If you are going to get a portaledge, especially one filled with air, we figured it would be nice to see it work and see when it doesn't. First half of the video is actually using the G7 Pod on El Capitan. It took 20-25 bag fills to fill it up. You don't blow it up with your mouth but with the stuff sack it's stored in. It has a sea to summit valve which allows the bag to connect securely. You can also deflate it quickly with the orange tab which is secured to the back lip so it doesn't accidentally come open. Get level or it's not comfortable. You adjust it with the sewn loops at the top. Several doubled up modes When you have two, you can use one for shade during the hottest part of the day. Tilt one for lounge mode. Create a double decker if you don't want to cuddle with your partner, just don't let the top person pee on the bottom person. Or just do it normal and sleep side by side. If you step on the outer ledge, it doesn't pivot up throwing you out of the ledge because it is squishy, something you can't do with a normal ledge. 10% Supports HowNOT2 Get 90% of your big walling gear here. This leads you to a detailed buying guide. Lab Tests Taking a knife to one of the most expensive pieces of climbing gear out there made me shed a tear. But I discovered something very important! Don't use the cleaning alcohol wipe it comes with before the patch unless you have hours to let it dry. Even when it looks dry your patch won't stick. It was shocking how hard it was to puncture it. They have a great warranty if it got truly damaged. 2 year, no questions asked warranty. We are confident in our products, so we stand behind the POD with this simple promise — we will repair or replace your POD. No questions asked, no fine print, no BS. The POD is really durable, it’s not indestructible. You cannot stand on it with crampons, you cannot stab it with a knife, but you can use it on a bigwall as a ledge to belay from, sit on, sleep, and rest. Even if you pop it, and can't patch it (which is unlikely) you still have a place to sleep until you get down to properly fix it back up. What's Next I rode this thing like a magic carpet All this big wall related content can be found in the Big Wall Bible

What's up with Vertical Limit's opening scene? Cams sliding out of cracks, ropes going through arms and bolts exploding makes this cringeworthy, but maybe that's what makes it great? Bobby Hutton and I break down each frame and laugh about it. What's Next This one might be funnier

SHORT This question has popped up lately as you see images of people stacking two plates because they don’t want a single point of failure. Rescue 3 Europe tested stacked plates in cooperation with DMM and found that the double thick plates actually caused carabiners to fail at lower forces. There are no moving parts to a rigging plate. It’s a hunk of machined aircraft quality aluminum. The forces it takes to break a plate would never be generated in any sort of rescue or rigging situation. It’s a classic case of if one is good, two is better. Except two is not better, two is worse. The plate in this test was sold by CMC Rescue in the mid 1990’s and has been used for training by Tom Pendley for close to 30 years. It’s a monolithic piece of aluminum that shows wear and has been well used. It has no ratings or markings other than CMC rescue on it because when it was made, that was not required. In the 1990’s (and still today) rigging plates are in the NFPA auxiliary equipment category and only need to meet 36kN mbs but they often far exceed that strength. It’s good to see that a machined piece of aluminum worked hard over 30 years is still unquestionably sound as a master point. What's Next What about old dog bones?

John Godino has been consistently creating climbing and navigation content for years on his website https://www.alpinesavvy.com/ and his Instagram https://www.instagram.com/alpinesavvy/. We have some break test videos coming out that we did together and this is the behind-the-scenes of his content. What's Next

What’s a Tension Back Tie? In the rescue world, we love a solid anchor but sometimes anchors just aren’t in the right place and you have to engineer what you need. We use a tension back tie element to focus a super good anchor that’s not in a great location to a, not-so-good anchor that’s in a great location. A great location means a spot that’s safe to work and lines up with the spot where we want to go over the edge. In rescue, we are dealing with bigger two-person loads so we want the anchor to be redundant and stout. We can use any rope for the tension back tie but let’s face it, 11mm or 13mm rope is heavy and stretchy. We have been using Sterling Power cord for rigging anchors for at least five years and its very low stretch (1.5% with 600 lbs), its 5.9mm with a MBS of 19.7 kN, and it only weighs about a pound and a half per 100 feet. Compare that with 11mm static rope at six and a half pounds per 100 feet. But is Powercord strong enough? Tom Pendley from Desert Rescue Research came to Hownot2 to find out. Our Tests The test sample is a 5-year-old, moderately used length of PowerCord from Sterling Rope. PowerCord is a Technora core with Nylon mantle. Since this sample is 5 years old we started out on the bollards to get a base line on strength and it came in at 19.3 kN which was close to full strength. Then we tested figure 8 to figure 8. The average of 3 pulls was 7.8 kN which was about 60% strength loss. Did you just say 60%. Yup, Aramid fiber cord is known for pronounced weakening from knots. However, the PowerCord makes up for this in its baseline strength, lightweight and very low stretch. When we moved to the 2:1 tension back tie we got an average break strength of 15.56 kN (3,498 lbf). On the 3:1 tension back tie, the average break strength was 24.05kN (5,406 lbf). In all of the tests, the PowerCord broke at the knot and I asked Tom if he had a concern about the significant strength loss in the Aramid cord at the knot. He said “In my opinion, it's old school to apply a 10:1 static safety factor requirement with a broad brush to your entire system. With dual main systems, we just don’t have that worst-case shock load potential in our systems. That’s especially true if we are using devices that reliably force limit.” He also said, “Look at these forces, it’s incredibly difficult to generate failure forces in these anchor components. If we choose sound anchors and make a clean system, it's even less likely.” “This is why we test, to understand the material performance. Yes, you can go big, it's fine but it's not necessary and it’s not efficient. There is no body count from blowing up anchors.” “Spend your time and energy preventing edge trauma events to your ropes”. Buying from ExtremeGear.org supports us with 10% The big advantage of tension back ties is twofold. First, you can introduce a strong, low-stretch tension element between anchors and second, you can easily get equal tension on the components of a master point in your anchor system. You can find the Essential Technical Rescue Field Operations Guide at Desertrescue.com and use the code "Hownot2" to get 20% off. This best selling guide covers Rope rescue, Confined Space Rescue, Swift Water Rescue, Trench Rescue, Structural Collapse and Helicopter Operations. Its designed to compliment a full training course for easy reference of important step by step procedures but can be used by rescuers at any level with detailed command checklists and important safety definitions. The hundreds of high quality illustrations help this guide set the standard as a rescuer friendly go to guide. What's Next How NOT 2 use the Ronin by a guy who repairs them when you do it wrong.