Hi, and welcome to
Masterclass on Carabiners. A lot of us like to treat these
as indestructible magic, which is only partially true. And in this video,
I'm going to show you how this carabiner could FAIL under normal
climbing conditions on forces that are lower than what
these ratings say I'm also going to explain
why there is so many different shapes and sizes and features and everything
you need to know about carabiners so that the next time you go
to a climbing shop, you would not get lost in all that vast amount of choices. And in some cases, the salesmen's pitch. Most of carabiners that are used in sport
climbing are made out of aluminium or to be more precise, aluminium alloy, which means that aluminium is mixed
with other elements That But that's only for my geeky viewers. Under normal conditions,
this metal is super resistant to corrosion and going to last to forever. However, you need to be cautious
if you're using it next to the sea, because longer exposure to a salty water
might still damage it. And if you're one of these smart people
who asked why? isn't aluminium resistant to corrosion? then the answer for you is, yes, it is. However this is alloy,
mixed with these elements And long story short. Wash it if it gets in contact with salt. And long story long in video description. Then we have carabiners made out of steel. They are much stronger,
but also much, much heavier. So you won't be carrying them
on your harness. They are mainly used in advanced rigging situations or fixed equipment. So don't make a mistake
and buy them for your climbing. Sometimes you might hear that
a carabiner is hot-forged. You can safely ignore
this as a marketing label because every carabiner which
has a little bit more intricate shape will be hot-forged, no matter
if the manufacturer mentions it or not. Forging is basically a process
of shaping or removing the metal, and it can be done hot or cold or warm. And the main goal
is to remove parts of the carabiner that are not contributing to strength,
to make it lighter or to shape it in some ways that make it
more ergonomic. So, this carabiner
has a lot of intricate shapes. And it's definitely hot-forged while this carabiner, as you can see,
is completely smooth and round. And it seems that they just took
a bar of aluminum and bend to have this shape. OK, now why do we have so many different
shapes of carabiners? Originally carabiners were made
oval like this, but very quickly,
manufacturers realized that if you shape
a carabiner more like a D that will shift the load
closer to its spine, which is the strongest part
of the carabiner And that way, you can remove
some of the carabiners material, make it lighter, but equally as strong
in the optimal loading direction. So most of the carabiners that you will be using
will be more or less like a D shape, while Ovals still have some use
in some rare situations, because they have very nice
round, big opening. For example, if I have my stick clip
and I try to clip my D shaped carabiner it doesn't really
want to function that well as a nice old oval shaped carabiner. I can flip it easily
in any way I want. Works well. OK, next, we have carabiners,
that are shaped like a pear, and they are often labeled as HMS carabiners, which comes
from a German word, that I have trouble
pronouncing So what that means
is that this carabiner is good to be used with Munter hitch knot I will talk about knots
in another episode. But now just to give you some context,
Munter hitch is used mainly in emergency situations
in case you dropped your belaying device, and you need to belay
somebody or rappel down. And since this knot needs space to flip
when you're operating it, it works much better
with big and smooth carabiners. So that's why these carabiners are called
HMS carabiners. Basically, this historical reason of this hitch also, since HMS carabiners have nice, big and smooth top. They are often used with belaying devices. And in addition to the nice round top, some of the HMS Carabiners
will have a little loop here. And what it does it prevents
the carabiner from twisting sideways
and loading in less than an optimal angle You will find different designs of this loop for example, this is spring-Loaded. I've used this carabiner for quite a long
time, and I was pretty happy with it. It's pretty easy to operate. One downside is that sometimes you might forget that spring,
and if you clip it, then forget about it. You might actually bring that spring. Some brands do that
spring operation in reverse. So even if you forget that spring
and you take a fall, it will just clip itself and removing it's
a little bit more effort. Now, Black Diamond
has a slightly different design where by opening the gates. You're also opening this little loop here. If you have a harness with narrow
belay loop, it works really well because all you need to do is just pull
and it sits in its place. And when you open,
it's quite easy to operate. However, if your belay loop
is a little bit more thick. This mechanism tends to
jam sometimes, for example. Yeah. So not ideal, I would say. And then Hana Banana said to me,
hey, try Mammuts cross-lock. this thing is actually
really smartly designed. It's spring-loaded,
but it's loaded both ways. So that means that it's
