Climbing hangers feel sharp and seem obvious they would be bad for a rope, but for some reason, some people have done this. We test dynamic and static ropes in sharp hangers and hangers that are designed to have curved edges so ropes could be threaded inside of them. In our recent VIDEO of the "Texas Rope Trick," many people asked why not just put the rope directly in the hangers if you had an emergency rappel of bolts not intended for it. Hopefully, this video answers that question. Our Ropes Dynamic and static ropes may act differently since they are built for different purposes. Dynamic ropes are stretchy and can take bends and edges easier because flex is fine, but they aren't always as strong as a static. Static doesn't like to be bent but is more abrasion resistant. Both ropes in this test are 9.8mm, the dynamic rope was made of 100% nylon and the static was 100% polyester ropes. Knots in Hangers What if you fix a rope to a hanger? This is where you would tie the rope directly to it not expecting to retrieve it. We tested that 2x each with the dynamic and the static rope. 3 of our 4 tests broke in the knot which means the knot was worse for the rope than the hanger. BUT this is for one "pull to destruction" test. If this was left up long-term, the hanger would definitely cause more damage. Rappelling on Hangers What if you double-strand rappel off a hanger? The rope in a U shape is going to be double the strength, in theory. More often than not, we will get 180% when we do things that should double the force. The dynamic rope did TERRIBLE on the sharp hanger and the static was not too bad as this one was built for abrasion. If we put the rope through different hangers that have softer edges meant for ropes, we consistently got super safe enough results. However, when we tested around the shackle pin which is a bigger diameter, we were maximizing the rope strength since sometimes it was breaking in the knots, instead of the pin, at almost double what we got on the sharp hanger in the same configuration. Our Results 10% Supports HowNOT2 Get your climbing, caving, or canyon gear here to support us. Case Study of Why NOT to do this Now this doesn't seem like a common problem but mid-edit, @labajaclimbing sent me his most recent post where someone actually tried this which is crazy because there were 2 perfectly good RAPPEL rings on the hangers. He had to help them free their rope, not just once but for the next two rappels. I'm not saying we should give Darwin his two week notice, but the more we can share this information the better. If you do this, AND you can pull your rope down, it will wear your rope out so much faster and risk getting core shots where the core, or inside of the rope, is damaged. Of course, like you see here, you may get your rope stuck which is an entire other problem you want to avoid. What's Next Check out what rappel rings break at, even when worn.

A HowNOT2 Course Intro to Ice Climbing We have 4 glacier guides in Iceland introducing you to Ice Climbing. This was going to be 3 episodes of Gear, Anchors, and Technique but we were able to smash it all cohesively into the one video you see above. Naturally, as this was filmed in Iceland by Iceland guides, this is taught on glacial ice. Waterfall ice climbing is a bit different but many of the things shared here cross over super good enough at the beginning level. This is intended to read and watch before you go ice climbing with someone who knows what they are doing, so you can absorb things a lot faster. It would have been super helpful to have seen this before going ourselves instead of showing up "cold turkey". Please don't watch an hour-long video on youtube of people you don't know and then put knives on your feet and sharp axes in your hands and try this stuff on your own. There is no way all the nuances of your context can be covered and you don't know what you don't know and could get hurt as a result. Your Ice Guides Mike Reid is originally from the USA and imported a surplus of stoke when he moved there in 2018 so he could ice climb... all day baby! He also is an AIMG certified glacier guide and also owns and operates his own private company, ICE PIC JOURNEYS, for ice tours, adventures, and pics. Ásgeir Már is from Iceland and has been an AIMG certified glacier guide since 2015. He has a lot of experience with waterfall ice as well as he has traveled through the Alps, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand exploring mountains. Žaneta Bartoňová is originally from the Czech Republic and she has been an AIMG glacier guide for 3 years and is an avid rock climber. She's ice climbing in Antarctica at the moment so she can't finish filling out her bio yet! Stephan Mantler is originally from Austria and has been climbing the European mountains and Iceland's glaciers for over 30 years. He is an AIMG certified glacier and mountain guide, member of the Icelandic search and rescue team. He owns and operates his own private tour company, STEPMAN, where you can see Ice Caves or summit the highest mountains in Iceland. His guesthouse, Dynjandi, was very nice and comfortable and we recommend it if you visit that area. Ice Climbing Gear Even if the rope is set up already, you'll