GearFlogger

The Better Bungee Build-a-Bungee Kit

You gotta love it when some clever people take something you just didn't think could be any better and improve it. Exhibit A is the humble bungee cord or strap. Two hooks joined by a length of elastic material. What could possibly be improved?

Well The Better Bungee folks had some ideas. They start with the rope, which in this case is replaced by polyurethane cords that stretch up to 2x their original length, and aren't affected by UV/water/gas/diesel/oil/most other chemicals, and are even unaffected by extreme temperatures. We weren't able to directly test a lot of these claims, but people seem to genuinely like them and after using them ourselves we can see why.

The Build-a-Bungee kit takes things a step farther. Ten feet of rope or strap and six hooks allow you to build up to three custom length bungee cords. The nylon hooks are pretty ingenious, just wrap the cord around the hook and press into place and presto! Instant custom bungee that you can undo and redo to your heart's content.

You can also buy the cord in bulk, and really go hog wild. The Build-a-Bungee kit is a great way to get fast, reliable custom gear tie-downs in place. The company makes a lot of other bungee related products, be sure to check them out!

$27.99 at The Better Bungee

Black Diamond 9.9 Single Rope

Black Diamond brings sexy back, at least for mid-diameter climbing ropes. It's new 9.9mm single rope really is a work of art, a perfect balance of weight and strength that makes it a standout in its class. It used to be that when grabbing a thicker cord like this, you just knew you were sacrificing handling for durability, but not any more.

The 9.9 non-dry rope, available in 35, 60 and 70 meter lengths, is billed as a "go-to rope for year-round rock climbing" and that pretty much nails it. The rope has a great hand, feeling supple and strong and the same time, with a clearly marked center and ends that are whipped tightly enough that getting them to fray has become a personal - and so far failed - obsession.

At 64g/m it's not too heavy, and it's rated at six UIAA factor falls so feel free to bring it along for that beginning lead climbing class. Or just save it for your summer projects. Either way you'll feel no reservations when you grab the Black Diamond 9.9. It's an every day, no-days-off rope that knots easily, belays smoothly and catches falls until you're ready for a cold one.

$89.95 to $179.95 at REI

Klik Belts D-Ring Rescue Belt

I've never been much of a belt person. I've always been of the opinion that pants should fit, and belts are just one more piece of clothing you have to buy, store, clean occasionally and put on and take off. And then along came practical/tactical belts, and lo! I now have a belt collection.

My latest discovery is Klik Belts, maker of some absolutely fantastic webbing belts, the flagship of which has got to be the D-Ring Rescue Belt. The belt uses the awesome AustriAlpin quick release buckle, one of those top-of-the-food-chain pieces of kit that is so satisfying to use you'll find yourself working it just for the sheer pleasure. Whether it is holding up Lady Gaga at the Superbowl or saving a life in technical rescue situations, the AustriaAlpin is state of the art.

Klik Belts uses a special version with a built-in D ring that can easily support body weight. As a person who has a day job that involves working in an office building on the 14th floor - in an earthquake-prone town where fire ladder trucks can only reach to the 7th floor - I've always had a vested interest in technologies that would allow me to GTFO down a rope should the need arise. The Klik Belt is fashionable enough to be worn daily as part of business casual attire, yet tough enough to perform life-saving duty when the need arises.

The D-Ring Rescue Belt has a design where the ring will lie flat until you need it, and the tail where it goes through the buckle is thinner for easy threading. The 1.5 inch width is perfect for carrying tools, and the stitching will last a lifetime. With the weakest link in the system being around 4,000 pounds (buckle strength in a straight pull), you're good to go when the going gets hairy. Available in black and coyote brown, a more handsome and practical belt there is not.

$69.00 at Klik Belts

Frabill Ice Safety Kit & Scotty Throw Bag

Some of you - let's call you people who don't live in Alaska - are already enjoying Spring in full Fling. Those of us who do live in Northern climes are still enjoying the last gasps of winter activities, from skiing to ice skating. Speaking of ice, it can kill you dead. Not so much the ice, but the water you fall into after breaking through the ice.

