UKC

Figured its worth highlighting this thread on SuperTopo

http://www.supertopo.com/climbers-forum/2662339/Petzl-Ange-Biner-FAILURE

In reply to slacky:

Like the thread says, it's possible for that to happen with almost any wiregate 'biner. Unlikely but possible. I do like the Daily Mail style use of capitals for FAILURE though!

In reply to yesbutnobutyesbut:

There is a good discussion of this on Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/climbing/comments/3f272l/petzl_ange_biner_failure_b...

I think this comment is very worth reading:

"For the people who didn't bother to read the article, these are 2 videos comparing Petzl Ange with WC Helium.

Ange: youtube.com/watch?v=RBa_-yiaJGE&
Helium: youtube.com/watch?v=jP66To-1oPA&

You can't just say all wire gates can get caught by the sling and slip open and write it off as that. For Ange, it clearly gets caught more frequently. The Helium also has a 10mm dyneema sling and it doesn't get caught.

Since this did happen in a real life situation, I would say it is a design flaw and Petzl needs to fix this."

In reply to Rob Morgan:



This is a bit of a no shit Sherlock comparison. The wire on a normal wiregate mount at the hinge outside of the carabiner, guiding the sling over the hinge, protecting the hinge.

With the Ange in order to stop this they use a plastic boot on the gate, so it's a known issue or they would use the boot. The question there maybe is the boot large enough to prevent it catching but it's always going to be worse than a wire that covers the hinge.

As regards to this failure, the gate itself has become bent, if this occurred when the sling was caught on the hinge the leverage required would be substantial and it's not clear if this is what Petzl have reproduced at 1.5kn, which sounds very low to bend the gate from the bottom.

To get the gate to bend at such a weak force you'd think the sling must be higher up, away from the hinge towards the opening. For that to happen in a fall, wouldn't the biner would need to be orientated so that the hinge would have to higher than the opening to start with, so that the sling can move down towards the gate to effect leverage. In which case the movement of the sling over the hinge is in the opposite direction and not a contributory factor.

Interestingly wasn't Haston demonstrating a grivel draw with a captive sling at Friedrichshafen a couple of weeks ago?

In reply to yesbutnobutyesbut:


Having a gate that's significantly narrower than the spine and 'hinged' centrally in it it does look a little more susceptible to this sort of sling hang-up than a conventional wiregate. Looks to me like Petzl have already (and incompletely) tried to solve this problem with the small conical plastic guide piece on the gate.

jk

In reply to winhill:

A fair point (although I don't think it is initially obvious to everyone [certainly wasn't to me] how the Ange might catch the sling, so the videos help).

If you watch the video though and look at the way the sling catches on the boot of the Ange and opens the gate, perhaps from this position the sling might now be able to slide up to the top of the gate and bend it. I am no expert in this however - until we see how Petzl recreated the fault then it is all just speculation.

In reply to jkarran:
" Looks to me like Petzl have already (and incompletely) tried to solve this problem with the small conical plastic guide piece on the gate."

I was thinking the same.

In reply to winhill:





150kg pulling on a single piece of wire? Sounds entirely likely it would be enough.
I never liked the look of these but it wasn't because I thought they were unsafe.

In reply to winhill:

I think the salient point here is that the gate is bending sideways because the sling is loading it whilst it's been pulled open. As somebody else states, an unsupported piece of wire, or indeed an unsupported standard solid gate, when side loaded will break at a comparatively low load. This is not so much a design flaw as an unavoidable fact of life. The SuperJIZZ forum is somewhat getting its knickers in a twist IMO, and this threads opening title is a little sensationalist too. Yes it's a possibility, but then so are masses of other gear failure modes and the thing to take from this video is that you should try to mitigate this problem by orientation of your carabiner in the piece. I susopect that this failure mode might occur more readily when the biner is placed in a bolt as the position is limited somewhat as compared to a trad placement. But to be honest I'd be more cautious about the nose of a biner hanging up on a bolt hanger or a wire and cross loading it than this...

