We chained 12 wiregate carabiners together and pull-tested them to destruction. Which carabiner survived the longest? Was it your favorite wiregate? Read on to find out. Wiregate carabiners are extremely popular. They are lighter than conventional solid gate carabiners, offer wider gate clearances, and don’t suffer from gate flutter, or opening significantly when bumped. These advantages make them a staple on almost every climber’s rack. Chaining a dozen carabiners together is not a normal usage. We conducted this test for “edu-tainment” purposes, not science, to show that all 12 wiregate carabiners are super strong enough. Any CE rated carabiner that meets UIAA specifications for climbing can withstand more force than you will generate under normal climbing conditions. It can be helpful to see what you are trusting your life to get pulled to failure to see HOW it fails and what it looks like when it does. Some take aways are that they stretch but not that much. Steel stretches like playdough but aluminum doesn't go very far before it snaps dramatically. This is why gates need to be closed to retain most of their strength. I'm so sad that Camp Photon broke at 11kN because it's my favorite, but it was because the gate got stuck open when we over stressed it in the 3 prior tests. Same Chart in 3 Different Orders How NOT 2 Buy Carabiners I do NOT recommend buying the strongest carabiner because it is irrelevant. I do NOT recommend buying the lightest because it's too small for big hands. I do NOT recommend buying the cheapest because depending what you use it for, the nose is fat (see Big Wall Course for those rants). Camp Photon broke the lowest because the gate was open but it is all around the best for size, weight and price. If you are willing to spend more, Camp Dyons are the best IMO, I have over 60 of these on my rack (and no, I bought them and they don't pay me to say this). Big & light biners with skinny noses for the win! The big takeaway here is: use rated gear! There are a lot of dubious carabiners on Amazon these days! Every carabiner at ExtremeGear.org is rated and safe for climbing and 10% supports us. Check out this article for more information on ratings. 10% Supports Us Buy your carabiners here! They have an absolute ton. Behind the Scenes This was an experiment, like all videos, on how to make an episode. We want to make videos about gear, tell you a little bit about them, and break them for fun. We figured connecting them in a chain and rooting for our favorite like people do for teams was a creative gamification of a gear review. According to the massive amount of views it seems to be a popular style. Our future videos dive a little bit deeper into the gear itself because absolute strength isn't really, or shouldn't be, a main driver in which one you buy. After Posting Thoughts It's shocking to me how upset people are in the comments about how this isn't science. First of all, who the F*** cares??? And what even is science??? We are exploring a hypothesis that the most durable carabiner will be the last one standing and hot damn, it was at 31.48kN after being pulled 12 times. It's edutainment and it is helpful for people to see what they trust with their life break in slow motion. But to isolate each carabiner and break it by itself is so much less entertaining and there is quite a wide range of strengths you can get breaking the same exact type of carabiner 10x. Since we were only breaking 1 of each, this was a fun way to test these. So chill out and grab your popcorn and enjoy the show. Speaking of showdowns, check out our NEXT ONE. OUR LOCKING CARABINER SHOWDOWN

Testing frozen ropes is one of the most frequent requests we get at HowNot2. In our endless pursuits to answer all of your questions we froze semi-static, dynamic, dry treated, and non-dry treated ropes into blocks of ice and broke them. These are the lengths we go to for science! We soaked 8 rope samples in water. Half the samples were then frozen into a block of ice at their center, the rest were frozen in a knot. We also broke four control samples so we could compare the results. Ropes Tested The dynamic rope was a dry treated 9.8mm Sterling Velocity with 28.8% elongation and is 62g/m rated for 6 UIAA falls. You can find that here. ​ The semi-static rope was non-dry-treated, 10.0 Beal Spelenium with a static elongation of 4.1%. You can find that here Our Results Freezing your ropes makes them stronger! Start storing your ropes popsicles. Just kidding, all samples broke at basically the same force and in the knot, like ropes pretty much always do in our tests. In short, Ice did not affect the strength of our rope samples. More Issues Than Just Strength Strength is only one factor. Frozen ropes are a big problem in actual use. Ice makes ropes heavier, stiffer, and more difficult to handle. It can interfere with ascenders, belay devices, progress captures, and prusiks. Belaying and rappelling can become difficult, dangerous, and sometimes impossible. Ropes can freeze into ice, making them impossible to recover. Icy ropes can lose their dynamic properties, resulting in hard catches and high impact forces on protection. 