixing the carabiner to the sling does anything significant about this---you have either have to use something that locks or two things that don't lock for this problem.

Hi Ron. I can understand the first set of conclusions that you made because they are really just personal preferences. Personally the drawbacks that you mention don't bother me at all, but to each his own, as they say. That said, your last statement that I quoted above doesn't make sense to me. In fact, my conclusion is the exact opposite. I wish I could find the video that someone made showing how the biners became unclipped in Wayne Crill's accident in Eldo because it would be very helpful to this discussion. Alas we will have to settle for my poor description. In essence, both of his pieces failed because his biners rotated (perhaps due to rope flutter associated with his first piece ripping) and then the gate on the biner pressed on its own draw as loading was occurring and thus the biner simply unclipped itself from its own draw. This happened on two pieces in a row for him (yikes to say the least). If you play around with this scenario, it becomes pretty clear that this circumstance is extremely difficult to replicate when the rope end biner is fixed, but frighteningly easy when the rope end biner floats. Can it still happen with the rope end fixed? Meh, maybe. But it is waaay more likely when the biner is allowed to float. Obviously the only way to really mitigate this issue is with a locker on the rope end, but doing that on every draw is obviously cumbersome. My "middle ground" solution is to fix my rope end biners on my draws (which solves the problem "most" of the time) and then carrying a couple locker-end setups for times when I want to bookend a long runout or be damn sure on a critical placement.

Here's a video in which someone makes it happen...

youtube.com/watch?v=TrlKLS9…

Gunkiemike = Posting GOLD! Nice LMAO

rgold wrote:Here's a video in which someone makes it happen...

Ron you rock!! That's exactly the video I was referring to. After I watched Stefan's video I went and played with some slings a bunch and yeah, it was pretty sobering. I have to admit, I am sort of surprised that you haven't observed the biners getting hung up on slings because most of my partners (many of them old and crusty) agree with my anecdotal claims about how common it is to have biner hangup.