So, if you're ice fishing or snowmachining - yes, snowMACHINES dammit! - or backcountry skating or walking out to a glacier or anything else on ice, please do yourself and others a hyuge solid and get some ice claws. Or ice spikes, or ice picks or whatever you want to call them. If you go in the drink it's extremely difficult to self-rescue without spikes to pull yourself out with. It's also extremely difficult to rescue someone else without a rope.

Fortunately there are economical and easily portable solutions to both those problems. Frabill's ice safety kit includes a pair of leashed ice claws, a whistle and a pair of traction devices for your feet. All work well, and the hand spikes have a nice spring-loaded cover over the spike to protect you from accidentally stabbing yourself. We were easily able to pull ourselves along the ice with these, although we may end up replacing the leash with a straight piece of thin cord for more comfort; easy enough to do.

The Scotty throw bag with fifty feet of 9/32 550lb test floating MFP rope is also superlight and easy to carry, with the bag having a built-in buckled strap and reflective band. Note the whistle in the picture is sold separately. The high-visibility orange rope allows you to stand off a safe distance and still heave the rope bag to someone in distress. The fact that the rope floats makes it easier to see and to grab. Just clip it to your pack, your boat, a life ring, or what have you and when the time comes off it throws. It repacks smoothly, and the bag has a mesh side for easy draining and fast drying. For under $40 for both the throw bag and the ice safety kit there's no reason to leave home without it.

Frabill Ice Safety Kit $15.99 at Amazon
Scotty Throw Bag $22.23 at Amazon

LoopRope

You know what I appreciate? Brevity. Specifically, an economy of words in product names. Imagine my relief at discovering LoopRope, about as simple as it gets. And simplicity, it turns out, is the most attractive quality of LoopRope.

I admit, initially I thought "hey that's cool for people who don't know their knots and rigging," but I soon found myself appreciating the infinite adjustability of LoopRope for securing my crap valuable stuff in all kinds of places: on a kayak, in the back of a vehicle, basically anywhere you want something that's likely to move to not do so.

LoopRope is essentially an etrier made out of bungee cord. The cool part is that the combination of stretch and the small loops give you an infinitely adjustable cord for securing just about anything. See www.looprope.com for examples; I particularly liked the fishing poles on the ceiling of a vehicle. For me, quickly securing loads in the back of a compact SUV (Ford Escape), e.g. jumpstarter, propane tank, etc., is quicker and easier with the LoopRope that now lives there permanently.

The one unknown is strength, both for the cord and the biners; it's oddly hard to find out just how strong a given bungee cord is, but if you're not using it for climbing (you shouldn't be!) or another mission-critical application, LoopRope provides a very convenient way to quickly secure and release loads across a wide array of shapes and sizes.

$31.92 for a 5' 2-pack at Amazon

PMI 5mm Accessory Cord

I remember I made a mistake once. It was this time, I thought I was wrong but it turned out I wasn't. To that we may add a second mistake: I needed some accessory cord for prussiks and assumed - yes, you read that right, I assumed - that it would be cheaper off the spool at REI versus pre-cut in a package.

Fail! A package of thirty feet is on sale for $5.93 (normally $8.50) versus $0.32 per foot off the spool which is... which is... c'mon Google calculator! Which is $9.60 for thirty feet, a full buck-ten $3.67 more, which is a full pint of beer plus shitty tip (really, don't be that guy) in a dirtbag bar somewhere! And you get a free plastic bag and cardboard label with really tiny pictures of people doing presumably cool things with said cord.

Anyway, the PMI cord is to replace another package of 5 mil I bought that turned out to be polyester. The PMI cord is gloriously grippy nylon, which is much more suitable for prussiks, especially on skinny 8mm glacier travel ropes. Especially when they're icy. And I'm scared and peeing myself. Creating more ice, so you see the dilemma. And finally, it's in camouflage desert tan for your next ninja counterterrorism mission. Nuff said.

$5.93 (on sale from $8.50) at REI

Black Diamond quality control lab: slings and draws

You stingy bastard. You know who you are: the guy who insists his gear is still fit for duty as it crumbles into dust. Everyone is guilty of it, but we all need to take a deep breath and realistically assess the state of our gear.

