The Rambo’s offset bent shaft provides a natural, shorter swing that enhances stability by keeping the center of gravity closer to the contact point. The contoured grip is less fatiguing and the index nubbin improves grip. Sold with Evolution Pick for ice.
- Bent shaft makes for a more natural angle for the wrist and keeps knuckles away from the ice.
- Ergonomic grip with a small index finger rest is less fatiguing.
- Spike is flush with the shaft for ease of plunging into ice.
- Tongue-and-groove pick attachment system uses few bolts.
- Parts are interchangeable using an Allen key.
- Included Evolution pick is extremely thin and works well on pure ice.
- Leash included.
JScoles - Mar 21, 2002 1:38 pm - Voted 5/5
Untitled ReviewThey do have an outstanding pick, which performs quite well on any ice or rock challenge that you can through at it. It sticks well on hard ice with little fracturing because it is so thin. As well it has a real good droop on the blade that makes it easy to extract. I didn’t have the problems I some times have of driving the pick in too far it always seem to go in just far enough and always gave me good feedback.
One nice feature is the ease in which the picks can be changed and the different tools that can be added to suite local conditions. The picks I had were factory fresh and had a negative cut in the pick and went into ice really well and even though they were rather thin they still seemed to hold up when using them for dry tooling. As well, the hammer was far enough away from the shaft so it can be used in cracks without getting you arm in a knot and it was a good size for pounding pitons.
I found the swing to be good for me (other’s I tried were better though), but what I really liked was the handgrip, which was just perfect for my rather small hand. The finger guard at the top of the handgrip was nice as it stopped me getting a knuckle bash on at least one occasion. Most of the time the bent shaft kept my knuckles well away from the ice and really helped when going over bumps and bulges better than all the other tools I tried out this winter.
As an alpine short axe it was adequate but not outstanding. It did plunge all right but I noticed that the handgrip was starting to roll up the shaft on one tool and the other looked like it was about to. IMHO it would only take a few long alpine trips to totally trash the grips so some tape around the base may be something you may want to do if you pick one up. For daggering the newer version is much better (I had one older one and one newer one) as the head was redesigned with less nuts sticking and into the hand and a much better adze.
They come with your basic type leash, which is not as nice as the higher end ones out there but did do the job. I myself would invest the money in a better set of leashes to get some real performance out of the tool.
In all there are a very good all round tool since their performance on ice and mixed ground well out ways their average performance in a pure alpine setting. If you are looking for a set of moderately priced high performance tools that can go both ways and if you have smaller hands then there will do you nicely. I would just rent them first to see if the swing fits you as I have heard just as many people complain about the swing as praise it. It seems that Grivel had dropped this tool from its product line, which is a pity because it is a most popular tool so watch out for them coming on sale soon.