very easy to put it in. It cannot cross load. And it's very easy to take it out. So I have to say, well done, Mammut
on this design really smart. And the last shape
I wanted to talk about is this, which is technically not a carabiner,
it's called a quick link, and it's used in anchors to connect chains
with rings and stuff like that. However, you will find that
some climbers will carry these things on their harnesses. That's in case if we cannot
finish the route, they would leave this on the bolt
and would reppel down of it. I don't recommend doing this. I will make a separate episode of what
to do if you cannot finish the route. And honestly, in many years of climbing, I never left a piece of gear
on any sport climbing route. It could happen. It's super, rare. But in that case, I would just leave
an old carabiner or old piece of quickdraw that I don't care to
much, and carrying heavy piece of metal on
every single climb is definitely stupid. OK, let's talk about the gate
of the carabiner, which can be locking or non locking non locking carabiners are
typically used in quickdraws You can find solid straight gate
or solid bent gate. or solid bent gate. The straight gate usually goes to the bolt while the slight bend in the gate helps
to clip the rope. And then we have carabiners
with wire gates. Or something like this
skinny Petzl wire gate. These are lighter, but clipping
them feels a little bit different. And some people don't like it,
some people don't mind it. So it's just a question of taste. However, what you should
definitely avoid is carabiners would have this hook on the nose. This is quite old design
and it's really annoying. What can happen is that when you're
trying to unclip a rope, it gets stuck or you're trying to unclip a
carabiner from the bolt. And this nose hook just gets in your way. So avoid these. If you choose to use
wire gate carabiners look for once that have
so called key-lock feature. It's basically a hookless nose. Non locking carabiners are equally as strong as locking ones
when the gate is closed, however, it's very easy to open the gate and then the strength gets compromised
and it can actually unclip very easily. So if the only thing you have
is not locking carabiners and your life is at stake,
you can use two of them with the gates facing away
from each other. However, you should be cautious
how you're clipping them. For example, if I were to clip like this, the gates are facing away from each other. But if something would happen
and one of them would twist around, now suddenly both gates can be opened
from the same side, which is bad. So to avoid that clip, one of them, and then when you're
clipping the second one, make sure that the wide side matches
the wide side of the other carabiner. In my case, I want the other
carabiner to be like this So if I flip one of them now, the gates will open in this pattern, which is impossible to take the rope out. There's this much safer. All right, let's talk about locking carabiners starting from the classic screw gate which is super safe. If you don't forget to screw it, that some of these carabiners have is red or orange indicator. that you didn't screwed the carabiner yet. And once you screw it, that indicator
disappears when screwing these carabiners,
don't screw too tight! If there is a heavy load, you might have
trouble unscrewing it later. Also, if sand or dust gets inside the
thread, you might have the same problem. What sometimes helps is to take a little rock and
just gently tap the gate to loosen it up. Or you can wrap something like a sling
or a rope around the gate to have bigger leverage. And that sometimes helps to open it. And of course, if your gate, has sand
or dust inside, you have to clean it and lubricated to prevent such problems. All right, next,
we have auto locking carabiners that lock themselves once you close them. This one is so-called double action auto locking carabiner,
meaning you need two actions to open it. In this case, you need to twist it
and then open it, because this is only two action carabiner. You should not rely on a single
one of these because it's quite easy to accidentally open it. It's still safer, than
non-locking carabiners. But if you want to rely on single
auto-locking carabiner, you should find a one
which has triple action gate, meaning you need to push up
the gate, twist and open. This is super safe. It's very hard to open it accidentally. The downside of these triple action
carabiners is that they are quite difficult to operate, especially
for the people who are not used to them. And the best way to do
this is to push the carabiner against something
while you're pushing the gate up. Then twist the gate,
then open the carabiner. You can push against yourself
if you want, because doing it with one
hand is not easy at all. So while triple lock carabiners
get rid of the human error problem, they tend to be a little bit more heavy and they are more difficult to operate. For example, if I want to build an anchor,
it's much easier to do this with screw gate carabiners. The gate is still not closed yet. It's very easy to clip a sling. And now I can close both of them easily and continue building my anchor. If I were to try to do the same
with locking carabiner now in order for me to clip the sling to this carabiner,