In reply to beardy mike:

It looks a hell of a lot more likely to happen with this design than any other I've seen.

In reply to DubyaJamesDubya:

Sure, but is it a FAILURE? Or a even design flaw? I think that's pretty debatable. Sure, it's not ideal, but then any non clean nose wire gate can get hung up on a bolt and fail at low loads far more easily than this would occur. All I'm saying is that we need a little perspective on these things rather than jerking our knees so hard and fast that we get a bloodied nose...

In reply to beardy mike:

I think this type of failure is different to and can't be compared with a carabiner getting hung up on the nose. It's easy to avoid a carabiner hanging on the nose just be placing it correctly whereas, as demonstrated on the video, the failure method on the ange carabiners can happen spontaneously even if you have initially placed the gear correctly and it seems much more likely to happen with this design than with other designs.

Perhaps everyone reading this thread should go and test all their gear to see if other carabiners hang up like the ange to see if it is unique to them.
I had a look though my rack and couldn't get any o the different carabiners i have to hang up in such a way and that includes DMM prowires, aerowires, wild country astro wires and xenon wires.

In reply to beardy mike:
What ever you want to call it its pretty shoddy IMO and I wouldn't be going out buying and petzl Ange biners. Putting extra force on the gate is something climbers systematically avoid and this seems like something that can happen too easily - once the sling has ridden above the gate it looks very likely to occur.

In reply to slacky:

The Ange gate always felt shoddy to me. I remember it having considerable lateral give in the shop.

Weight saving often comes at a cost, and as always we have to decide where our priorities lie.

In reply to purplemonkeyelephant:

I guess so, but in the case of clean nose wire gates I actually think they are generally safer than solid gates as they suffer less from gate flutter.

In reply to slacky:

Hmm,i read the stuff on the other sites and it does seem like peeps are getting carried away with themselves,i use these biners and chose them above all others for feel and quality and low size (i use the ange small),so this post was of particular interest to me.

A quick point,someone mentioned the gate had a lot of lateral play on the ange,i tried this and could move it about the same as a camp nano.

I seem to remember reading that the reason petzl had not made a wiregate biner before was because they wanted so many uses/ repetitions,cant remember the number,but they couldnt make one with the number they wanted (its common for wiregates to get sticky) so they didnt bother until they came up with the ange design.

On the other sites which talk about this failure someone rightly states that the gate should be opposite the climber which is why i have both biners on my draws facing the same way,always place gates facing away from you and your sorted,this test has the gate facing toward the fall (shoudnt be happening) and the biner held firm which wouldnt be happening in any situation especially a trad one.

Ive just been messing around with and ange finnesse qd,i clipped it the wrong way like the test and i couldnt get the dogbone to catch as in the video,this was recreating as real life a situation as i could,i.e. qd clipped the wrong way onto a sling which goes accross my bedroom at about shoulder height,i clipped a piece of rope into the bottom biner,raised the rope slowly so as to lift the qd slowly then rapidy yank down on the rope as in a fall,i couldnt get the sling to catch once,although im sure if i tried for more than the 5 minutes i tried it could be done aventually.

Also i tried flicking it up and down randomly which i dont see happening in a real situation and i got the dogbone to catch several times,sometimes on the bottom of the gate as the vid shows and sometimes on the top and sometimes right in the middle of the gate(i did it for a good 5 mins),i also tried this with a camp nano biner at the top and the same thing happened but the nano only caught on the top of the gate or in the middle.

So ok, this is only my personal test trying to recreate a fall situation as best i can,but at least for now im happy to carry on using mine.

In reply to cliff shasby:
Interesting feed back some what backing up what beardy had to say regarding the top biner being more captive on bolts maybe being a factor?

Either way you look at it ideally this should really have been spotted prior to release.

