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Climbing Magazine Gear
2012 GEAR GUIDE Reviews BoulderingGet high with this new swag. Sport Clipping bolts just got more fun. Trad Shoes, pro, and more for the gear-plugging crowd. Alpine The right stuff for ice, alpine, and mountains. How to Buy —Belay Devices |
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 2012 Gear Guide: How to Buy - Rock Shoes
Of all the things climbers accumulate, the rock shoe is one of the few that actually improves performance. Nearly everything else is designed primarily to keep you alive and relatively comfortable. When you find a perfect match for your feet, climbing shoes will encourage good footwork and make you a better climber. Wouldn’t it be great if every piece of gear could do that? Dozens of well-made shoes line the shelves of climbing stores, divided into categories such as beginner, high-performance, all-day, and crack climbing.  2012 Gear Guide: How to Buy - Ropes
The climbing rope is the centerpiece of your safety system. Unless you’re bouldering, it’s your most critical climbing equipment. You may buy a one-size-fits-all rope, or build a quiver of ropes that suit each type of climbing you do. Modern nylon climbing ropes use a kernmantle design, meaning they have a thick “kern,” or core, providing most of the strength, plus a thin “mantle,” or sheath, to protect the core. Extensive twisting of the core yarns gives a rope most of its stretchiness and energy-absorbing capabilities.  2012 Gear Guide: How to Buy - Cams
If you’re getting into traditional climbing, or upgrading your rack, a set of spring-loaded camming devices will be your biggest expense: At $50 to $90 each, you’re looking at $500, minimum, for a modest selection of units. The good news is that modern cams offer excellent value: They work beautifully and will last much longer than your shoes, ropes, or harnesses.  2012 Gear Guide: How to Buy - Helmets
You wouldn’t consider biking down a busy road without a helmet, so why climb without one? Whether sport climbing at your local crag or venturing up a 15-pitch alpine route, helmets offer critical protection from falling rock or ice as well as from a blow to the head during a fall. Two basic designs of climbing helmets are available: Suspension models, or “hard hats,” have a hard shell supported by webbing. Foam models are similar to bike helmets, with a thin shell protecting a dome of foam padding.  2012 Gear Guide: How to Buy - Harnesses
Like much of your climbing gear, harnesses not only have to provide critical protection, but also must offer adequate comfort for hanging out on whatever kinds of climb you like to do. From Cadillac big-wall rigs to ultra-trim sport-climbing models, here’s what you should look for in terms of features, padding, and fit. Three basic harness types are on the market today: low-profile, bare-bones mountaineering models; lightweight, fixed-leg models, typically made for sport climbing; and fully adjustable, padded models for trad climbing or big walls.  2012 Gear Guide: How to Buy - Belay Devices
Whether you’re doing your first 5.8 toprope or starting the 10th pitch of a big wall, you need a belay device. These simple tools help climbers apply the brakes to a rope, making it relatively easy to stop a fall, lower another climber, or rappel. While belay devices are fairly basic, lightweight tools, they are useless without correct belay and rappel techniques. Moreover, many devices require unique techniques— what you learn on one device doesn’t necessarily apply to another. Read the manual, go online, or get competent instruction to learn how to safely belay or rappel with your specific device.  2012 Gear Guide: Packs
Stoic Welded Haul Duffel - Durable, spacious, and simple—this duffel is well suited to road tripping and plane flights alike. One tester packed all his clothing for a three-week bouldering trip in the size large (85L), plus some extras, and praised the wide-opening access for bulky items. The body of the duffel is soft, allowing the bag to be packed easily into a car, and “in spite of the rubbery outside, this duffel even functioned well as a pillow when filled with soft items,” the tester said.  2012 Gear Guide: Hardware
Black Diamond Hoodwire Quickdraw - This is the first ready-to-buy draw using BD’s clever HoodWire technology. A standard wire-gate biner has a hook in the nose that can snag on bolt hangers or gear loops on your harness, but the HoodWire shields this hook with little stainless-steel strips for hassle-free clipping and unclipping. The hood will not trap debris that could cause open-gate failures, and it protects the nose from wear.  2012 Gear Guide: Bouldering Gear
Stonelick Yose - The only thing worse than hitting the ground while bouldering? Landing on your pad and still hitting the ground while bouldering. Thanks to an innovative hinge design from a new company, this just won’t happen anymore. Stonelick’s “step hinge” eliminates dead spots around the fold, saving your ankles and body from deep impact. The Yose is Stonelick’s medium-sized pad (36” x 48” X 4.5”), and the foam is top-quality.  2012 Gear Guide: Harnesses
Black Diamond Flight - The Black Diamond Flight harness (women’s is the Siren) easily met our requirements for a superb sport climbing rig: lightweight (11 oz.), comfortable, and little fuss. Our testers used this harness from Spain to the Red River Gorge, and praised the clean, auto-doubled-back design on both the waist belt and leg buckles. “It’s a big plus that there’s no extraneous material hanging off like on other adjustable harnesses,” one tester claimed of BD’s trakFIT slide-adjustment system.  2012 Gear Guide: Approach Shoes
Five Ten Guide Tennie Canvas - Every so often a company will take one of its best products, one that is performing just fine, and alter it in some major fashion. Many times this seems like pure marketing—we don’t really equate this to, say, Apple upgrading hardware to make it faster or more secure. So it was with much trepidation that our testers tried on the canvas version of the reliable leather Guide Tennie. Our worries were unfounded. 2012 Gear Guide: Helmets
Mammut El Cap - Love it or hate it, climbing is getting steezier. From neon clothing to reflective sunglasses, flash is back. So when climbing helmets needed a makeover, Mammut introduced the El Cap, which breaks away from the standard bucket helmet with a narrower design and a low-profile visor. At first glance, this helmet looks more apt for kayaking or snowboarding, but the El Cap more than holds its own on rock. With 12 ventilation openings, adjustable headband, and relatively light weight (12 oz.), this is a well-built helmet that looks good.  2012 Gear Guide: Alpine Gear
Salewa Pro Guide - When Salewa revealed stiff-soled climbing boots that loosen up for walking with a simple adjustment, people slapped their heads and said, “Why didn’t I think of that?” But would they really work? Our main tester, a Rainier guide, used these boots on his home mountain and on steep ice in Montana, and he loved them. “The boots continue to impress with the walk/climb mode adjustment,” he reported. “I wear them on any approach in walk mode, switch over to climbing for the steep ice, and then step blissfully back into walking comfort for the hike out.”  2012 Gear Guide: Rock Shoes
La Sportiva Futura: This downturned slipper-cum-Velcro is La Sportiva’s latest high-performance kick. Testers lauded the comfort and easy on-off (elastic ankle cuff with one Velcro strap), which make the Futuras perfect for bouldering and indoor training. The Futura received high marks for sensitivity, thanks to a 3mm Vibram XS Grip2 outsole. They also hook really well, with a heel that vacuum-fits a variety of foot shapes and sufficient toe-top rubber and forefoot flex. 2012 Gear Guide: Ropes
New England Ropes/Maxim Airliner 9.1: Easy clipping and complete smoothness out of the gate made this Maxim rope an absolute favorite for the serious sport climbers in our test squad. Knots were easy to tie and untie, and initial kinks were kept to a minimum. The 9.1mm diameter is absolutely perfect for redpointing—thick enough to stand some abrasion and big whips, but thin enough (61 g/m, or less than 9.5 lbs for a 70m rope) to feel like there’s practically nothing there. |
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