I need somehow to open the gate. And as we know, it's not always that easy
to open a triple lock carabiner. So it works, but it's much easier
with screw gate carabiners. Now, every carabiner which is sold for climbing
independently of its size needs to match certain
strength requirements, which I'm going to talk
a little bit later in this video. But what it means that even this tiny
carabiner is strong enough to be used in climbing. So in situations where weight matters, choosing small carabiners,
you can save a lot of weight. However, the smaller
the carabiner is, the harder it is to operate it, especially
if you have big hands, which I don't. So for me, it's still usable. For example, this carabiner
has a tiny gate opening space and while clipping to the bolt,
you need to be very precise. While in contrast, if you have big gate opening, it's
much easier to put into the bolt plus in situations
where it can barely reach the bolt. The bigger carabiner you might still be able to clip,
while the smaller one will be more tricky to reach. And this is a very good example where
you might choose a very big carabiner. It's as a master point for your anchor, where smaller screw gate carabiners work
very well to connect to the bolts You might choose to have a bigger carabiner
for your center point. It has more space
to connect multiple things. And it's also a little bit stronger. It's rated a little bit more. OK, let's move on to something
a little bit more fun. The strength of the carabiners, as they already mentioned, properly used
carabiners are indestructible. However used improperly,
they might be surprisingly easy to break. If you look into any carabiner
which is made for climbing, you should find strength ratings
somewhere on the spine of that carabiner. The first number indicates
the strength of the carabiner when the carabiner is pulled
along its long axis. The second number indicates the strength
when the carabiners is cross loaded and the third number indicates the strength
when it's loaded along its long axis. However, the gate is opened. OK, so what? For these numbers to make any sense We need to understand what forces are
involved in the real climbing situations. And I've already made a video
explaining a lot of that. So if you haven't watched it,
I recommend to watch it later. But for now, what matters is
that an average lead climbing fall will generate about 2kN of force or about 4kN
in some really exceptionally hard falls. Now, these 4kN
is the force to the climbers harness. What's more interesting
for us is the force to the top piece of the gear
that the climate is falling on. So let's imagine the worst case scenario. Let's assume that this is our belayer And the climber climbs
above this piece of gear and takes super hard catch
of 4kN of force. And then the question is,
what is the force to this piece of gear? So what we have here
is actually very inefficient pulley. This is a more efficient pulley. Now, the only thing you need to know about
pulleys is that they redirect the force. So if I pull on this side of the rope,
the tension on the other side of the rope will be the same. So if the climber falls
and there is 4kN pulling here, there will be 4kN pulling here. and 4+4, means that this carabiner will see 8kN of force. Now, in the real life scenarios,
during the fall, the belayer will move up, and that greatly reduces
the forces of an entire system. And here is a video from Petzl And the result was that
4kN of force to the climber resulted into 6kN of force
to the top piece of the gear. So 6kN to the top piece of gear
on super hard fall which is super rare to generate
in real life scenarios. And since every carabiner
needs to be stronger than 20kN when it's pulled along its long axis. This one is rated for 26kN. It's literally impossible to break it, even if you somehow manage
to cross load a carabiner oi, it's not that easy to cross load
a carabiner to begin with Let's try again. So if you manage to take a really hard fall on a cross loaded carabiner,
it still should survive because the force, as we said,
6kN is super rare already. And according to the standards,
every carabiner should hold at least 7kN in a cross load situation. For example, this one says that it holds
9kN in a cross load situation. So it's literally impossible
to break this carabiner. Personally, I know only one case scenario where a cross loaded carabiner was broken in this picture
they just put the gate back. But actually, the entire gate
was ripped off the carabiner So the takeaway is, if you see
your carabiners is cross loaded. Fix it. But there is no need to panic because the chances of breaking
it is like being hit by a lightning. Especially if that happens on your
belay carabiner During this hard fall
that we talked already about the force to the belayer was
only 2kN And that's more than three times lower than the braking strength
of any carabiner being cross loaded. So there is totally no need to panic
if you see your belayers carabiner being cross loaded. However, I still like to use
these belay carabiners with extra loop because they give me certainty
of the orientation of my carabiner and it's just less things to worry about. All right. Now a fun quiz, how much
a carabiner clipped like that will hold? Is it open gate strength?
