Latest in the funky carabiner design category is the Black Diamond HoodWire. It's also the latest in the TakeOutTheSpaceBetweenWordsButStillCapitalizeThem trend. GearFlogger hates that. ReallyWeDo.
The wire hood eliminates snagging on bolts when you're cleaning a draw, or if you're un-racking off a sling. The HoodWire is otherwise a nice little hot-forged biner with good handling and a generous 24mm of gate clearance. The wire gate will cut down on gate flutter or "lash" where sudden loading may cause the gate to open. Not likely, sure, but wire gates are also nice because they are lighter and don't freeze up in icy conditions.
The 1.3oz HoodWire looks like a modification of Black Diamond's HotWire biner. Substituting the HoodWire for the Positron on the bolt end cuts the weight significantly from 3.3oz for the HotWire draw to 2.9oz for the HoodWire draw, both with 12cm by 10mm Dynex dogbones and rubber keepers on the bolt biner. Whether it's worth the extra buck-fifty a biner or two bucks a draw is up to you.
For some reason our test biner was a little sloppy on the quality control. The wire gate was offset just a teensy-weensy bit, enough to have already chipped the anodized color off the nose. Although the design really does work, we might wait a bit to monitor long-term durability of the hood before subbing out all our Positrons.
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