Black Diamond Cobras

Does anyone know if BD will be re-designing the Cobras for next winter? I need a new set of tools and considering the Cobras, but I don't want to pull the trigger on a tool that might be getting better. It seems odd to me that they would introduce a new Viper and Venom without the Cobra getting an update too.

JoeCrawford Crawford wrote:Does anyone know if BD will be re-designing the Cobras for next winter? I need a new set of tools and considering the Cobras, but I don't want to pull the trigger on a tool that might be getting better. It seems odd to me that they would introduce a new Viper and Venom without the Cobra getting an update too.

The cobra won't change for next year, bd has very little reason to. The viper was changed because the old viper was essentially a worse cobra, so they redesigned the tool for to have excellent usability in the alpine as well as waterfall ice climbing. The venom changed to make room in the line for the swift, by making it slightly more technical they could introduce a slightly less technical version (the swift) to sell to those who dont need all the venom has to offer. Also the venom used to have special picks that only worked with the venom, now it uses the one bolt system that all the other ice tools use, which saves bd from having to lines of picks. In conclusion the cobra will remain the same for a while, its a damn good tool and bd knows it.

PS: buy the cobras, best pure ice and sub m8 tool I've ever used.

FWIW, I sent an email to Black Diamond regarding the availability of the full-size hammer for the Cobra and potential design updates to the Cobra.  The response is provided below.

“These [full-size hammer accessory] are no longer available. There are no updates on the Cobra coming in the near term or at least through the late 18 season. Thanks for checking.”

For my climbing style the Grivel north machines are pretty sweet.