In reply to CurlyStevo: this is exactly what I meant although cliff put it better than I ever would (being an illiterate engineer ). I guess it's easy to say something like this should be caught, and in an ideal world it would be. But things are often missed, which I know is not an excuse, just the truth. I mean there are sooooo many recalls in the outdoor industry and other issues which are deemed insufficient to warrant a recall that this really is a pretty small problem by comparison to some others out there. I mean you just have to look for example at the via ferrata frictional lanyards... There's got to be quite a few manufacturers who have simply not bothered recalling or issuing advice on what's now a well known problem... Go figure... Never mind the fact that they all deliver horrendous impact to smaller climbers, especially children because the current standards are just plain Stoopid.

In reply to jon: have you seen the new Grivel carabiner which is like a small belay Biner with a wiregate across the crab to hold the sling captive and correctly oriented? Really good lateral thinking. Not a massive fan of Grivel crabs, and they need to do a wiregate version as well as a solid gate, but it's as close to fixed draw like a Mamba but with the practicality of a standard biner. Not sure when it's out...

In reply to beardy mike:


Hmm, so the manufacturers should recall products which conformed to the required standard at the time of sale but don´t conform to a revision? Going to be a lot of gear going back, at least half of my rack to start with.
The onus is on the user to ensure their equipment is suitable, not manufacturers conducting a rolling replacement program every time a standard is changed.

In reply to jimtitt: I don't think I said that did I? I said there's a huge number of recalls at the moment, and as far as VF kits are concerned, there are frictional kits being sold which will be prone to failure through use is the customer is not fully aware of what they are buying, the Kong Kisa plate being one example. All these types of plates were shown to suffer through normal usage when the lanyard was exposed to wear, even on a small scale, and shown to be completely ineffective. Their main kits now have the absorption section inside a protective bag, but they still sell the plate on its own. I don't know if they're the only ones doing this, but surely the onus is on them, knowing that there can be a serious issue with these, that they at least withdraw them from sale. And as far as the standard goes, vf kits are a serious area for thought. Many of these kits are not owned by the user, but are rented to them by shop owners who are pretty clueless about inspection and maintenence of the kits. So I do feel that that being the case the manufacturers have duty of care to their end users to do everything in their power to prevent injury to young users. Both Kisa frictional style kits and tear style kits can cause serious injury to small, light users, and I don't think that fact is well advertised. A problem like the one highlighted in the OP pales into utter insignificance when compared to the potential problem presented by the quantity of VF systems being used by inexperienced end customers. The standard change may be a minor one on paper, but it's pretty significant for usage of current kits...

In reply to beardy mike:


You did:-"There's got to be quite a few manufacturers who have simply not bothered recalling or issuing advice on what's now a well known problem".

You are putting the onus on manufacturers who have produced equipment for over 30 years to the required standard to take action because the standard is now seen to be incorrect.
The manufacturer could not previously produce the desired equipment as it would not have conformed the the standard in force so clearly the problem is with the organisation who dictate the standards and not the manufacturer, they should be issuing the recalls and issuing advice (and taking the financial consequences if required).
That the way the standards are produced needs a rigorous overhaul is quite clear BUT retrospectively penalising manufacturers for things out of their control is not going to encourage the industry and anyway is a concept alien to the leagal systems in most western countries, Ford for example have issued no warnings nor a recall for the Model T or for my current car both of which no longer conform to the latest mandatory safety standards.
That retail or hire outlets are failing in their legal duty regarding staff training is their affair, not the manufacturers.

In reply to jimtitt: hang on a second, what I'm saying is that frictional devices which have been shown to stop working completely due to the rope running through them fluffing up, that's a well known and documented issue which has come to light in the last few years, and whilst manufacturers can't force people to stop using their kits, nor should they if they are vigilent, they should be making every effort to make it well known that there is a danger associated with extended use of these devices. Yeah sure it helps if you have vigilent customers, but not everybody looks at internet forums or reads magazines. But at the very least they should stop selling the system in question, which clearly is not the case with the Kong KISA plate. This is a plate which is specifically sold so that the customer can equip them themselves with their own choice of rope, carabiners and set up int he way they wish to, of which there are multiple ways.

