This is such an improvement from their last big wall harness.  It’s lighter and the padding is better. The molded (stiff-ish) gear loops make clipping easier and don’t leave any space between loops.  You need all the real estate you can get and this gives it to you without double stacking gear loops which would just make accessing the gear on the lower loops harder.  I cannot praise 2 belay loops enough.  There is so much going on downtown, you need the space.  And they are infinite loops - no stitching to get stuck on gear.  Finally… self-locking buckles.  Adjusting double-backed buckles on the old harness made you feel like you were going to die every time you did it.  Not sure why a fully rated haul loop is all the rage in harnesses like this?  It’s not like you are hauling from your harness.  But if that gets you stoked, it has one!

You get something for the weight… comfort.  The steps have extra wide stiff webbing and are on every step so whether you’re chillin’ at a hanging belay or top stepping, your feet get a tiny bivy to stand on.  The spreader bar is NOT round!  The flat bar gives you the extra inches you need for top stepping the low angle part of the route without having to step awkwardly on the bolt itself.  It has a loop for your leash at the top, not just your hand.  Get different colors so you can untie the knot that you tie yourself into when everything is connected.  You can also be spicy on C1 and let your ladders free solo, making less to manage. 

What I love: The guide at the bottom keeps the rope from grinding my small fingers. When jugging on a line, the tail of the rope will run over your hand.  Gloved or not, this sucks after about 2,999 feet, so the addition of the rope guide is awesome. The other thing I love is the single keeper hole at the top to secure your rope. All the carabiners I clip to it can freely spin all the way around.  Another benefit to these ascenders is the worlds tiniest pulley if you are ascending sideways or have this mounted upside down on your anchor. A little perk for no extra weight.

What I’m neutral on: the thumb tab to open it is much smaller than either BD’s or Petzl’s ascenders.  But you can view that as being more secure too.  I think it’s something you get used to after about 2 pitches and you wouldn’t think much of it after that.  

What I hate: WHY have a 2nd hole at the bottom almost nothing fits in???  The CAMP Compact Oval Locker does, but thats about it. I intentionally stock 7mm aluminum quicklinks to solve this problem but come on. 

Worth every gram.  If you’re traversing sideways or doing a roof, or just want to go back down just an inch, you have to extend your daisy.  Every other daisy requires you to stand up to take your weight off and lift your daisy buckles up and away from you.  THIS DAISY is just a push of the button.  If you don’t want to wipe your ass when you are done, I recommend hanging onto the tail.  Walls require a lot of energy, so reducing any amount of times of standing up to complete an action is welcoming.  It’s a bummer that buckles can’t be made out of aluminum to be lighter but they can’t - I’ve checked.  And you don’t want those super lightweight buckles that you would tie down small loads on your truck.  You might be tied to your rope at all times, but let’s be real, it’s got 30 feet of slack at night before it would catch you.  You want a bomber daisy and these give you that.

Hard to beat the grigri.  Don’t use the “plus”, like ever, but especially on a big wall.  The “normal” one is super duper good enough.  You can take an ATC if you really want to, but you can also just knot block for single-strand rappelling or simuling if you don’t mind the extra risks that come with that.  I have a GriGri on me and keep it on me and that’s all I have.

Polyester is a very static, very cheap material and surprisingly durable.  Sterlings HTP comes in 9mm and 9.5mm (⅜”).  You just don’t need a 10mm in polyester for standard walling.  The 9.5mm will last longer but your 9.0mm is going to last super long enough for the bulk and weight savings and it’s under $1 a foot!  If you aren’t trying to link weird pitch combinations that people don’t normally link, the 61m (200 foot) length is all you need for Yosemite.  I’ve never taken a 70m haul line before and I linked all the time.  

Glacier Black added HMPE (off brand dyneema) into the sheath of a polyester rope and kept it close to $1 a foot.  The core is HMPE and Polyproplyene.  It literally floats (in water, not air… unless it’s windy on el cap!).  It’s 8.5mm but more durable in theory than an HTP.  A 60m piece is 5.4lbs! Whereas a 9.5HTP is 10.6lbs.  This is such a big wall hack to save bulk and weight, plus it’s hyper-static meaning every calorie you burn to get your pig up the wall is actually moving the bag… or getting it more stuck.  You can ascend and haul an 8.5mm with all the normal gear and most rappel devices you are using are rated down to an 8.5 including a grigri.  Just be mindful when using skinny stuff!

I just used this on a low angle wall (lots of drag on the bag) with more than my body weight in the bag… and I foot pumped it up.  I thought my partner forgot to put something in it.  When the pig got up to me, I was expecting it to be light and tried to reposition it by lifting it directly and holy shit, it was heavy.  

The new swivel is more beneficial than you may realize. Oftentimes, positioning the traxion on your anchor doesn’t always line up with your direction of pull in relation to the bag.  The swivel lines it up so your rope isn’t grinding on the side plates and giving you all “95%” efficiency.  This new pro-traxion is WAY easier to operate the teeth than the last one and the plates are easier to open up too.  You don’t have to unclip it from anything to install the rope (micro-traxion also has that feature).  The becket at the bottom is for the 3:1 I absolutely don’t think you should do.  But it’s nice to have a clip in point there 🙂.

