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Clean Nose Carabiner comparesement - which one to decide for QuickDraw Upgrade: DMM Chimera or Wild Country Helium - or another one?
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Hey, Ive tested the Petzl Ange S 28g (too small, the ball on the gate snags, dont like it), L (to heavy, the ball on the gate snags, dont like it), DMM Chimera 30g (quite nice without gloves), Alpha Trad 35g (heavy, awkward shape, no good), Wild Country Helium 32g (biggest of all, yet quite light compared to that), CT Fly Weight Evo 26g (nice size without gloves, no clean keynose), Edelrid 19G which actually weighs 19.5 - 19.99g (too small, snags too much), Ocun Kestrel 26g (way smaller than the CT Fly Weight Evo but same weight, same size as the Edelrid 19G), and I can not decide if I want to go with 40x DMM Chimera for~ 1200g or with Wild Country Helium Biners for ~ 1315g of weight, compared to the fact that the 19G would do the same job for just 800g, or the CT Fly Weight Evo could do the job with 1040g with just the small downside that they have no cleaned nose. I thought alot about it, and because I come form the CT Fly Weights I have a tendencies to rather go with the smaller weight (DMM Chimera). The only argument against is to me would the use with gloves - but I do not Ice climb and do not plan to, but I Abseil with Gloves some times, and felt in that moments the Fly Weight could be a bit bigger to handle even better. So, I see reason why it would be smarter to choose for the Helium. Now Im stuck that feel afraid to bet my money on the wrong horse, and I dont like my "experience" which feels like Im biased to choose for the lighter Biner which Im know im not perfectly happy with, and do not dare to try the newer, bigger ones, which I might get happy with... Anybody who had the same question in the past and decided for each or the other way who may want to share how he feels afterwards about his decision - I would appreciate any comment before I spend the 600USD+ on that. Thanks
Ideas from later in the thread: Camp Nano 22g + WC Helium 32g = 54g. 20 sets = 1080g. Thats 235g lighter if just the Gear End is replaced with another biner, with clean nose + bigger rope clipping biners. Camp Nano 22g + DMM Chimera 30g = 52g. 20 Sets = 1040g, same weight as the CT Fly Weight Evo Rig but with clean-nose on one side. |
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Try the camp dyon. They're what I settled on after trying many of the same options. They have a nice stiff gate feel that feels more like a keylock than a wire gate and the nose profile is second to none for ease of clipping. I use these on my draws and rack on nano 22s |
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Camp Dyons are rad |
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+1 for the helium |
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Dyon all day. Plus you can often find them for $8.50-9.00, whereas helium under $10 is rare (except maybe marco?) |
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I ordered the Camp Dyon and will have a look into them too! Also I ordered the Nano 22, and if its any good (size and weight seems good by the spec sheet) it might replace the CT Fly Weight Evo. Thanks for your hints as I totally missed that one in my search. @Brassmonkey Thanks for the hint of Version 2 and 3! I am lucky and seem to have Version 2, because my weighs in at 32g. Actually I dislike the weaker gate spring tension on the Heliums compared to many others - the DMM Chimera feels better. So lets see how the Dyon will feel like. See you |
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I dive deep in for stuff like this and shoot for a high usability to value ratio (premium gear must be bought with good sales). I have Chimeras for a few racking biners, a couple of those as UL quickdraws, DMM Alpha Trad and WC Helium as racking biners, and my trad/alpine draws are all Heliums. I have a couple of Dyons and use them for racking nuts. Not sure I like the gate action on Dyons enough to use them more widely. Pros for the Dyon - large size, decent price, high open gate strength, thin nose for clipping into chains/pins/etc and minimizes racking space Cons - weaker major axis strength rating, stiff gate doesn't feel as nice, could be lighter. The Chimera are great, smaller size and weight, if you're okay with that. Harder to get as good a price on, wider nose. WC Heliums (2.0) - great size and weight, clip awesomely, high strength. Cons - nose is wide for chains/pins and racking width. If you can't decide, maybe use price to do it for you. Here's current deals I can find: WC Heliums - $9ish at campman.com with coupon FIRST20OFF DMM Chimera $11-12ish at epicTV with couon EXTRA5 and buying the purple (old) model quickdraws If you don't mind mix/matching - a good setup would be Chimera for racking biners (expensive to get the colored sets, though), and Dyons for the gear end of draws, and Heliums for the rope end - I find they win out in clipping feel. People who don't mind having snag-nose 'biners like a CAMP nano 22 on the gear end and Photon for the rope end - very light setup. I hate nose snagging, though. My 2 cents |
