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Petzl Ice Tool Failures (Current Generation Quark, Nomic, and Ergonomic)
Gunkiemikewrote: well maybe not while being climbed on.... JJ broke about 3 of them in his yard this summer |
Andrew Lambwrote: Your Christmas gift to us all was resurrecting this dead ass thread? Bah humbug. |
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I'll break that stuff, send me all you got |
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Happy New Year!  |
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Just to be clear, as I understand that last picture is from a lead fall directly into tethers clipped to a tool. https://iceicebeta.com/blog/you-shouldnt-be-falling-on-your-tethers/ Context is important. |
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Tools shouldn't be breaking. I have brand new nomics and this is really disconcerting. |
Nick Goldsmithwrote: That's funny? I have a several beat-up pairs of Nomics and Ergos and they're not broken? Go figure :) |
Bruno Schullwrote: What’s most interesting to me about this is that I believe that pommel is rated for ~1.5kn. Which I believe would mean that a force likely lower than that amount was transferred to above the handle where it broke. That’s not a lot of force, but perhaps other factors and forces were at play, would be curious to get more info about how the tool was placed (any lateral forces?). |
Bruno Schullwrote: You’re certainly welcome to calculate your own risks. But just because they’re not yet broken doesn’t mean they can’t break. It’s the particular mechanism of failure by my assessment, not necessarily a direct correlation with how much use the tool has had. |
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@ Christian and Nick, I was being ironic because all this back and forth has been played out on this thread over the past 14 pages. Yes, the breakages are concerning. However, without more information, there's nothing we can conclude. There are massive numbers of Nomics and Ergos in circulation--if these tools were breaking regularly, and had lead to accidents, we would know about it. That's how I calculate my risk. One thing I don't do is ice climb on tools that I have used extensively for dry tooling. Anyway, of course, use Hydras, Morphos, whatever. |
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I am Not in the camp of buying anything other than X dreams or Nomics. I don't do hard drytooling. I do a fair bit of soloing.. I don't ever want to see a picture of a broken tool regardless of the reason. that shit is supposed to be bombproof. I have only done one roped climb this season. 90% of my climbing is what I call winter hiking... Broken tools are not an option....  |
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Nick the standard you want is completely unreasonable and a bad mindset to be in. It’s doesn’t matter if a tools was made out of tungsten it would eventually break. Yes there are one off situations where people break tools but that’s the exception to the standard. I guarantee you ropes get cut or bines break wayyy more often then tools breaks. If you are so worried about a tools breaking either stop climbing or buy a new set of tools every climb. |
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I don't think there is anything unreasonable about expecting tools to be able to handle more than 1.5k. I do replace my tools about every 3 years. I do my part . the damn tools should do theirs. in over 40 years of ice climbing I had only kown of one tool actually breaking. My friends grivel machine the handle came off while leading WI6 in the Canadian Rockies. I went through a spat of BD picks breaking in about 2006 /07 so ditched BD as an option. switched to Petzl and Cassin with no further problems in that dept. Now I get myself new tools for xmass and I see pictuers of them broken all over the fecking computer. Not Fckn cool in IMYOP |
Nick Goldsmithwrote: Nick, while I understand the fear, I encourage you to read the Ice Ice Beta article (which I edited). The use of those tools for direct aid and tether whips can generate some extremely high forces which would never be encountered in regular usage. In fact, the whole point of the article is Greg suggesting a system to avoid slamming the tools with such high forces. replacing your tools after 3 yrs of heavy use is still super smart. They do get worked. |
Daniel Kaywrote: I was really hoping to discuss the point I previously raised further that most tethers I’ve seen are rated for 2kn or less (it says so on the BD tether, can’t confirm the Petzl). And the Petzl pommel the tether was clipped into I’ve seen rated for 1.5kn. The whole point of the article was to suggest using something that would break at a lower force, i.e. a 1kn loop of cord. The oversight, however, is that in the two other scenarios except for the Ergonomic, these things (tethers and pommels) were breaking because the forces exceeded their rating. If neither the tether or pommel broke in the Ergonomics case, how would it be possible that this particular fall generated higher forces (greater than the 1.5kn pommel) if neither of those points broke before the handle here? Does that not mean a force LESS than 1.5kn was transferred to the point at which the tool broke? That’s not a very high force. Genuinely trying to have a discussion here, hopefully that’s not too much to ask. |
Christian Donkeywrote: For sure. I pointed Greg towards this thread, perhaps he or Nick B will feel like weighing in. Cheers. |
Christian Donkeywrote: No, it doesn't. A force rating is a statement of the mimimum breaking strength. It doesn't mean the component will break at that force, and in fact actual break forces on new gear are generally well above the MBS. |
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Greg here from the article. I haven't read most of this thread yet but I thought I'd chime in quickly. I've broken 2 ergonomics in half, and Nick has broken one. The failure in the picture we think was a lateral load on the tool, and that the tool had accumulated fatigue that made it break way lower than it would have otherwise. We both dry tool fairly hard. One of my failures was under bodyweight in a shaft torque. Another was while swinging into a 'rose petal' ice feature. Neither case was probably over 1.5kn, they were just the straw that broke the camels back. I didn't want to get into a whole rabbit hole of how we've broken 3 ergonomics in half between us in the article. The crazy part is you have guys like Jeff Mercier climbing on the original Ergo's for like a decade without snapping them, it's not like hard dry tooling should cause failures either IMO. Nick and I are both on BD Hydras now, not entirely because of those failures but they certainly contributed to the decision. I can go into it more at some point, but I'm heading out early tomorrow. |
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Conspiracy theory: since the Nomic has been the pinnacle of a pure ice/easy mixed climbing tool for many years now, the only way BD could leap ahead, was to copy it, and then plant seeds of doubt in Petzl owners to get them to convert by staging and posting up several “failures” in a covert media smear campaign This is a despicable business practice. |
Mark Pilatewrote: I would say you watch too much TV, House of Cards comes to mind… But then yeah…replace those Nomics in case your wrong ;) |