10% Supports HowNOT2 Get your climbing, caving, or canyon gear here to support us. Don't Let It Get Icy, But If You Do... Luckily, there are some tactics to prevent a rope from freezing. Dry treatment helps ropes absorb less water, shed new ice buildup, and remain less stiff. Keeping a rope moving will prevent it from freezing into ice. Not letting the rope get wet on the approach helps. Avoiding running water and seeping areas of a climb help tremendously. Bringing a rope into your tent can help prevent freezing on overnight trips. In some conditions, ropes will ice up no matter what you do. It helps to use rope a skinny diameter rope on the small end of the range that your belay device is rated for. "Snapping" the rope as you belay and "flossing" it through the belay device will help it soften so it feeds better when belaying. On rappels, a munter hitch or even a Dulfersitz (body belay) may work better than a belay device. We hope this article helps you understand the effects of ice on climbing ropes. We thrive on your questions and comments, so if we missed something post your comments on the youtube video and we will investigate. Feedback from Comments Several people were concerned we didn't soak the rope long enough so the rope wasn't saturated and therefore the ice was only on the outside of the rope. We tested wet ropes also and with dry-treated or non-dry-treated ropes, we found that they would be fully saturated the water could fully turn to ice so we believe they were saturated and solid ice during the tests. What's Next Rumor has it that nylon gets weaker when it's wet. Even your climbing ropes have warning labels about it. We tested it thoroughly and we think you should look at what we found.

What's a worst case scenario force during a guided rappel in canyoning? Well, I thought it would be during a rescue from the bottom. There are a lot of factors that come into play when calculating (guessing) the expected forces in rigging a system like this. So many factors that it's almost impossible to determine in the field. This is one type of rope systems that can generate a lot of force. We wanted to know how much force and what our margin of safety really is. The Rigging This system was rigged from two 55mm Triplex bolts in shear "equalized" to a master point at the top. The bottom anchor was equalized with a Dyneema 60cm sling to two 55mm Triplex bolts in shear. All bolts were placed in solid granite. The rope we used for the guide-line was a BlueWater Canyon DS pro. The rope Joe was rappelling on was the 6mm Petzl PUR line which gives a nice smooth decent on a system like this. If you are curious about how strong the Triplex bolt are, check this video out 👉🏼 👉🏼 Check out the full Triplex Blog here 10% Supports HowNOT2 They sell canyon gear and ship internationally The Results I used two different techniques (one poor technique 😂) to simulate what might actually happen in a bottom up rescue. Since more force is created when ascending, we did not run a rescue from the top. During the simulated rescue, the top anchor saw a peak force of 4.8kn both times, the bottom anchor saw a peak force of 5.07kn. There are more ways, and better, to execute a rescue on a guided rappel. Rigging using releasable systems is a good place to start. The best option is not to need a rescue at all. Tensioned systems like these are high risk and you should have good training and an understanding of rope systems before using a tensioned system like this. HowNOT2 SWAG What's Next Head over to our canyoning TEXTBOOK

The American Death Triangle is a climbing anchor with a scary name. Will it kill you? Probably not when used with bolts. Should you use it? Almost certainly not. Why is it bad? The 2 biggest reasons not to use the American Death Triangle are: First, it is not redundant. If the sling fails for any reason (such as a falling rock), the anchor ceases to be and you can die. Second, it can magnify the forces on each anchor point, instead of sharing the load like a good anchor would. The top of the triangle looks like the 180 degrees that generate infinite force according to force vector charts. In the chart below you can see just 170 degrees is 576% of the load on each anchor point. So how does this really work? Tests Results In summary: An equilateral triangle (60 degrees) put ~80% force on each bolt. At 