need personal gear. Harness, helmet, crampons, and axes. If the rope is not set up (not sure how since you are going with an expert) you need ice screws, anchor material, a rope, and a belay device and that's beyond the scope of this course. As free content is not free to make, we promote Extreme Gear products below as they support us 10% with what you buy. It helps us add to this course and make others. Harness The harness you’ll use for ice climbing is essentially the same as for normal climbing, if you already have one, perfect! If not, or if your existing harness doesn’t have a lot of adjustment left, you may want to buy one specifically for ice climbing. It’s important that you’re able to adjust the waist and leg loops to be large enough to fit you when you’re wearing all your layers. For more advanced applications like leading or longer multi-pitch routes, you may want a harness that has space for a caritool tool holding carabiner. This is a plastic (not-rated!) carabiner which hooks onto the harness for storing ice screws, and occasionally your ice axes. Helmet As for helmets, you can choose to use an existing climbing helmet if you’ve got one, but ice climbing-specific helmets have some kind of eye protection built in (ice hurts when it hits you in the eyes), and different helmets achieve this in different ways. Some have just a small brim that sticks out to help prevent things from hitting you, others will have a clear face shield that can swivel into and out of place. If you are on steep terrain and you don't want to risk your axe popping out and busting your mouth open, you could always just wear a hockey helmet. You might look new or confused to other ice climbers but you'll keep your smile at the end of the day.
Be aware that face shields or sunglasses can fog up and prevent you from sending. I mean seeing. Boots and Crampons Do NOT use normal hiking or snow boots for ice climbing, they will ruin your day and your feet. Mountaineering/ice climbing boots are much stiffer and will help your crampon to stay attached to your feet, and provide a good base for climbing later on. It’s crucial that your boots match the crampon style that you’ll be using. There are 3 categories of crampons that are made: Strap crampons, semi-automatic/hybrid crampons, and automatic crampons. Strap crampons are the most versatile as they simply use a strap to attach to most boots. They are also the most likely to shift while in use, making doing harder climbing in them a challenge. These crampons are most often used for walking. Semi-automatic/hybrid crampons combine straps and a metal piece in the rear that hooks onto a lip on the back of some boots. This means you will have to have a compatible boot, but the fit you can achieve is much tighter and more suitable for climbing. Automatic crampons have a metal piece in the rear and in the front, both of which hook onto ledges on your boot. This crampon requires a boot that is specially designed for automatic crampons, but they provide the tightest and best fit for climbing applications. Every crampon features adjustability for different-sized boots, however, it is really important that your crampons work well with your boots, and to test them at home. Don’t find out that they won’t work together at the base of a waterfall! Carrying your crampons for the approach can be in a bag specifically for them, putting the crampons with points together, or facing the teeth in the same direction and strapping them to the outside of your bag (teeth out). Axes Axes come straight and curvy, with different blades and different attachments on the back. Mountaineering axes are meant for walking and going up inclines, but not for climbing. Its straight handle provides little purchase for actually gripping and it's meant to be poked in the snow like a walking stick. Its pick and adze can be used to clear away bad ice and snow. Slightly curved axes are for a similar purpose but could be used for more technical mountaineering. If you are looking for a 1-tool-does-all type of axe. The ice climbing-specific axes have a more curved shaft and a pommel/handguard to give you more grab on the tool. These are what you want for your first time ice climbing. You may not need the curviest of all the axes as they are for higher performance steep AF terrain. Ice Anchors While it’s unlikely you’ll be actually building an anchor on your first ice climbing excursion, it's good to know how they work so you can understand what’s going on or ask good questions to understand the context of that climb. As with rock climbing, we like to aim for a SERENE anchor. This acronym helps us remember a few questions that are important for creating a super good enough anchor: Strong - Is it strong enough for our application + some safety margin? A kilonewton (kN) is102kg or 225 pounds of force. Top roping doesn't have a lot of big falls since the rope is above you. The weight of the person belaying also counts. So on average your anchor will see 2kN. If ice screws are installed well, they are 14kn, your rope at the knot breaks between 14kN and 20kN, your rope in a U shape going through the anchor isn't twice that strong but almost. The carabiner is around 20kN and your