because the gate is opened? Initially, I thought it will be like that. However, open gate strength
is when you load the carabiner along its long axis and open the gate. When you place it
like this, it's called a nose hook. According to Black Diamond
nose hooked carabiners can fail at 10 percent
of their maximum rating, which is crazy. And here is a video from DMM. Where a nose hooked carabiner broke
between 3kN and 4kN. That's the force that you can
already generate on very hard whipper And that's another reason
to avoid carabiners. with this nose hook because this problem is possible
only on these carabiners If I try to do the same with a carabiner
which has a key lock feature like so.... during the fall it would
flip to its proper orientation. So it's not a problem. All right, here is another quiz. Imagine a carabiner
being bent over the edge, which can happen
if the bolt is placed in a bad position, or maybe you're placing
your own protection and suddenly your carabiner is being pressed
against the rock. So unfortunately, carabiners
don't have the ratings for these things, and it would be pretty hard to make
a rating for this misuse of the carabiner. So I messaged my friend
Ryan from YouTube channel How Not to Highline because he likes breaking stuff. And I asked them to break some carabiners
in this misuse case. So how much weakened the carabiner is
will depend on the leverage, for example, in this case, the carabiner
broke around 3kN only. Oh, that's not very high. That is a force you can see
when you're climbing. So if you encounter such situation
in the real life, the solution could be using longer
a quickdraw or using a longer sling to make sure that the carabiner
is overhanging the edge of the rock. All right. Another quiz for you. How much will this black carabiner hold
on huge force downwards? Normally carabiners are not designed
to be pulled in multiple directions. So how bad is this? Well, Ryan. It's really fun to have Internet friends who are willing to break their equipment
every time I ask. Fifteen point seven, five being 50
to 60 percent somewhere in there. That is pretty low. Now
let's turn it around and see what happens if we use the wide side of the pear. So we're getting a consistent result
that the wider side of the pear is lower. So after he broke a bunch of carabiners, the results mostly
dependent on this angle. And one more interesting thing is that pulling the carabiner like this,
where you have two forces on the wide side of the carabiner
was much worse than pulling like this, where you have two forces
on a narrow side. My assumption is that
since the nose of the carabiner is the weakest point of the carabiner,
as we talked before already. This creates a disadvantage compared to doing this. Now, such setup is not going to kill you. However, there is absolutely
no need to do this. And I will talk about proper anchor
building in the future episodes. So don't do this. So to sum up, loaded
in the proper orientation without twists or bends or presses against something,
carabiners are literally unbreakable. However, if you're doing something else,
you might have some surprises. Now, assuming a proper use,
how long does the carabiner last? since aluminum alloy doesn't
degrade on itself It all will depend on the usage. For example, this little screw gate
that you might use in your anchors might last you forever. And carabiners that
see constant friction over them. For example, in quickdraws
or belay carabiners will develop grooves over time. Now, just the light
paint loss is completely normal. And for example, this Petzl carabiner
I used for maybe a few climbing sessions. And in this part where the rope goes,
there is already no paint left. However, over a longer period of time,
the groove might get so deep that it becomes sharp
and it's actually not good for your rope. So a small groove is not a problem. However, check if there is nothing sharp
on any parts that get in contact with your rope. Another possible failure is when the gate
stops closing properly like this. And now I cannot even open it Yeah, this is already bad. Sometimes you can fix it by cleaning and lubricating it and if not,
it's time to retire such carabiner And in general, when checking
their carabiner, just ask yourself, does it give you a confidence?
check for cracks or defamation. And also, if the gate is working properly while small scratches are totally fine. If you drop your carabiner to the ground, can you still use it? Most of the people who ask this question probably heard about so-called
micro fractures. Now, this is just my personal opinion. And you should always listen
to what manufacturers recommend. But I don't think that micro fractures
is a problem for aluminum carabiners, while for steel it could be because steel
is more hard metal and it's more brittle. Also, I was very entertained
watching another Ryan's video where he tested this myth by smashing his carabiners to the ground
really hard many many times Something that really bothers me is
the fact that I was told that doing that you would have to retire your carabiner. Basically, a microfracture is a crack
in the aluminum. You're technically not able to see that's a lot of fun And then breaking them on
his break machine And none of the carabiners
broke under 20kN So it's kind of a myth. So as a general rule of mine,
if I see a carabiniere falling from the top of a really long route
and hitting the rock really hard, then I might consider
retiring this carabiner. However, on anything else,
I would just take the carabiner Inspect it If there is no visible damage,
I would still use it. But I take no responsibility. If your inspection is really bad
and you get hurt by this advice. So listen to what manufacturers recommend. And final bonus question,
was this video useful for you? If it was, then you should
share it with your friends. Anyway, thank you for watching. I have something in my eye
and I have something behind me, which is a lot of Mammut gear that
you probably seen in this video already. And that's because I reached out to them and asked if they could help me
to produce this course. And I'm super happy that they agreed. So I have a lot of stuff
which I already broke, quite a few things. So thank you, Mammut for that. And thank you for everyone
who supported me via donations. It helps a lot. If you want to do that,
here is the link. If not, see you in the next video. And enjoy climbing.
