Broken Gear Loop on Harness

My buddy and I were climbing up the NE face of Pingora Saturday and around pitch 8, a cam on his gear loop snagged and broke the loop causing our 5 big pieces to fall down the wall. Not a good feeling when your belaying and seeing 5 cams come flying down!

Anyone else ever experienced that on a harness?

Are the cams still up there?

Cams are somewhere on the East face

Fixed loops?

Edelrid made a harness a couple years back that you could add/remove gear loops that attached along a "rail". I ripped one of those off and retired the harness for it's faulty design.

Carl Smith wrote:My buddy and I were climbing up the NE face of Pingora Saturday and around pitch 8, a cam on his gear loop snagged and broke the loop causing our 5 big pieces to fall down the wall. Not a good feeling when your belaying and seeing 5 cams come flying down! Anyone else ever experienced that on a harness?

This was a fairly common phenomenon a few years ago, I think mostly with BD harnesses. If I remember right, BD was using injection molded plastic (kind of rubbery feeling) gear loops that inspired at least a few broken gear loop threads either here or on rockclimbing.com. I haven't ever heard of it happening with the newer style of gear loops on BD harnesses, or on any other harnesses. It would be interesting to know what kind of harness and what generation of gear loops your buddy was using.

I had a gear loop rip off of a BD Flight harness in a fall a few years ago. My best guess as to what happened is that during the fall, the rope got caught on a racked cam enough to rip out the loop once the rope came taut. I was in a layback and the rope was running over my thigh, so it was in contact with the gear racked on my harness.

I contacted BD about it and they asked my to send it in. They replaced it with a brand new harness, no questions asked.

I was unaware that BD apparently changed their gear loop design recently?? The harness was from 2011 I believe.

Who made your buddy's harness?

gear loops are not structural (except on those bulky metolius harnesses).

i have had friends break their gear loops during a fall.

if it is something that really concerns you, you can always rack on a sling.

kennoyce wrote: This was a fairly common phenomenon a few years ago, I think mostly with BD harnesses. If I remember right, BD was using injection molded plastic (kind of rubbery feeling) gear loops that inspired at least a few broken gear loop threads either here or on rockclimbing.com. I haven't ever heard of it happening with the newer style of gear loops on BD harnesses, or on any other harnesses. It would be interesting to know what kind of harness and what generation of gear loops your buddy was using.

It was a lightweight Camp harness with sown on gear loops.

Yep. Fell, snagged the loop on a tree limb, scattered gear all over, broke four ribs. Wasn't the best day ever.

I pulled the stitches so that I could remove the two pieces of gear loop. It's still in use.

alpinejason wrote:Fixed loops? Edelrid made a harness a couple years back that you could add/remove gear loops that attached along a "rail". I ripped one of those off and retired the harness for it's faulty design.

Those were terrible, I remember them. Edelrid fixed the problem later on but had already lost the customer's trust in that design. The loopo isn't available any more in the US!

That sucks...
And is precisely why I love my Metolius harness. Rated gear loops. They aren't going to break on you.

Carl Smith wrote: It was a lightweight Camp harness with sown on gear loops.

Thanks for the info, this is the first I've heard of a Camp gear loop breaking, but then again, there aren't a whole lot of people who use Camp harnesses that I know of either.

A friend of mine had a Camp gear loop fail a few years back. He was leading the pitch, and was about 20' above me. I don't recall the specifics, but think 5 or 6 cams fell off. I managed to catch 2 of them (lefty, while still belaying with my right!), and pin one to the wall with my foot when it stalled on the foot ledge I was belaying from. I was pretty psyched to have caught a few of them!

I think Camp sent him a new harness, but can't recall for sure if the construction of the next generation was any better.

Rich Farnham wrote:A friend of mine had a Camp gear loop fail a few years back. He was leading the pitch, and was about 20' above me. I don't recall the specifics, but think 5 or 6 cams fell off. I managed to catch 2 of them (lefty, while still belaying with my right!), and pin one to the wall with my foot when it stalled on the foot ledge I was belaying from. I was pretty psyched to have caught a few of them! I think Camp sent him a new harness, but can't recall for sure if the construction of the next generation was any better.

This is obviously just a single data point, but my one experience with a Camp textile product was a Rox crag bag. That thing had seems ripping out within a month of owning it. I ended up re-sewing several seems, but within a year the whole thing had just fallen apart. If they sew their harnesses like the did that pack, it doesn't surprise me at all that gear loops are coming off.

Micah Klesick wrote:That sucks... And is precisely why I love my Metolius harness. Rated gear loops. They aren't going to break on you.

And when you get all senile you can tie off anywhere on the harness.

I had a Cassin warden with this issue...10lbf on a hooked cam and blam, loops gone. They replaced with the Lazer which was nice of them. However with a good sewing machine just messing around I made my own loops out of a retired sling pushed through vinyl tubing. 3 passes on the machine with uv balanced thread on the sling and it held 40-50 lbs in weight plates I have ... so seems like it shouldn't have been a issue. If I can do it with no training or experience sewing.