Best small-size locking biners for building anchors at bolted belays

My favorites are the Petzl Spirit lockers. If you're on a budget Cypher or Mad Rock have a selection of small lockers for cheap.

Justin Barrett wrote:My only gripe with the metolius locker is that it takes forever to screw it open or close. It's about 6 full turns compared to the BDs 2 or so. Other than that, it does feel more solid. The petzl attaché? I'm not sure on what specific name, but it's the smallest of their I-beam screw locks. I love the gate action on those biners. Super smooth

I actually like the metolius small locker for this exact reason; even when they start to back off, they are far from being unlocked. The greasy action also seems to prevent unlocking. The petzl attaches have a habit of coming unscrewed, sometimes just from vibration. I like using the small mets for anchor bolts and autoblocks..

Firestone wrote:Steve, can you tell us more about how that happened? Looks more like an argument of solid vs wiregate, not snap vs locker (just my thoughts from your pics)

Agreed, looks like it got loaded over the gate.

Firestone wrote:Steve, can you tell us more about how that happened? Looks more like an argument of solid vs wiregate, not snap vs locker (just my thoughts from your pics)

TR anchor, but bolts were over the lip and to the left of the climb. I guess the TR anchor was moving back and forth a bit, and also the biners were able to touch the rock. Somehow the biner worked its way sideways, with the gate in the hanger, and got torqued. Since it was a wiregate, it bent sideways a bit. Luckily I had a locker on the other bolt, so the anchor wasn't totally compromised.

A solid gate would probably do better, but could still end up cross-loaded. Also a solid gate could still possibly fail if it got into this orientation (albeit at a higher load than a wire), since it looks like the gate was torqued sideways.

Now I always use at least 1 locker for the bolt side unless I'm at the anchor and can watch it (top belaying) or it's not going to be loaded in a compromising way (e.g. sport anchors that are parallel, in line w/climb, and not touching the rock).

EDIT: A quick schematic of how I believe it was loaded, based on the shape and how I found it. A solid-gate biner would undoubtedly be stronger here, but no biner is designed to be loaded this way. It could still bend, or unclip.

Noah Yetter wrote:The Grivel Plume is crazy light but pricey and not durable. I use one to attach my rappel backup knot and that's it.

I've been very happy with the Plumes. They are all I have on my rack for lockers at this point, not counting my belay biner. I would not hesitate to buy them again and have not been tempted by anything else since getting them.

But I have only used them for about a year. Curious what durability issues you have had.

I'm neurotic about weight and use CAMP photon lockers on the gear and connect it all together with BD Vapor Screw Locker in the middle. Those belay biners are really light and very easy to work with especially when creating a multi piece trad anchor.

I really like the small Metolius Bravo locker. It works great for bolted anchors. It's also light weight.

metoliusclimbing.com/bravo-…