Given that there are hundreds of different ropes which could be used, all of which have different properties as far as friction, rope compression and wear, that the carabiners used for Via Ferrata are extremely specific owing to the types of loadings experienced and that you could easily set up the system incorrectly, would it not be sensible to with draw it from sale as part of your duty of care and only sell pre assembled kits so you know 100% that they are set up correctly? Yes, you can push all of that onto the customer and make it their responsability, but is that realistic when you can go into many stockists across europe, with absolutely no experience and buy everything you need to make a defective system unless you follow the user instructions to the letter?

In terms of low load falls and high impact, is it really that much to expect, that a company selling the kit specifically marked and certified as safe for use, makes absolutely certain that it goes above and beyond to ensure its kit is safe to use for all? It's not as if children have just been invented or just started doing via ferrata, or that the physics laws of energy absorption are new. Sure, the UIAA and CE are responsible for defining standards, and they are clearly at fault for not setting an appropriate standard, but then you could say the same for the nut and cam standards which are pretty woefully inadequate aswell. That being the case, I would say it is up to individual companies to do the thinking, and to ensure that the well known thinking is applied to their products as part of their responsability to their customers. And this has been known for a long time, so whatever the standard says, they should be making sure that they don't just comply to the minimum level.

Replacing the units is extreme, thats not what I was getting at and my terminology was incorrect, but certainly letting people know very clearly of the dangers would not be such a bad thing in as public a way as possible. Sure we're all responsible for our own safety but every little helps.

In reply to beardy mike:


Exactly, that´s why I own one. The KISA has never been certified to EN958/UIAA and carries no markings to imply it is.

In reply to beardy mike:




Heaven forbid that customers should have to make any effort to get things right for themselves!

What would you like to see dumbed down next?

Maybe all belay devices should come pre threaded with the correct rope?

In reply to timjones:

In fairness - this is worth knowing about. Does not look too hard for this to end up in a potential failure mode.

In reply to timjones:

OK, just as a little experiment, can you tell me what the difference between a standard carabiner and a via ferrata carabiner is? I'm assuming you have the standard knowledge of a climber, as opposed to Jims which is somewhat advanced.

In reply to beardy mike:


You're quite right that I can't answer that question because I don't do via ferrata.

However , if I wanted to put together a via ferrata kit I'd make the minor effort required to ensure it was up to the job.

In reply to timjones:




I think the manufacturers and standards authorities are struggling so perhaps not a minor effort.

In reply to timjones:
OK, so you'd go to the shop and buy some carabiners and make a kit right? Only Via Ferrata carabiners are specifically designed using an alloy which is sufficiently bendy that they will deform but not break when loaded over a VF peg, rather than snapping like a twig. Thing is, if you don't know that and you just go and sling on a couple of old biners off your rack like a lot of climbers would do, and god forbid in a fit of utter incompetence managed to fall off, you'd be in trouble.

Seeing as the KISA plate is exactly the same plate as used in all Kong frictional kits (which ARE certified) and it only costs 12 euro, and most (tight) climbers have enough old climbing rope and a couple of biners lying around to make themselves a kit, and are sufficiently belligerent not to read the instructions let alone actually follow them, its well within the realms of possibility to construct yourself something which is simply not going to work. It's all well and good when you've got loads of indepth knowledge like Jim, but most people don't. And seeing as the differences are not actually that obvious, you'd be forgiven for making a mistake. Just saying like... So it's not got much to do with dumbing down really. Besides I believe I was advocating not getting your knickers in a twist about the Ange further up the page... never mind.

In reply to beardy mike:


How long has there been specific VF krabs and more specifically separate VF krab standards, out of interest, Mike.

Pretty obvious when you point it out, climbing krabs usually only take straight pulls.