harness is stronger than your spine. Equalized - Do the multiple pieces in the anchor share the load equally? With two pieces, you want them both to hold 50% of the force but realistically one sees more than the other, just aim to have them share the load even though one piece is super strong enough. Redundant - If one piece fails are we still connected to the wall? Two screws are redundant. One sling with a knot in it makes each leg isolated and therefore redundant. A triple auto-locking carabiner is so bomber you don't have to have two but if you got them that would be redundant. Yes, you have only one rope but it's not always practical to have two. Efficient - How long did it take us to build? Take too long and summer will come. Don't over-engineer an anchor. Keeping it simple and quick keeps it super safe enough. No Extension - If 1 piece does fail, will the other piece(s) be shock loaded? This is not very important for top roping as the forces are low and the rope absorbs any fall that may happen because one screw fails. It's just a good anchor principle to follow for other contexts in the future. If something were to fail, you want to minimize how the rest of the anchor shifts and extends. Shock loading the rest of your anchor and ropes rubbing rocks is not ideal. From tying in with figure 8s to using munter hitches to belay with, if you don't know lots about knots, this EPISODE will going to be very helpful. Screwing Around Again, it’s unlikely you’ll have to do this on your first time, but ice screws are the main protection used when climbing ice, so it’s good to know how they work. They have sharp teeth on the end that helps the screw bite into the ice initially, then the ice screw is turned clockwise to engage the threads. Once engaged, these threads guide the screw into the ice until the hanger hits the wall. At this point make sure you don't force the screw in any further, as it will reduce the strength of the placement. Instead back the screw out just a little until the hanger points in the expected direction of pull. When choosing a spot for your placement, you’ll want to inspect the ice, as the screw is only as strong as what you put it in. You need solid ice of course but sometimes you find it's aerated or has ash layers, snow layers, or air pockets which are all bad. You'll know you have good ice if you see a steady stream of ice coming out of the center of the screw. If this gets interrupted, it means you are hitting air, snow or ash. Why not just use the biggest screw all the time. Sometimes you are not putting it in a thick glacier but a thin layer of ice with rock behind it. Using a screw that is too long could break the ice off the rock where it’s attached and destroy the teeth on your shiny new ice screw. If the hanger can't get all the way down to the ice, and sticks half way out because there is rock behind it, then it will leverage it and is too weak to hold you without doing some more complicated solutions. Placing two screws too close together or in the same horizontal plane on waterfalls could create cracks in the ice that reduce both placements' strength (think of the squirrel from Ice Age). Screws have a limited lifespan as they melt the ice around them so check them regularly. This can happen in just a few hours and hold 0kN. See how strong ice screws are in this EPISODE. The longest ones, Petzl 21cm stayed in the ice and the hanger broke at 14kN but the Black Diamond Express 13cm came out of the ice at 16kN and the hanger didn't break. This would be great to watch to learn to trust ice screws and learn when they don't hold. It is possible but doesn't seem necessary to use V threads for a top rope anchor but we did also test V threads. That is where you drill a V with the long ice screws and thread your rope into the ice. 6mm rope would break before the ice and our ice in our context was breaking at 15kN with bigger ropes. See just how it all happens in this EPISODE. Getting Knotty The two most common anchor setups used in both rock climbing and ice climbing are the BFK and the sliding X. Both are super good enough but have some minor differences that make them more useful for different applications. The BFK or Big Fat Knot, allows an anchor to be redundant and limits the extension of the master point should one piece fail. However, if the climb wanders side to side, or you plan on climbing multiple routes right next to each other, it doesn't equalize at all when the direction of the pull changes from what you set it up with. The sliding X, on the other hand, equalizes the pieces really well given any direction of pull. You can check the redundant box by using 2 or 3 slings but, if one piece were to fail, the master point would slide down the length of the sling, shock-loading the other piece. Not a huge problem if you have a bunch of rope between you and the anchor but you want to minimize that on your anchors. How Edgy Are you Depending on where and how you’ll be climbing, the anchor may need to be 3 meters back from the edge or extended over it. If you’ll be belaying and climbing from the bottom you will want the master point extended over the edge so you can see the carabiner(s) from the bottom. Having a rope run over an