how much weight will BD hooks hold?

I have two BD talons, cliffhanger and grappling hooks for aid. In the few pitches that I have put in with them (only used them once or twice) when I weight the hook there appears to be quite a bit of flex in the metal. I know they are treated so they will bend before they break but it just makes me uncomfortable seeing the small piece of metal thats holding me bending. It alway bends back into shape though. I weigh about 245lbs, give or take, and am worried that I am just too heavy for hooking. I would hate to be a few hook moves off my last piece of gear and have one break under my weight, that just seems bad. So are there any bigger aid climbers out there who have experienced this and does anyone think that my weight will be too much for hooking? Does anyone know if there is a weight limit for the hooks? I have a leaper and moses cam hook and the limit on those is 250lbs.

Hooks are not known to break. But rock sure is.

Agreed. Hooks will be last thing to fail/break. Coming from someone of your same size.

It is unnerving when hooks flex, but as Bob said, I'd be more concerned about the rock edge you placed the hook on than the hook itself.

photocodo wrote:...makes me uncomfortable seeing the small piece of metal thats holding me bending. It always bends back into shape though.

Dang! 245 with no rack or rope! I can't imagine the hook breaking, I'd worry more about any small edge breaking.

I know Im a big boy ;) trying to lose some of those pounds. I will start keeping my eye on the rock more so than the hook itself. Thanks for all of the advice.

Photocodo

364.866 lbs?

A trick for you, Photocodo, would be to figure out a quick way you can equalize a couple of pieces. Sometimes I'll carry a five foot piece of 5 mil that I'll used to tie a couple heads, or hooks or any combination of things together to build myself a mid pitch "mini-anchor".

Hell, I weigh 125 pounds sans clothes and rack, but even still, security is security and I'll take it wherever I can get it!

I only weigh 125lbs (like Mark) but I have taken a couple (and by couple, I mean, two) factor 2ish daisy falls onto a grappling hook both times and it held fine with only a little bit of tearing of the stitches on my ladder clip in point. I would assume (without doing any math of course) that a 125lb plus gear factor two is going to produce much more stress on the hook than a static 245lbs with gear, but what do I know? I've also factor two'd onto an inverted Moses camhook and it held fine fwiw.

All in all, I'd not worry about body weight on the hooks. The rock on the other hand... I'd worry about that.

I'd probably worry more about fixed heads at that weight, since you'll probably be sketching on those much more than hooks on easier walls.

I have certaintly not herd of hooks breaken but check out this video... the guy falls on a BOMBER grappling hook and it apparently breaks...
youtube.com/watch?v=JqOrMDr…

daisy fall...

I've heard of them straightening out on a fall, never actually breaking. Still though, not much difference, the climber still falls.

On the Zodiac my buddy was leading into the white circle. Almost to the anchor he took a 40 footer. The BD skyhook bent, kinda opened up the radius of the hook (what Mark H describes), blew the rock and a fat bolt with a screamer caught his fall.

He fell probably 15 feet onto the hook, then another 25 beyond.

Kept the hook as a memento. Never used it again..

funny thing... what caused the fall was he was hooking and the water knot came undone on the weighted hook

I took a 50 footer on Native Son last year that was held by a big 4" hook.

BASE1361 wrote: fat bolt with a screamer caught his fall.

20 kN wrote: Why would you put a screamer on a bomber bolt?

I designed the first wide based hooks while working for Ed Leeper in the early 70's. We made two styles, one that would fit in a 1/4" bolt hole and a wider one for hooking on flakes. I remember that the narrow one would open up at about 400 lbs and the wide at about 500. The BD hooks are descendants of these as Chouinard copied ours ,with our permission, as our machinery did not allow us to make a larger one. The point of failure was at the transition from straight to curved. I would assume that the BD hooks would start to open up at around 500 lbs. In our testing the rock usually failed first if it was granite, the hook failed first on eldo sandstone.

Hey Mark, who makes that hook in your photo? Used a similar but smaller one in Zion recently, so clutch. I need to get my hands on a couple!

It's a Pika hook. They were out of production for a while but someone just started making them again. I use that hook a lot, it's very useful.

Hold on I'll try to find a link for you.

Search for Pika Mountaineering.

looks like this is the site mark got his hooks from... me thinks I am going to go into production in shop class! stoked!!!

blumental.us/store/?page/52…