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If you hurry, you might get some older Heliums. They are full sized wire gates with a clean nose. Unfortunately the Helium 3.0 is now out and weighs 38 gms, a bit too high compared to the competition. The Chimera is my favorite racking biner, where a smaller biner is not a big deal, since you are frequently grabbing the biner at the same time as the cam's sling (and seldom have to get more than the rope into the biner). One of the advantages of a shrouded nose like the Heliums and Chimeras is that it lessens the chance the gate will drag open against the rock. I'm not a fan of the Dyon, since it has the reverse situation, with the gate sticking out further than other biners. I used the Nanos for a while, but thought dealing with their small size and gate notches wasn't worth that extra weight savings. |
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Acro, fair point about the Dyon and gate/rock drag potential. Matt, I would actually prefer the helium or dmm alpha trad but, like garfield, I get the snugglies from the stiffer gate tension on the dyon, so I use those for racking and gear end of slings (alpha sport for rope end of slings). All my draws are either alpha trad or helium though, and I love them - just tough to lose all that space on the harness, as you pointed out. I exclusively use Ange biners for nuts, for some reason they seem to enable security and access better than any biner I've tried - never used a dyon to rack nuts though, maybe I should try. Garfield, best advice to use the biner that feels best, regardless of weight. I've yet to encounter a situation where 3 oz total would make a significant diff in my climbing performance... if I lost ten lbs, I'd increase a letter grade tomorrow, so that's what I'm focused on instead ;) |
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I went with camp dyons and love them. The dmm chimera is a bit too small. prefer the dyons thin nose and they are just easier to handle / clip. Bd and WC have options, but prefer the dyons to anything else for no snag biners |
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DMM Chimeras seem to be the only clean-nose carabiners that come in all the colors as the Totems, if that's a thing that matters to you. I've been using exclusively WC Heliums for my trad rack, but considering switching to the Chimeras for any new biners I buy, since the new Heliums are going to be significantly heavier. |
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They make a black Chimera? I’m a bit disappointed by the dearth of good black carabiners ... oz are fine but sure would love a nice full size biner Thankfully Dyons cover the other 6 colors |
Christian Heschwrote: Yes! However, looking around, I'm realizing I don't see any places that sell the black, at least by itself. It may be that these are only sold as part of the Chimera Quickdraws. |
David Kwrote: Camp Dyons come in the Totem colors. Fwiw I have Dyons on my Totems and Heliums on my other cams, helps me tell them apart easier when carrying lots of gear/doubles. |
Christian Heschwrote: I tend to agree with this logic. While my favored biner for my trad rack is a fairly light biner (the Helium), my favored sport biner isn't (the Petzl Spirit). Lower weight isn't necessarily going to help you send harder if it comes at the expense of clipping ease. It's not hard to imagine scenarios where fumbling a few seconds at a pumpy clip costs you more energy than dragging up a few extra ounces would have. |
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It bears mention that 12 draws would be 40% lighter than 20 draws. |
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I try not to buy any gear made in china. (Camp) Not sure about BD now. |
mbkwrote: while true, I'll play devils advocate: After my first noob experience with significant rope drag (because of *not* bringing enough alpine draws), I realized that 8lbs of rope drag (prob more like twenty!) is worth about 40 alpine draws, so carrying 6-8 more is not a problem, when it reduces drag factor. After that "learn by doing" experience, I never again skimped on draws, and tried my utmost to learn how to read routes so as to use them for highest drag reduction...as that's worth a lot of lbs in the long run, especially linking pitches or simuling. |
mbkwrote: Not to mention you never need 20 draws. Stop sewing it up yall |
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Thanks for the feedback. Well, you need 20 draws: I never claimed I carry 20 draws, buts a different if I go Lead climbing in a gym with 15m walls, which takes 5-10 short draws, or if I go double rope alpine climbing where I need 16+ draws which are extendable. The other comment, that 3oz of gear is not worth considering, is some opinion you may have - but to me, who likes to backpack touring, every single gram counts! I carry all my gear and food from the second I leave my front door - no car, no hitchhiking. So for this situation, you may want to reconsider your gear aswell. We are talking only abouth the quickdraws here, but you can play this game all day long: There are Figure 8 Descenders that have 300g+, and there are some lightweight ones with 170g (CMC), there are HMS biners with 67g (Grivel Klepsydra) as there are tubes with ~50g compared to