UKC

Hi just a quick noob question I am trying to build up my trad rack and would like to know what non locking crabs to people use for their gear, do people just go for the cheapest ones as that they are just holding gear? I have seen the BD hood wire at a good price would these be any good?

Thanks
Shane

In reply to Shane jones:

Any UIAA rated gear will be up to the job, regardless of its price and any gear bought from a reputable shop will be UIAA rated.
More cash will get you features such as lighter weight krabs, wider gate opening, stronger gate open strength, fancy colours etc. but if you want the maximum no. of krabs for the minimum cash to build up your rack then buy the cheapest you can find, even budget gear is pretty good these days.
One point which you may not know is to keep the rope end of a quickdraw (usually a bent gate for ease of clipping) separate from the gear end (usually a straight gate). Krabs clipped into wires, pegs and bolts can get nicks in them which can damage your rope's sheath. So always clip the rope into the same end and some means of knowing which end that is is important.

In reply to pec:

I am looking for crabs to hang my cams,nuts and other gear off my harness

In reply to Shane jones:

For racking gear I use Black Diamond Oval Wires for nuts, some people hate them since it isn't immediately apparent which way up they are, but I find they make handling the nuts easier because they hang much better (ooh err missus). I'm tempted to try one of the twin gate oval carabiners from Beal, since it seems likely the risk of accidently dropping a wire would be much reduced, but they are relatively expensive and I haven't got my hands on one to test it out. I tend to rack cams and hexes on individual krabs so anything goes there, I was using DMM Pro Wires but recently got some Camp Nano 23s in different colours to match my hexes, haven't tried them out yet though.

My extenders are mainly DMM Pro Wires, for no other reason than because when I was building up my rack they were very cheap.

In reply to Shane jones:

You sometimes find karibiners cheaper when bought as sets of quickdraws. Worth a look

In reply to Shane jones:

Rack every cam on its own snaplink krab. Then once cam is placed its ready to clip rope straight in with no messing about wasting time and energy. Ideally buy coloured cams to match the tapes on your cams so you grab the right size cam fast by recognising the colour. E.g. Wild Country size 2 is red taped so mine has red krab. So if I judge the crack to be size 2, I just reach for red.

DMM phantoms are very good and very light and come in various colours.

In reply to climberchristy:


DMM Spectre 2's are almost as good and almost as light and also come in various colours, but are often quite a bit cheaper if you don't have the cash to get Phantoms...

I have the DMM ovals for racking nuts. Often they have managed to flick themselves round the 'wrong' way but they do hold the nuts better, so it's probably a personal thing.

thanks for the replies I'll check the spectre 2s out