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.
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.
Steve Larson - Feb 4, 2005 1:58 am - Voted 5/5
Untitled Review