RRC Archives

I saw the thread about wear on draws and it got me thinking about how often gear actually fails. I know the stuff is rated to fail at loads a whole lot higher than we can safely generate but I was wondering just how often gear actually fails. Has anyone ever had gear (biners, rope, trad gear, etc) fail on them or heard of it failing from a reliable source? Thx.

I've had two pieces blow. One, a micro-nut, the other a #0 Matolius 4-cam unit. Both times it was the rock that broke and not the piece. My two cents.

As for reliable sources, two of my friends have had #1 metolius (the small blue cam which is the same size as the green alien) cams invert on them. They are both bigger guys than me though. Also, the cams may have been under-cammed and since metoluis doesn't have full strenght cam-stops, they can't take passive loads. So, even in those two cases it is questionable whether it was user error or gear failure which caused the pieces to fail.

Also, what about bolts/anchors outdoors?

I've had a few obvious pieces pull but aside from that I have seen, once, a text book cam placement fail. The piece was an orange or smaller Metolius and it was in the bottom of Afterburner. The climber landed on his ass on the rock directly at the base.

But did the cam itself fail or did it just pop for some unknown reason?

that's fucked up! Afterburner has bomber placements. Really parallel crack for most of it. If I remember correctly it's blue metolius size. Nice though that the person only got a bruised ass.

I've know of one biner that failed on a fall, it was cross loaded on the bolt. And the guy was 200+ pounds.
I've never seen a bolt pull when someone fell on it, but I was belaying somebody when the bottom bolt pulled out of the rock, from the rope teasing it out as he climbed past. It was obviously not in good shape, though. We had stick-clipped past it.

marathonmedic wrote:But did the cam itself fail or did it just pop for some unknown reason?

It popped for an unknown reason but it was so bomber that it, in my book, is classified as gear failure.

marathonmedic wrote:Also, what about bolts/anchors outdoors?

This website will tell you pretty much everything you need to know about bolts/anchors outdoors.

http://www.safeclimbing.org/education.htm

Add good judgement to that link and you're pretty much good to go.

Never seen bolts/anchor failure outdoors [yet] but then again I've only been climbing for less than 2 yrs...

Rest assured though that bolts/anchors at the new property (Muir Valley) are safe and sound. Only SS 1/2" x 4.75" bolts are used there.

Also there's a lot of local orgs now that take care of rebolting and maintenance of established routes.

Also there's a lot of local orgs now that take care of rebolting and maintenance of established routes.

Oh really? What org would that be?