UKC

Im looking to buy quickdraws for a new rack which I envisage using all year round in the UK and the Alps. I already have some sport draws.

I found some good advice in this thread (http://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/t.php?t=550548) but wondered if the 'clean nose' is worth the extra cash? I can afford to buy the Helium or Chimera if so.

E.g.
DMM Spectre 2 Wiregate £9.50 (Gate opening 25mm)
vs
Wild Country Helium 2 Quickdraw £18.00 (Gate opening 27mm)

I havent read much about the Chimera from DMM but it seems similar to the Helium only smaller so I presume thats going to be fiddly for any winter climbing?
DMM Chimera Wiregate Carabiner £18.50 (Gate opening 22mm)

In reply to worthy:


I'd say no, unless you're doing a lot of sport.

In reply to worthy:

I love my heliums - they're a great size. I tried phantoms but found them too small for everything but racking cams. However I bought them all on sale/secondhand and if buying new I don't think I could quite justify the clean nose.


If I think hard, I don't quite know when I would have struggled without it. Clipping a cam? No, the thick tape already covers the nose. Clipping the rope? maybe a thin half could get caught on the nose and require a second clip. Clipping a nut? Probably this is the only real one, but how often do you think you'd struggle to place a nut, clip it, but not have the time or energy to adjust the wire in the biner basket.

More important I'd say is to get all of your runners with consistent coloured carabiners for the rope and gear end (I use grey for gear, red for rope) - that way you have no chance of burs damaging your rope on falls.

In reply to worthy:

I use phantoms on my cams partially as I have one cam per biner and I figured bulk and weight savings would be at a premium but I still wanted a biner with a good gate open strength. I don't find them at all fiddly.

I also own various other biners and for quick draws I personally think the safety factors of a clean nose are worth it (less likely to get loaded away from the major access and less likely to come unclipped from bolts and pegs etc, also often less likely the rock will open the gate by dragging the wire against it. The heliums are nice although you'd want to be particularly careful loading them over an edge as they seem particularly bendy in that direction. The trad alpha light's are actually very nice, they have a very wide gate opening for such a small biner and seem particularly burly for their light weight.

I've just ordered a chimera quickdraw but its not arrived yet so I can't compare to the trad alpha lights although I suspect I'll get along fine with them as most my biners are the DMM shields and they have quite a small gate that doesn't open that wide and as mentioned I get along fine with phantoms.

I think for winter you'd ideally want biners the size of heliums. I have four sling draws made with heliums and they are easy to clip with gloves. I find the shields a bit of a pain sometimes to be honest but normally my climbing partner can make up the other draws and I do have a few other full size clips around.

In reply to neuromancer:
ofcourse the rope can wiggle the nut so that the wire rests in the notch of the nose of some wiregate biners and significantly weaken the biner if loaded. I've read (a possible factoid) that if you load a biner from the nose to the normal bottom loading point they can break at only a few kn. The UIAA minor axis test is different, its across the gate.

http://www.crabdev.co.uk/comp%20introduction_clip_image006_0001.jpg

this case was deduced to happen from a different use case but it demonstrates how weak biners are if loaded from the nose.

https://www.thebmc.co.uk/media/files/Gear/TCM%2005_08%20Salewa%20Karabiner....

I realise there are bigger things to worry about but I just consider the clean nose design superior.

In reply to worthy:

I've got all Phantoms on my trad rack apart from the racking biners which are BD ovals. When I first saw the Phantoms I thought they would be difficult to handle but for me they are fine, although I'm not sure I would use them for winter climbing. If you have huge hands you may find that they do not suit. An added benefit of the Phantoms is that they take up less space on the harness so I can get two additional krabs on each gear loop compared to my previous set up.

Al

In reply to humptydumpty:


Ditto. Clean nosed for sport, especially if you're doing a lot of overhanging stuff, but never had a problem with hook nosed on trad. I'm not sure how likely a scenario of the wire catching in the nose is - I've never noticed it happening.

In reply to whenry:

its not just sport when this can occur

https://www.mountainproject.com/v/nose-hooking-mammut-moses/108461816

a similar thing can happen with the wire of a nut on non clean nose biners also

In reply to CurlyStevo:

I wasn't thinking about it catching in relation to sport climbing, more the hassle involved with stripping a massively overhanging sport route.

From the Mountain Project thread it looks like it could be a problem with a particular biner - I'm not saying it couldn't happen on other biners though, and I know there was a thread a while ago about the Petzl Ange biners getting cross-loaded and snapping the gate. What I am saying is that I've not noticed it happening on my gear (Phantoms, Prowires, and Camp Nanos), or on friends' gear.

In reply to whenry:

The issue is more likely to occur with some biners than others, generally clean nose wire gates are safer in this regard.

In reply to worthy:

Of all the carabiners I own my heliums are my favourite. I've put them through a lot.
Yes, the not suffering catastrophic failure from nose hooking on a wire bit is a plus, but I find not having a nose just better for not snagging on today's thin dyneema slings. For the rope end of sling draws, i.e. the one you have to keep unclipping and clipping from the sling, I would not use anything else.

In reply to worthy: I'm another big fan of WC Heluims. They are a great all round krab but I've been doing lots of UK Winter stuff, a fair bit of instructing work and no Alpine stuff over the last few years so weight hasn't been a major concern.
However, I bought all mine secondhand over 2-3 years to replace original Spectres and always paid under £5 per krab. I do NOT think they are worth paying a major premium for not when Spectre 2s are such stunning value.

I've not played with the Chimera yet but it might be a better compromise in terms of size, weight and features. Unfortunately it is again potentially rather hard to justify the price premium.

In reply to CurlyStevo:

http://dmmclimbing.com/knowledge/carabiner-and-bolt-interaction-vid/

Info about nose hang-ups.

Thanks guys.

In the end I purchased 6 heliums and 4 spectre 2 to save some money. I prefer the wire gates on the spectre 2 as they are more positive, but the slings on the heliums and of course they have the clean nose. I cant imagine I would have trouble with either after using them with gloves. All have silver end for gear side.