Dyneema Contact Sling

I have been using these for over a year now, and have nothing but good things to say about them. They are so small and light! I carry a couple of the long ones tied in a small bundle on the back of my harness. They are so small I hardly know they're there until I need them. The 24" size are perfect for alpine quickdraws. So far, they wear quite well.

Also about 1 year of use, and I like them.



In my opinion, their main force is the posibility to 'tripple' them to form long/alpine quickdraws. In combination with two DMM ProWire carabiners, you get a long/alpine quickdraw weighing less than most regular quickdraws. The low volume makes it much easer to tripple the webbing, making it possible to rack 4-6 in one gear loop of my harness, and the tight weave slides well when shortening and lengthening the qd.



I have wrapped them around icicles and they withstood a fall. They are also slim enough that they can be used for abalakov-hooks (BD screws - wouldn't work with the ushba titanium screws, which have smaller diameter). The are also great for tying off screws not inserted fully.



Since I cannot imagine a better sling, I give them maximum 5 stars.



However, I have only used them one year and not very intensely, so I cannot judge long-time wear, but there are no signs so far. Should they start to wear I would reduce to 4 stars. Even if they should wear after 2-3 years they would still get 4 stars due to the other advantages.



Though most of you may already know the trick, I'll just explain how to tripple:

1) Put two carabiners on the sling

2) put one carabiner halfway through the other; feed it the two strands of the sling, then pull the carabiner back.

3) You now have three strands of sling through each carabiner - 6 strands between the two, meaning that a 24" sling becomes an 7" quickdraw and a 48" sling a 14" qd (you loose 1-2" from the sling running through several times)

4) If you need a longer quickdraw e.g. to prevent rope drag from a zig-zagging rope, release any 1 or two of the strands frokm one carabiner. The sling will reajust to desired length.



With a bit of training all of this can be done with one hand. After step 1) you can fix one of the carabiners to the sling with a rubber O-ring. This makes the system less flimsy, and also identifies that as the rope-end carabiner. The advantage hereof is that possible scratches to the gear/bolt-end carabiner do not wear on the rope.

Converted everything over to these slings. I love them. They are thin and they do tend to twist a bit more when used for quick draws. I used some very small strong rubberbands to keep the biners cinched up tight and that lessened the amount of twist.



I love how much weight I have shaved off my rack with these.



So far so good on durability but less than a year with them so the jury is still out.

Runners, belay stations, whatever. These things are great!

I have a buddy (a climbing guide in the gunks) who has been using these for 2 years straight for his runners ect. and he swears by them!

I use the 24" length and run one biner through the other, clipping the excess to create an extension runner when neccesary.