others that got around 100g or even more. You can use some heavy steel biners for anchoring, or you can choose the lightes screwgate available, the CT Aerial Pro SG. Summing up all the weight savings, I can achive more than 500g+ of savings with exactly the same setup, with exactly the same features! Tube vs Tube - HMS vs HMS - Screwgate vs Screwgate - Fullsize vs Fullsize - Clean Nose vs. Clean Nose - Webbing vs Webbing! No Apple to Oranges, always staying within the exactly same specs. So, it may does not worth the effort for some other who rather exercise more and loose weight, but it does so to me as a completely separated action. I can loose 10lbs of weigth AND save 500g of my rack. So, why not both ;) ? By the way:The Dyons didnt arrived yet, but I guess I will go with the Helium 2 for the rope end. I tried clipping a few more times indoors and I think it worths the additional 2 grams compared to the DMM Chimera. Im yet undecided if I go with smth. like the Nano 22g, or the Edelrid Mission 25g or the CT Fly Weight Evo 26g or maybe the DMM Chimera 30g for the gear end. Lets see - I feel already good enaugh to have my rope end upgraded. |
Garfield LovesFoodwrote: There's a saying on hiking forums: "Don't save ounces when you can save pounds." The classic first-time hiker mistake is to bring a big Bowie knife or similar and after leaving that on the second mile of their first trail, the newbie hiker goes online to find the lightest $300 titanium stove and cooking kit and save a few ounces, while they're still carrying the same 50 pounds of big three (backpack/sleep system/shelter) they bought before they were concerned about weight. The point isn't that the small stuff doesn't matter. The point is that you should deal with the big stuff first. When I was really serious about ultralight hiking, I was trimming all the extra length off my backpack straps to save fractions of grams, but that was only after I had removed all the excess gear and gotten the lightest small stuff, and that was only after I had gotten the lightest big three I could afford. If you haven't dealt with the pounds, there's no point even looking at the ounces. Applying this logic to climbing: I don't think anyone is saying that a savings of 270g (switching 15 draws from 39g carabiners to 30g carabiners) is irrelevant if you've dealt with everything bigger than that. What I'm saying, and what I think other people are saying, is that most climbers who need a thread like this aren't at a point where 270g matters. If you're 20,000g overweight, that 270g is irrelevant. The point isn't "don't optimize carabiner weights", the point is "look at the big picture and figure out whether carabiner weights are the biggest problem before optimizing carabiner weights". Maybe you're at a point where carabiner weights are your biggest problem. If that's where you are, you're in better shape than most climbers ever get to, and you've optimized your gear to a high level already. Congrats. Good for you. Well done. But at that point, you know what you're doing and don't need this thread. Going back to the hiking metaphor: nowadays I carry a Jetboil. It's not the lightest stove on the market, and in fact when I was really serious about ultralight hiking, I didn't carry a stove. Similarly, I carry a full tent with a fly and bug netting, instead of the much lighter tarptent I used to carry. That's because experience has taught me that hot meals and drinks and a dry, bug-free place to sleep are more important to me than a couple pounds. If I were trying to through hike trails as fast as possible, I'd be going lighter, but that's not how I hike these days. Similarly, experienced climbers are going to understand that small weight involves compromises, and choose compromises that make sense for what they're doing. If you're doing a fast and light summer alpine objective where you're pretty much always clipping from really good stances with ungloved hands, then sure, get the Edelrid 19g--the numbers don't lie, this will save you quite a bit of weight. But there's a reason nobody is talking about those on this thread: fumbling with every single clip with your tiny hook-nosed carabiners is going to be a bigger problem than the weight savings for almost every climber out there--some of us clip from bad stances or with cold/gloved fingers. If you're at the point where the Edelrid 19g is the right choice for you, you're optimizing for a very specific objective, and you probably know what you're doing enough that you don't need this thread. This long rant is just to say: the sensible audience for this thread is average climbers, who are a bit overweight, probably aren't carrying any of the absurdly heavy gear you mentioned (figure 8, steel biners) and probably are seeking objectives where clipping ease and losing a bit of fat are higher priorities than shaving 270g off their rack. There are people who have different priorities, yes, but those people know what those priorities are and don't need this thread. If you think you aren't micro-optimizing here, keep in mind that the 500+g you mention, which you seem to think is a lot, is actually well within the fluctuations in body weight that humans experience daily. You can likely save 500g by going to the bathroom before you send. |