130 degrees there was 150% at each. At 40 degrees it was 70%. No matter how you build it, it is worse than a properly built anchor. Anchors should look like a V and climbers call them Xs, see the episode at the bottom for more of that. Note: The devices used to measure force are not perfect, but super close enough to see the differences. A note about rappelling Typical rappelling scenarios can involve an American Death Triangle of sorts. American Death Triangles pull the bolts at an inward angle. We tested some exaggerated angles and got 160% of the "rappel force" on each anchor point which isn't really a concern. Bolts are generally super good enough but if you are rappelling off twigs or sketchy gear, keep this in mind. Further Resources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_death_triangle https://www.alpinesavvy.com/blog/a-closer-look-at-the-american-death-triangle https://www.ropebook.com/INFORMATION/VECTOR-FORCES/ https://www.99boulders.com/introduction-to-climbing-anchors https://expeditiontraining.org/climbing-anchors-evidence-based-practices-myths-and-assessment-tools/ What's Next 3 ways to build a top rope anchor

Everyone knows it’s bad news when a carabiner is loaded over an edge. Sure, it’s not ideal… but shit happens. Sometimes you find yourself looking at a levered carabiner. Maybe someone drilled a bad bolt. Maybe you’re placing a cam deep in a crack and don’t have a runner. Regardless, when a carabiner is loaded over an edge, it reduces the strength of the carabiner. But by how much? The Setup If you want to watch how exactly we tested this, you can click on the video. But in short, we used a hydraulic system to pull a carabiner—clipped into a standard bolt hanger on the outside of our test bed—across the metal edge. Usually, the load cell is on the opposite side of what we’re pulling, but that isn’t possible in this case (and we can’t put it behind the hydraulic because we aren’t set up for that). To solve this we measured the force with a LineScale-2 dynamometer and were careful not to let it go flying! During the test, we also moved the metal plate with our hanger in relation to the edge, to mimic several angles. REFERENCE: Climbing gear is rated in kilonewtons (kN). This is an expression of force, and the kN rating on your gear demonstrates how much force the gear can withstand. 1kN is equal to about 225 pounds (102 kg) under Earth’s gravity. Test 1: Wiregates Levered Near Midpoint Result: Carabiners break at 5.57kN and 3.69kN In the first scenario, the plate our hanger was on was positioned further from the edge of the box, so the carabiner was initially levered nearly at the midpoint of its spine. It broke at 5.57kN. We also used a second carabiner (of a different model), levered over the box edge itself. This carabiner was levered closer to the pull point, not directly on its midpoint. Still, it broke at a mere 3.69kN (830 pounds). Even in the biner that held longer busted under a mere 5.57kN (1,200 pounds of force). You could probably achieve that in a whipper. Test 2: Locker Levered Near Midpoint Result: Carabiner breaks at 6.01kN Even this burly, thicker locker broke at not much more than our wiregate in Test 1 (around 6kN) when levered at its midpoint. Test 3: Wiregate Barely Levered Result: Carabiner breaks at 18.44kN This small wiregate, levered only barely over the edge, was much stronger. It broke at 18.44kN, which was nearly its minimum breaking strength (MBS) of 22kN! Test 4: Wiregate Near An Edge Result: Carabiner breaks at 18.11kN In this test, we attached a wiregate directly to a locker, and had the former loaded when it was perpendicular to the edge, but not quite angled over it. Like the wiregate in Test 3, this biner held up pretty well, breaking at 18.11kN. Test 5: Wiregate Levered on Spine Result: Carabiner breaks at 4.65kN When we positioned a wiregate and levered it directly onto the midpoint of its spine (as opposed to the gate-side and spine equally) it wasn’t any stronger. That said, it did twist and lie flat—loading along both sides—almost immediately, making the usefulness of this test hard to determine. Conclusion This was a simple test, with a very small sample size. We also used a metal plate and edges, which are likely sharper than the edges you’ll encounter on rock. Still, our biggest takeaway is that when it comes to a levered carabiner’s strength, the size or thickness of the carabiner doesn’t matter nearly as much as the ANGLE at which it’s levered. A tiny wiregate held up almost at MBS when it was just barely poking over the edge. A wiregate near the edge similarly performed nearly as well. But our big, burly locker broke at a paltry 6kN when we levered it over its midpoint. What's Next How Strong Are Levered Carabiners?