Grivel...oof

I must be a petzle bot as well. I broke 4 BD Viper picks, switched to Quarks and never looked back..  sometimes shit happens. 

Malcolm Hansell wrote:

anecdotal but my g20+ have been fantastic and as durable as I could ask for, no idea about the 22s though

One of the tuning fork type adjustable bars between the sections snapped on me while leading not too long after this, for what it’s worth

Just updating this post. We now have 3 broken G22+. We're pulling Grivel crampons from our inventory and personal collections. We will not be recommending Grivel crampons going forward.

 If anybody has a direct contact with somebody at Grivel, not a sales email or other generic address, please PM me. I can do some math but we're at around 20% catastrophic failure rate for G22/G22+ crampons. With zero from all other manufacturers combined. 

Yikes. Anyone want to buy my grivel crampons?

I broke my G20 +  in a similar manner. 

Post on Reddit a few days ago with a similar breakage.  

https://www.reddit.com/r/iceclimbing/comments/1huszi2/grivel_quality_control_issues/

I like my g20s more than any other crampon, but now I'm questioning them. Looking at the pictures, it's hard to tell what part is breaking- it seems like the g 20 s and the g22 s have a much different construction. Is it the case that the breaking part on the 22s isn't a piece that is in the 20? It's hard to tell what I'm looking at in the little picture on my phone.. 

Ira OMC wrote:

I like my g20s more than any other crampon, but now I'm questioning them. Looking at the pictures, it's hard to tell what part is breaking- it seems like the g 20 s and the g22 s have a much different construction. Is it the case that the breaking part on the 22s isn't a piece that is in the 20? It's hard to tell what I'm looking at in the little picture on my phone.. 

my G20+ broke in almost the exact same spot as the G22s in the link above. 

Adam Stone wrote:

Post on Reddit a few days ago with a similar breakage.  

https://www.reddit.com/r/iceclimbing/comments/1huszi2/grivel_quality_control_issues/

Yeah. I saw that and also posted the photo there too. 

Ira OMC wrote:

I like my g20s more than any other crampon, but now I'm questioning them. Looking at the pictures, it's hard to tell what part is breaking- it seems like the g 20 s and the g22 s have a much different construction. Is it the case that the breaking part on the 22s isn't a piece that is in the 20? It's hard to tell what I'm looking at in the little picture on my phone.. 

If it helps, we haven't had an failures of G20/G20+ although others have. The OG G20s are one of my favorite crampons; they just get worn to numbs without a replaceable front point. 

Two of the three fractured through the main yellow part of the crampon just in front of the secondary point and the third fractured a the little black metal piece that essentially serves as a spacer between the front points. In either instance the crampon goes pretty limp. 

Thanks Jason for the clarification! 

Has anyone heard of any breakages of the venerable G14?  There must be a zillion of them still in use. 

A bit concerning to hear that Grivel is having failures like this, especially on newer pieces of gear. Between my wife and I we have about 7 pairs of G20, G22, and G20+ crampons in various states of abuse. I have broken the linking bar on my 1 beater pair (newer style bar) but I broke it when I was trying to straighten the under arch points back out after they had bent. They broke where the bolt goes through when I was bending the point with a pair of vice grips. I've broken 1 bail, too. Otherwise, no issues. Makes me wonder if they've had a bad batch of poorly tempered crampons. 

I have broken 2 pairs of darts (front points cracked) and 1 pair of sarkens (front point cracked!). 

good luck out there, folks! 

Bale wrote:

Has anyone heard of any breakages of the venerable G14?  There must be a zillion of them still in use. 

I haven’t seen any broken G14s or G12s, but every crampon is going to have a limited fatigue life.  The only effective safeguard against crampon fatigue failures is to inspect your crampons for fatigue cracks.  

This QC Lab Report doesn’t address the design issues unique to the G20 / G22, but it does provide a good general overview of crampon fatigue failures.