edge creates rope drag and makes belaying more difficult. More importantly, that rope drag can actually melt the ice where the rope runs. This isn’t so much of an issue until the rope stops moving and all that ice refreezes. If you leave it for too long, the rope could get stuck and you’d have to free it (creating a mild inconvenience and an absolute epic). It’s also nice to see that your rope is still properly loaded in the carabiner(s) at all times instead of being out of site. If you are not able to easily access the start of the climb, the climber will then be lowered to the bottom to climb back up. You don’t want your anchor right on the edge so the climber has a lot of room to comfortably get over the edge as they are being lowered or a lot of room to safely belay. The belayer could stand right at the anchor or if they wanted to keep an eye on the climber, extend their personal anchor so they can right up to the edge. However, as we mentioned earlier if it’s your first time ice climbing you likely won’t have to worry about anchor setups and ice screws. Your experience will be very similar to going to a climbing gym to top rope. If you have never top roped in a gym before, it’ll really improve your experience to do that before you go ice climbing (learning things when you’re cold and tired, and hungry is hard). Learning the sequence of how to belay and tie in will translate well to your outdoor ice experience, and allow you to focus on learning how to climb the ice. Ice Climbing Techniques Similarly to rock climbing, your feet are the most important part but that's where the similarities stop. You can't approach ice like you would approach rock. The teeth on your feet are in the front, which means your feet must point straight forward at all times. To get the power to kick them into the ice, you can't top step, or place your feet really high like you might climbing. And if you campus up the wall with the axes you will get gassed out. Play It Straight It pays to understand how your crampons are designed to interact with the ice. There are a few different designs, but all share the same basic concept. The front points are the points in the front, mind-blowing, right? These are designed to break into the ice and get your crampon seated. This is obvious on the ground but it has to translate into how your foot is positioned! There are also secondary points behind these which create more stability when utilized correctly. When you kick, kick the teeth in, not your toenails. If the boot is facing down because you are standing on your tippy toes with your other foot, you are just kicking the top of your boot into the ice. We’re kicking ice here, not soccer balls! Next, you can lower your heel until the secondary points engage. You should be able to feel your foot become more secure. Remember you are not climbing a rock so don't try to get higher by standing on your toes. If you point your feet down, they come out. Keep your heel down to keep all the teeth in. Don't Get Cocky If you cock your foot sideways because it's too far to one side, you guessed it, your teeth come out. So where do your feet need to be placed? A good base technique is about shoulder width apart, but you can build on this as you get more comfortable and understand the ice better. To advance your feet up the wall, you’ll want to hang from straight arms and make small movements up the wall to your next stance. The first step is to shift your hips out from the wall and look at your feet, this will help you get better placements and it makes kicking easier. Think “center, center, wide, wide” as you move both of your feet up. You can move one foot to the center and up a little from where it originally was, then do the same with the other foot. These center steps don’t need to be perfect so don’t spend too much time on placing them perfectly (you’ll be hanging from bomber ice axe placements, more on this in a second). After centering your feet you can move them one by one up a little bit and back to shoulder width apart. Once you have feet you are happy with, do the second half of a squat to return to a standing position. DO NOT DO A PULL UP. This is the most crucial part of ice climbing footwork and it makes climbing up a whole lot easier on your upper body. Use the big muscles in your legs to climb up the ice, not the small muscles in your arms. The whole point of this exercise is to minimize how much your body swings side to side and keeps your center of gravity... centered. Edward Scissor Hands Moving to the axes side of things, remember that they are ice axes and not baseball bats. Getting a good swing is important for the stability and reliability of the placement. Getting a good swing does not rely on a big wind-up that would give Babe Ruth a run for his money. Rather, the swing relies on the engagement of the lats, a good wrist flick, and most importantly: a downward pull. Flick the wrist too soon and you lost your power, too late and you bash your knuckles. It's ok if it takes you a few wacks to get it in solid but with practice, you can nail it in one. If you do wack it multiple times, try to hit the same hole. As for where the axes should be placed, there are two different techniques. The