I think a Beal Tiger is a great big wall rope because it has the dry treatment, the unicore technology (see our VIDEO about that!) and 10mm is going to last you a long time.  It’s thick but if you want your rope to last more than 3 walls, you need it to be.

If you want to go lighter, the Joker 9.1mm is amazing, has the dry treatment and unicore.  Most of the time I measure it, it reads at 9.5mm.  You are only saving about 1lb using this rope over the Tiger 10mm but handling thinner ropes can be another benefit.  

Holy crap.  I just got the new style in stock and grabbed it to write about it here.  They upgraded it SO MUCH.  I own and used old ones so this is what I’m stoked about:

1. Waist belt isn’t just taller but lower.  That ridgid base won’t be poking in my back anymore underneath the belt!
2. BD finally realized G hook buckles were invented!  They are everywhere.  You don’t have to spend an hour at the base of the climb unweaving your bag straps.  They are also at the top making it easier to close the bag when your gun-ho partner starts hauling before it’s fully sealed up.  
3. The material isn’t permanently in the flat shape it arrived in from the mail carrier.  The old material was so stiff I stopped using my bags for the Metolius haul bags.  Some reviews are upset it’s the “flimsy” TPS material and not the “durable” Durathane but I’ve used TPS for years on my other bags and never had to replace them because of wear.  Maybe I just haul steep routes?
4. Roll top is so much better.  The old sphincter cinch top was just a funnel for water and dirt.  Now I can actually close my bag.  It also has an exterior pocket on it! 
5. There are more gear loops inside and they aren’t stiffened meaning they won’t get caught on so much crap as you pull out your stuff.

NOTE: There is extra material for the rear kangaroo pouch intended to stuff your straps.  While empty, it can poke you in the back.  Stuff it with your puffy while you hike and it becomes a feature, not a bug.

Now that I have used them, I can’t go back.  It’s an investment to get 2 but damn, they are so light and compact, especially when considering you don’t need an air mattress now.  Easy to flag and I even clipped it to my gear loop (still inflated) as I jugged so I’d always have a ledge to stand at every hanging belay.  You can bunk bed or double suite two of them.  It can be unnerving to have an air mattress hanging by a string but popping them in my tests was very difficult and easy to patch.  Just DON’T use the alcohol wipe first unless you let it dry for hours.  If it isn’t covered in Zion sand stone or cave mud, the patch will stick.  Blow them up as much as you want.  They get super firm enough to use as a ledge.  If your route has ok bivy for 1, this is a great solution to not bring an entire framed ledge.  The full VIDEO I have on it ironically has a million views but it’s also very helpful to the 0.00001% of the audience who will use one.

This helmet hits the best of both worlds when it comes to weight and durability. Heavy helmets might make you want to take it off if it is on your head for hours and hours and hours. That makes a lighter helmet a safer one. The Meteor still has a full plastic outer, so it is more resistant to wear and tear than a helmet with a foam outer.

We tried to make “doing it yourself” a little more convenient.  A 4” hose clamp fits most all-in-one cookers, technora doesn’t melt (easily), and the rubber band helps cover some of the sharp edges so it doesn’t rip (more) holes in your puffy.  We sell it at cost just to try to be helpful.

HMS or Pear shaped are “poor man rigging plates”.  They should be the first thing you clip to an anchor bolt and everything else gets clipped to it so nothing gets smashed.  4 for each anchor (x2), 2 for your haul bag, 3 spares on each person = 16

D-shaped Screw lockers for your personal anchors and general things you want to be locked.  These are the other half of your lockers. 1 for the hauler, 1 for each person’s daisies (2x2), 1 for each grigri, a whole bunch of spares = 10-15ish

D wire gates for 90% of everything.  The narrow nose doesn’t turn into an i-beam for a while so it fits in anything and they are full size in my hand.  Some people buy a motorcycle when they get a midlife crisis, I splurged and bought Dyons for my entire big wall rack.  They are not cheap so if you want to save money, you could get the Ceres Firefly II, they just don’t have narrow noses. You DON’T want mini or tiny carabiners.  If you have big hands, it just isn’t worth the weight savings for how often you are clipping and unclipping things all day. If you use a carabiner like I do for a “fifi” you MUST use a Dyon. Otherwise, you are limited on what you can clip.  

You need 1 for every single cam, 1 for every item in your haul bag, 1 on the end of every shoulder length sling, 1 carabiner can hold a set of nuts or heads or hooks, 2 for each rope bag = 50ish?

Ovals are awesome for ladders and ascenders with two holes to secure the rope at the top.   It is also essential for any pulley with two parallel plates like the mini-traxion but that should be an oval locker.  I find that the double length slings, at least the way I rack and stack them, fit nicer on oval wire gates because I clip the bottom carabiner to the top one after twisting.  D shape just smashes it all into one corner. You will want to clip any fixed piton you find with an oval carabiner, so its nice to have lots.

You need 2 for every ladder (2x2), 1 per double-hole ascender (2x2), 2 per double length sling (8x2), and 1 locker if you have a micro-traxion = 24ish

I prefer 8mm slings over 10mm since they are compact and I have a lot of them to manage.  I’ll carry about 15 over my shoulders, and 8 double length near the back of my harness and 2 for anchors.