In reply to Rick Graham:

As far as I'm aware, the biners have been that way for ages and a day - not sure about the standard - I'm sure Jim could tell you. What beats me is the low climber weight thing - which as far as I can work out is just such a huge oversight - 40kg and you more or less double the energy seen by the climber when Via Ferrata falls can be some of the most heinous you will ever see! The standards are being reviewed but anything UIAA/CE seems to take forever to push through, and in the meantime whilst some manufacturers are doing something about it, I'm sure some are not. It gives me the willys.

In reply to beardy mike:

So far as I know there has been a UIAA standard including type K karabiners since 1988 but it may have been before then.

The instructions for the Kong Kisa state "Basic rules for climbing a via ferrata. Before tackling a “Via Ferrata” it’s necessary to have:................ it is nescessary to use two connectors conforming to EN 12275 standard type K, complete with rope retainer (if not included in the EAS system)."
The Kisa has always been sold for other purposes than just via ferrata, if it was removed from the market then the most effective and reliable shock absorbing system for general climbing purposes would no longer be available.

Modern via ferrata energy absorbing systems are only suitable for use on "modern" via ferrata where the maximum fall distance is limited to 5m by following the anchor distance guidelines from the ÖAV/DAV. The Kisa is the only system available which could cope with the longer falls to be found on many older via ferrata since it can be set up by an experienced user to cope with a more severe fall. It´s construction using climbing rope anyway gives more likelyhood of survival if it fully extends compared with a sewn tape system.

The "light" user issue is fundamentally unresolvable. The allowable impact force data used to produce the standards is derived from testing with normal adults or more specifically male military personnel. There is no data for light adults or more difficult, children. How the UIAA is going to obtain the data for the maximum impact children can sustain without injury is an interesting question to put it mildly.
Currently the manufacturers put a lower weight limit on the systems and expect all children/light persons to be belayed normally using standard climbing equipment.

The other issues of expanding roped tourism without any controls over hire of equipment, training of participants etc are outside the scope of the technical standards and are a matter for the outdoor activities industry and the legislators. The lines between rock climbing/high ropes courses and via ferrate are vague and it is questionable whether a bar renting equipment to tourists with no previous experience to go on a traditional via ferrata can take advantage of the exemptions mountaineering enjoys under the PPE directive.

In reply to beardy mike:

So you have a rather low opinion of the intelligence of fellow climbers and want to reduce the gear purchasing options available to them?

In reply to timjones:

Yes that's precisely what I said. Congratulations for the insightful reply. What I'm saying is the KISA plate is sat firmly under via ferrata banner and it actually shouldn't be. Sure, sell it as a shock absorber for industrial purposes but it needs to have major caveats that go with it and be made more difficult to get hold of. The reality is that when you go into the mountains in Italy you see people trundling around with woefully inadequate kit precisely because they don't understand what they are doing. I've seen guys clipping into VF's with static slings, climbing in nothing but chest harnesses, clipping both leashes of a v lanyard into the cable rendering it utterly ineffective, all sorts really. I even heard of a german chap clipping into the cable of a service cable car and jibbing off the top of Piz Boe, subsequently falling to his death infront of his son. So am I saying my fellow climbers are stupid? In some case yes, less common sense than an amoeba. Is that the majority? No, but bear in mind that as Brits we tend to be a pretty self educating bunch and whereas you might have the wherewithal to work it out, the safety culture in other countries is markedly different. Where there is a large sector of the market who are not particularly aware of the kit they are using, its correct set up, or its maintenance, I would personally say that the manufacturers need to do what they can to prevent their kit from being misused.

In reply to jimtitt:

On the light user thing - I get that it's not a straightforward issue. But I don't think there is even vaguely enough awareness and whilst I understand that its difficult to obtain acceptable impact for a child without conducting some sort of Mengle-esque testing programme, starting off by limiting the impact experienced by those users to the same level as an adult would be a start. And sure it's not easy - that's why we became engineers right?

In reply to beardy mike:

Once we start making it more difficult to buy gear that might be misused where do we stop and how do we prevent regulations creeping until they have a serious impact on our ability to buy the simplest of gear?