first is better for beginners as it keeps you more square to the wall and prevents you from hitting yourself in the face with an axe. This is called the two-hand technique, and it involves your two axes being at least shoulder width apart from each other at the same height. This wide stance allows you to be stable in most situations and when you pull your axe out of the ice to move it, there is no risk of hitting yourself in the face (shoulder width remember?). So starting from a standing position you can do the center, center, wide, wide foot technique we were talking about earlier to get the handles of your axes close to your shoulders. Once you are here, remove one axe and place it higher up, still at shoulder width apart. You repeat this with the 2nd axe so they are at a similar height. Then just repeat the process. The second method is called the A-frame. This technique keeps both axes mostly in line with your body the entire time you are climbing. Again starting from a stance you can place one axe high and in line with your body. Then hanging from just one straight arm, you can advance your feet again using center, center, wide, wide. But this time when you go to stand up (using your legs!) you can pull the handle of your lower axe upwards, breaking its placement, and releasing the axe all in one motion. Now you can place this axe high and in line with your body and repeat the process. Be careful when pulling out the axe not to do it too early or you may risk hitting yourself. You want it to sort of come out on it’s own as your body and arm move upwards. Your arm should be bent at about 90 degrees when this happens as it will be easiest to remove the axe at this angle. For both these techniques you’ll want to keep your hips close to the wall in order to increase the force through your feet and reduce the force through your arms. This will help your endurance on longer routes and will make you climb better overall. Just the Tips Keep your hips to keep the force on your feet not your hands Don't try to retrieve your axe by moving it side to side. Lift it straight up and then out. Axe tethers are not to keep you on the axes but the axes to you, Clip them to the rope in front of your face during a top rope session so they are always within reach but don't bungee cord down to your face if they were attached to your harness Hockey helmets might make you look new or dumb, but you'll have all your teeth at the end of the day If you forgot to take your chalk bag off your harness, dump out the chalk and put a bunch of hand warmers in it! Youtube metrics don't tell me if this was super helpful to you, feel free to email me at ryan@slackline.com to tell me yourself so I know to keep adding energy to this course and the others. PRACTICE Before you go up the ice, just stay right at the ground and practice using your axe A LOT. Before you tie into climb, practice your foot work right off the ground until you learn how to get the front points in and keep them in. If you go up without doing this, you'll get gassed out and really limit how much ice time you get in. 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You are mid-slab and it starts pouring -- time to bail! You look down and there is nothing on your harness. You have is a sewn runner over your shoulder. How do you get down? We've got a clever solution for you, the Texas Rope Trick! It is a great technique that can save you, but it's unforgiving if you get it wrong. This situation should never happen. Keep a few carabiners on your harness whenever you are climbing. Leaving a carabiner and lowering or rappelling from it is a safer and better option than the Texas Rope Trick. How It Works Inspect the bolt. Is it solid? Are the edges of the bolt burred or sharp? Go in direct, get your weight on the bolt. Pass a sling through the bolt in a Basket Hitch. Untie from tie-in on harness. Pass the untied end through one loop of basket hitch and tie it to the other loop. It's a good idea to back this so if you drop it you don't lose the rope. Pull the rope strand coming up from belayer through BOTH loops of basket hitch. This creates a bight that lowers down to your belayer as you pull the rope. When the bight reaches the belayer set up your rappel. You MUST get right. **See the Getting it Wrong section to find out why a mistake could be deadly.** Set up ATC for rappel or Munter using the two stands passing through the Basket Hitch. ***Do NOT use the strand tied to one loop of the basket hitch***. When you reach the ground (or belayer on multi-pitch) identify the bight you sent down. Pull the side of the bight heading up to the sling. You can confirm you are pulling the right strand, in the right direction, if an untied rope end goes up the wall as you pull. You have it wrong if you cannot pull the rope or the bight begins going up the wall. Rope comes down with the sling. Voila! Now you have all of your gear back and have left nothing on the wall, pretty slick! Considerations You can only rappel 1/3rd the length of your rope using this trick. Soft goods (slings, webbing, cord, rope, or anything that isn't metal) tied directly to bolts is not a great idea. The sharp edges and small radius of the bolt can cut or