Black Diamond's quality control lab hooks us up with pointers on how gear degrades, what to look for and what to do about it. This edition focuses on slings and quickdraws, but there's plenty more on their site so dig around.

The bottom line: BD claims two main factors wear out slings and draw, and those are abrasion and ultraviolet light. One interesting finding is that both nylon and Dynex degrade similarly from UV, and most of that 16% loss in strength happens in the first ten weeks. So don't think it's even over time.

Their next gear lab will focus on biners, so stay tuned.

Metolius nylon slings

Nylon. It's not just for panty hose anymore. It's for inexpensive slings that outperform their high-tensile cousins, for reasons we'll get into shortly. Metolius gives us a decent cheapo with a few rough edges.

Metolius made a workman's sling here, rated at 22kn. It's 18mm wide with pinstriping down the center, just like the decals you put on your crappy old pickup truck when you were a teenager. Don't lie, someone saw you. The rough edges are on the ends, where at least on the one I got it looks like they were cut by someone operating a hot knife under the influence. The ends stick out half an inch from the bar tacking, which won't affect much but is annoying from a purely anal-retentive perspective. Which is the only perspective we know around these parts.

Where the 48 incher weighs 3oz, some of they fancy high-tensile sewn runners weigh in at a mere 1 oz. OK, sure, that's 2 oz. apiece and I like to count grams as much as the next weenie. But picture this: you're clipped in to a piece of pro with your webbing and for some reason you're above the pro, you slip and you fall. Chances are the nylon webbing will hold. The high-tensile dyneema/spectra/kevlar sling will snap, because it can't stretch even the teensiest bit. That means the peak load is much higher and it fails. Check out the current gear guide issue of Rock and Ice Magazine. They confirm tests by others that show this nifty little fact, and remember: knotting high-tensile slings steadily reduces their strength while nylon can be knotted and unknotted forever with minimal loss of strength.

$3.45 to $8.45 at REI

Black Diamond tests the breaking point of runners

Black Diamond tested the breaking point of wet and dry runners. We're generally supportive of the abuse of runners - what kind of sport is that, really? - yet initially we were sketical; surely a wet person will break at the same point as a dry person. Then we realized they were talking about webbing! Nylon and Dynex specifically:

"Dynex runners don’t seem to be affected when soaked, which was to be expected. Nylon runners, on the other hand, show about a 10% decrease in strength when wet. Should this slight decrease in strength be concerning? Not really. The strength of these, wet or dry, are well above the product rating and pretty much any force that can be created in the field. Bottom line: runners are crazy strong, wet or dry. So even if my partner had gone for a ride during our rain-drenched climb, he would have been fine.
 
"Note: If your runners or other gear gets soaked, don’t dry it out in direct sunlight. This causes degradation and a potential decrease in strength. How much? Check out an entry from the QC Lab archives: Testing Old Gear from the VRG. Dried out and sun-bleached slings broke at around 11 kN with some as low as 5 kN. That’s 1124 lbf and getting well into sketchy land."

Read complete article at Black Diamond

PMI 7mm Cordelette with Lumi-Line

PMI makes all the bondage cords for the professional B&D circuit. Their cords have been rated Best in Bondage three years running by the Netherlands Sex Fraternal Workers union, better known by their acronym, NSFW. If you ever get an email marked NSFW, now you know where it originated.

We climbers, parasites that we are, benefit from B&D technology with products like the seven-ounce PMI 7mm cordelette with Lumi-Line. It's a a standard pre-packaged 21ft/7m lenght of 7mm nylon cordelette with one twist: glow-in-the-dark fibers that add extra fun in the bedroom or the backcountry. Remember: safety first!

If you're still using webbing or runners to set up anchors, do yourself a favor and learn the equalette by reading Climbing Anchors: Second Edition by John Long and Bob Gaines. For extra credit pick up Rock Climbing Anchors by Craig Luebben. Some people prefer Spectra/Dyneema over nylon for lighter weight, less bulk, less water retention, UV resistance and higher strength. I think it's safe to say that nylon has the overall advantage because it still plenty strong enough, light enough, doesn't lose strength after knotting, doesn't slip as easily and it adds some stretch to the system to reduce shock-loading on that shaky pro you just placed. And it's cheaper.

$14.90 at REI