You cannot regulate against stupidity

In reply to Rick Graham:


It's pretty minor compared to the effort required to learn how to aid climb effectively and safely for example. You need to make the effort to learn how to keep yourself safe.

In reply to timjones:

You can't make it impossible for people to misuse something, but you can direct and educate the public who are buying the item better. I can guarantee you that you can go into any major climbing shop in Italy and buy a KISA with no questions asked, no advice on how to use it and off you toddle. And to be quite honest, you are using the same thin end of the wedge argument that gets trotted out in all sorts of walks of life - it doesn't always make sense and it doesn't in this case. I'm not advocating regulating how you buy carabiners, or cams, or ice screws or any other kit you want to buy; if you want to buy a cam from some company that only tests them to the minimum standard (5kN isn't Jim?) then crack on. You're a climber and you educate yourself and you make your own decisions. What I'm saying is that seeing as the climbing industry is to a large extent self policing and self regulating, the manufacturers have to be more pragmatic than normal about how, where and to whom they sell their via ferrata kit. Selling a shedload of VF kits to supermarkets and shops is all very lucrative but without those shops knowing what they are doing, or having a maintenance and inspection schedule in place, it's a pretty cynical thing to be doing. These shops are not only renting to you or I, they are renting to completely inexperienced punters who don't know their arse from their elbow. I know because I see them all the time. We shouldn't be OK with that - we should be taking as much care of those people as we would ourselves because they are blindly trusting their safety us, the climbing community at large. Their fault for doing that? Yes. But they are making the assumption that the kit is safe, and renting it for their 30-40kg 8 year olds and taking them up quite challenging routes because they don't know what a challenging route is. And not belaying them, because they don't know how to belay or even that they SHOULD belay. Yeah, you can't regulate against stupidity, but can modify your own behaviour to try to keep them safe.

In reply to beardy mike:

The problem lies with the outdoor activities industry and it´s massive expansion into "adventure" sports with no systems put in place to ensure the safety of its customers, borrowing practices and equipment from other branches of mountaineering without accepting the level of training required and the risk that come with these.
I too feel reducing the choice of equipment available to capable users is "dumbing down" for the convenience of another user group.

In reply to jimtitt:

OK, I understand you point Jim. I think partly we have a problem because we have arrived at the situation and there is no going back - people have grown used to the idea that VF is safe, which of course it isn't. In an ideal world we'd see everybody going and getting the requisite training and owning their own kit, but they aren't. So either the OI just have to stop selling these kits to hire shops who don't have a demonstrable methodology for maintaining the kit, and don't have some way of checking user competence, or we have to make it as idiot proof as possible and accept that there may be accidents as a result, which isn't a great result. You just have to look at the number of times you have threads on here asking about kit hire to know that people are used to the idea that they will borrow a piece of kit which is you're sole chance of survival trusting that it'll work.

In the case of the KISA, as I said before you could quite happily sell this sort of item through limited outlets not marked up for via ferrata - if competent users really really want one they will work out how to get one and use it safely. That could be through industrial kit outlets for example - it's really not that hard. But when you have it hung up next to all sorts of other kit in a climbing shop, mistakes/assumptions are easy to make.

In reply to beardy mike:

Why not police this issue at the point of access to the via ferrata rather than expecting manufacturers and retailers to do the job?

In reply to beardy mike:
Thanks for the tangent - didn't fully realise the differences between VF kits and climbing stuff. I've not done a VF, but would have just gone with climbing harness and a cow's tail made from old climbing rope. Now I'll read up properly before I get on one!

Edit: thinking about it more, it's clear how falling 5+m onto e.g. 1.5m of dynamic rope wouldn't be great.

In reply to timjones:

HAHAHAHA you are joking aren't you? Do you know how many VF's there are in the world, or how remote some of them are? Or how underused some of them are? Just how would you do it? Have a little hut at the start with some poor bugger sat there, presumably employed by whom I'm not sure checking kits? For feck sake - I'm not talking about policing, I'm talking about making it as easy as possible for people to get things right - I think you have this idea that I'm some sort of draconian do gooder - all I'm suggesting is that we need to make the system not utter shite and that the people who are in the position to do that most easily are the standards autorities, manufacturers and local governing bodies like OAV, DAV etc...

and sorry humptydumpty - I think this has got to be one of the most random tangents to a thread in a long time... should probs stop it!