damage the soft good, potentially causing them to fail. See our tests below. Bring a few extra carabiners and you will never have to do this. Don't leave the ground, or belay, unprepared. The Texas Rope trick requires focus and understanding. Practice it on the ground first. If you had no hard goods you could use a Dulfersitz to rappel. If you have don't have an ATC but you have a carabiner you can rappel using a Munter Hitch. Never lower with the rope running directly through soft good. This generates friction that can melt and break soft goods. Rappel instead, so the friction happens when your weight is off of the rope and if the soft goods fail you don't fall with them. Should You Do This? Well? Not unless you have to. It is safer to leave a carabiner and lower or rappel off of it. Another safer solution is to fix the rope and rappel. Return to get the rope during better conditions or with the gear you need. A small financial loss is better than gambling with your life. When would the Texas Rope Trick Shine? If you are higher than half of your rope-length and you only have one carabiner and an ATC. You'll have to do it twice, potentially three times, and make no mistakes. We still recommend more conventional options. However, this is a scenario, especially high on a multi-pitch, where the Texas rope trick could save your life. 10% Supports HowNOT2 They sell everything you need to climb Getting it Wrong There are two main failure modes with the Texas Rope Trick. The most critical is rappelling on the wrong strands. Three strands will run down the wall. Two pass through the Basket Hitch. A third strand is tied to one side the basket hitch. ***If the strand tied to the basket hitch is included in the rappel the anchor can fail catastrophically*** This is the biggest risk when using the Texas Rope Trick. Only use the two strands that directly pass through the basket hitch. The second failure is pulling the wrong strand or in the wrong direction after rappelling. Getting this wrong will cause the rope to not pull or fix itself to the wall. If you have more rappels to make this could be a big problem. Testing Slings on Bolts We pulled a basket hitch in an 8mm dyneema sling connected to a bolt. It broke at 18.86kn. Theoretically, basket hitches are twice as strong the MBS. In practice, we get an additional 50-80% over MBS. In this test we used an older, used dyneema sling. These generally break around 50-75% of MBS. We used the sharpest bolt hanger we could find. 18kn is in line with what we would expected and a reassuring result. The sling was strong enough to deform the bolt hanger but it broke where it ran over the bolt's edge. We are pretty happy with 18kn, it's probably super good enough if it is your only option, but be aware that connecting soft good directly to bolt hanger is always risky. We also rub-tested it since a rope can cut through the sling via friction. I used a 9mm rope and leaned back and rubbed back and forth about 18" at a time. It took quite a lot of effort to get it to cut but if I had all my weight on it, it would be a lot quicker. This was. a good demo of the fact this happens, it's up to you to risk how much you want to do this when your life depends on it. What's Next If you like niche rappel tricks, we test a product Beal made to retrieve a rope after rappelling single strand.

How worn down can mussy hooks be before they become dangerous? To find out we pulled tested 2 new Mussy hooks and three from 5 Gallon Buckets, and insanely popular climb at Smith Rock, that were well worn down to find out. Mussy hooks are a form of "Open System" meaning the rope can be clipped or threaded through the anchor without climbers untying the rope from their harness. Steel carabiners with captive eyes are another form of an Open System anchor. Rams horns, also called pig-tails, are the new kid on the block and are gaining popularity. We pull tested all of them. They all broke super good enough. We did a bonus test with lap links, chain links that are not welded closed, pulled off of an old route. They broke at a lower force than ropes do. Our Results Our results show Mussy Hooks are ridiculously strong. The weakest well-worn mussy hook, which had probably been used by 5,000+ people to lower, broke at 46kn. That's over 10,000 pounds of force (lbf). Rams Horns began to bend at 4,300 lbf, roughly 10 times more force than climbers generate lowering, rappelling or top roping. Steel carabiners break around 45kn. All of them are insanely strong and way more than super good enough. Lap Links broke at 14kn which is slightly lower than dynamic ropes break at, but they are still super good enough. *Breaking force is not the only part of an anchor. Rope grooves in fixed hardware can create sharp edges that can damage and even cut ropes. Inspect and evaluate any hardware you are going to trust your life to! Route Cleaning Cleaning a pitch means getting yourself, your rope, and all of your gear off of the wall and safely back on the ground. Rappelling, lowering off, and walking off are the most common ways to clean routes. There are advantages and disadvantages to all of them. Climbers will encounter routes that require each of these methods, so climbers should