Finding the Best Alternative to the Original Attache: A Review of Rope Bearing Carabiners

Hi Andy--thanks for the reply.  

That all makes good sense.  I think this is popular in the UK.  I'll have to give it a try in the kind of situation you describe. 

All best, 

B

Andy, I also came off as a bit attacking, sorry.

Main concern was it looked like belaying 2.

I find a munter much more comfy for this style of fast top belay off harness. No back and forth with brake hand stuff, seems like about the same amount of friction, maybe more holding power... but I have never done that with halfs/twins on a single HMS.

Grivel K6G aka Mega HMS is a great alternative: 

• same size/shape pear
• same size rope bearing round stock in the basket (but is is more "I" beam on the spine, so if it rotates in guide mode you may want to rotate it back for easiest rope pulling)
• even quicker to lock/unlock with the twin gate

I've just recently started using the Grivel and love it! 

I've been on the grivel twin gate band wagon for a few years now. I love them for everything when you aren't wearing large winter gloves. I do wear belay gloves most days and I found I couldn't efficiently operate the k6g shown above. However the gate/wire Lambda k7g works like a dream and is so easy to operate even w light gloves on. Super strong, if that matters, and round stock as well. 

that guy named seb wrote:

Do Americans usually not not how to belay directly off a harness? 

come on, everybody's doing guide mode, man!

Great write up. In regards to the "resistance ratings", this is probably only useful if we assume that the biner friction as a function of load is linear. If it isn't (it probably isn't), then the ranking of the various lockers could change as load is increased/decreased.

I suspect that with higher loads, the I-beam stock biners will experience a more nonlinear increase in friction, while the round biners maybe less so. That is, it might be unfair to suggest that the Nimbus has nearly as much frictional resistance is the current Attaché; that just can't be true, right?

Also note that all you need to do to translate these kg values to kN is multiply by (9.8/1000). The luggage scale is really just measuring a force in newtons, but internally converting it to kg by assuming g=9.8 m/s^2 (or, if it's analog, the manufacturer did this when calibrating the scale).

So this data suggests that the Nimbus provides a frictional resistance of 0.288 kN, and the current Attaché 0.297kN, a difference of 0.009 kN, or ~3%. Think about that; can you discern a 3% difference in biner friction on the belay? Even for a long mutlipitch, I really have no idea, but I doubt it. On the other hand, I'd think that I can discern between the resistance of a mostly-round biner (nimbus) and an I-beam stock biner on a partially weighted rope (e.g. lots of rope drag). 

Anyway, this is all just intuition, maybe I'm wrong. Just saying that I'm skeptical of the implication of the data, which is that the Nimbus gets you almost nothing over the current Attaché, in terms of ease of feeding rope through the belay device. 

Also, I'll note, this review convinced me on the Salewa. I was pretty set on the Nimbus, but I do like the idea of having a truly round stock biner, including the spine. If anyone has experience of the Nimbus belaying just as smooth in plaquette mode let me know.

Anyway, the Salewa unfortunately seems to be discontinued in the colors OP posted, which looks a lot like the original attaché. They now make it with a black gate, a larger logo, and apparently two different sizes (small, medium). Not sure which of those the model included in this review applies to. I assume the small.

Edit: 2 original blue/silver Salewa shipping from Europe for more than I'd like to admit

I prefer an autolocker for my master belay/rap biner: are there options in an auto-lock HMS version?

The Rock exotica pirate comes in lots of different combos. I’d check them out