In reply to beardy mike:

I would tend to suspect that most of the issues are concentrated onto relatively few VFs that have been created and publicised to attract tourists. Is it wrong to place the onus for user safety onto the creators of the VF?

In reply to beardy mike:

Highliners for example routinely buy and use rope, harnesses, tape, karabiners, nuts, cams, bolts and belay devices in pursuit of an activity far outside the remit of the certification for those products, are you suggesting these should also be sold in a brown paper wrapper from under the counter?
The education should be at the point of acquisition of the equipment, that is by sales or hire staff. Make this a legal duty (or in fact enforce the existing requirements) and a few mega compensation hits would soon concentrate peoples minds. Removing one item from the market is not the way forward.

In reply to timjones:

No, they're not. That's my point. You can get on most VF you want easily - that's the whole point - they are seen as an accessible way to get people into the mountains. With access provided by lift companies who have nothing to do with VF maintenence people can be at the foot of technically difficult VF's in a mater of minutes - VF delle trincee being a case in point. Rent a kit in Arraba, jump on the bins, 15 minutes later you're at Porto Vescovo, 10 minutes later you're at a section of VF which is technical and steep with a fall from 20-30 straight onto the deck.

Just in the Dolomites there are hundreds at all different levels of repair and as far as I am aware none of them are paid for by the "consumer" like some are in France. They were often put up decades ago - you can't go back and make these installers culpable because then you'd end up with somebody suing them for something which was done in the late eighties or early nineties and hasn't been modified or upgraded since. That's not their fault, it's just that the government hasn't set up anything as far as I'm aware of that makes sure the routes are maintained properly.And besides, why would an installer of a VF be culpable for you misusing your kit? That's just bonkers...

In reply to beardy mike:

Eighties and nineties??? You need to go back a bit further than that. Many were put up during and because of the First World War. That makes them 100 years old.

Al

In reply to jimtitt:

I guess the reason we got onto this in the first place is that people at the top of the thread were getting all het up about a failure mode for a carabiner which is reasonably unlikely to occur and people were getting all outraged about the concept that Petzl would dare release a product that has a failure mode, and my point was that there are many many products which have far worse failure modes being used daily by the unsuspecting public. Maybe my example was not the perfect one, but far from suggesting we need to hide gear next to the crystal meth I was actually suggesting applying bit of proportion to it. I personally feel there are some seriously screwed up things going on in the outdoor industry which I'm not going to elaborate on which are far worse than Petzl having a crab which is not 100% the best design.

In reply to GridNorth:
Sorry, re-equiped in the 80's and 90's. And I was being generous.

In reply to timjones:

That's a bad example for me, always found frigging my way up easier than proper climbing

But I can see where you are coming from.

In reply to beardy mike: "delle trincee being a case in point"

Took a photo during a long delay starting delle Trincee one summer day last year: that captured three well under 10yo children at various points on that initial slab with none in those rare VF lanyards designed for their light weights (that may or may not help much) and a family almost finished getting down because their mid-teenage girl had fallen and damaged her knee just a few cable sections up. Pair of adults went up next and spent ~30 minutes negotiating the same part, most time spent on just a few metres. This followed a torrential rainy day where t'other half, daughter and I went to an empty lead-only indoor wall where an Italian family walked in with harness and rope then asked us how to put the harness on their 9-10yo son. Was all quite eye-opening in terms of accidents waiting to happen.

Talking of "Petzl" and "VF lanyards", theirs is the only one I've seen recently which has the weight-range prominently both in their manual and printed on the EA pouch (perhaps inspired by that 2011 recall?). There might be more like that, but the others I've seen had it buried in the small-print.