know how to do all three safely. Open Systems vs Closed Systems Closed Systems require climbers to untie their tie-in knot to connect the rope to the anchor to clean a route. This can be dangerous if a climber misses a step or gets confused. Speaking of steps, Closed systems require a lot of them. Cleaning a route with a Closed System anchor demand knowledge, focus, memory, and organization. Missing any step can be catastrophic. Closed systems make it impossible for the rope to come out of the anchor, this is their main benefit. Open Systems require less knowledge and memory because they remove at least 8 steps when cleaning a route. We think that makes them safer. Open systems also ease traffic jams on popular routes because it is much faster to clean them. The disadvantage of open systems is that it's not impossible for the rope to come out, it's only extremely freakishly unlikely. Take a look at how many steps are required for each system: Lowering off of Open Systems requires only three steps, compared to 11 steps with a Closed System. Open Systems also make rappelling easier, removing 11 steps from the process required for Closed Systems. Open Systems save a ton of time and we think they will also save lives. Let us know which system you prefer in the comments. 10% Supports HowNOT2 They sell everything you need to climb What's Next

Climbtech Removable Bolts Climbtech is a great company that makes some really cool and unique bolts. We tested their 1/2” Removable Bolt (RB). Climbtech says their RB's are perfect for new route setting, industrial rope access work, and search and rescue. That all makes sense to us, but Climbtech also says the RB is ideal for alpine climbing, belay anchors, top-roping, and haul lines. This is where we are dubious, so we evaluated the RB and broke a few to see what the hype was about. A few years ago Climbtech released a commercial about their RB's. The video is clearly intended for the climbing community. It kind of makes it sound like RB's should be a staple on every climber's rack. In the beginning of the video the editor of Rock & Ice magazine states the RB is the most useful tool he has ever come across for new-routing. Their cofounder Karl, inventor of the RB, takes a huge whipper on an RB. If you listen carefully though, he whips on a 3/4” RB. Kuddos to him for such a big fall but we have some issues with this demonstration. A 3/4" hole is absolutely massive. It is extremely unlikely that any climber will ever encounter a hole that big. Climbtech states that their 1/2" version, a size hole climbers will actually encounter, is only intended for static weight and not to catch falls. The 3/4" RB's are rated for 22kn and are intended to catch falls. Karl's feet are at the bolt, but he falls around 50 feet. That means there was an unreasonable amount of slack in the rope which absorbed a lot of the force. We estimate that the bolt saw no more than 4kn. Any belayer that lets a fall of that length happen so close to the protection should probably consider partaking in a different sport. The largest bolt hole we've ever drilled was 5/8” or 16mm. It was tough to drill a hole that big, even in sandstone! It just doesn’t make sense to drill a 3/4”, basically ever. It would require a ton of battery and forearm power just to create a lot of extra and unnecessary impact on the rock. Climbtech even makes a 1” version, which is a heinously large hole! 10% Supports HowNOT2 Buy bolting hardware at Extreme Gear Our Results The 1/2" RB has an MBS of 11kn (2500 lbf) and is intended for static weight only, not for catching falls. In our tests both 1/2" RB's broke at 14kn. One was pulled straight out and one was pulled sheer. They both broke at the cable. Despite only being intended for static weight we would whip. The problem is that recreational climbers may encounter a variety of hole sizes. Big wall climbers are probably better served by hooks and sport climbers should probably find climbs where all of the bolts are intact. The 1/2" RB is really a tool for new route development. In that context there is a cheaper removable alternative - Concrete Screws which cost about $1 each. We used them a ton in our bolt buster tests to hold down our hydraulics and catcher systems. They were strong and economical. You can technically install Concrete Screws by hand but we used an impact driver. Note that for permanent use bolts should be stainless steel. To find our how Concrete screws perform as temporary and permanent anchors please subscribe to our Youtube Channel, we will have a specific episode about this later this year. Also check out our Book of Numbers in The Bolting Bible to discover in 15 minutes what took me 5 years to learn. We love Climbtech and they make some great gear. We are just picking on this one product. The RB is a niche product. It seems to work well and we found it to be much stronger than Climbtech stated. That said, it's just not something that most climbers will find useful or necessary. Thank you Kevin Kent for giving us these two bolts to test and to my patrons who make it possible for me to work 30 hours a day 8 days a week on this channel. What's Next? Check out our video on another removable bolt - the Petzl Coeur Pulse