Aliens

Noob question, what is so special about Aliens? Seems like everyone has to have them.

Here are a couple of reasons:

1) The stems are really flexible, so they are less likely to walk.
2) The lobes are quite soft, so they bite into the rock nicely.

The other selling point is the narrow heads. At places like The Gunks or areas where pin scars exist, the narrow head will fit in places that other cams won't, even if the crack is the same size.

I love my Aliens. I feel that they bite better than my one X4.

I read that they quit making them, and now they make them again. Are the new ones as good as the old ones? Or better?

The new ones made by Fixe are really nicely made.

I have handled both the Fixe and Totem version and used the Totem version. IMHO, it is no contest; the Totem version is a much better made piece of gear.

I have heard the Totem version is nice. I am bummed that they resized their version as it would be nice to get an exact match when I replace units.

I favor the FIXE aliens over the Totem Basics because the FIXE aliens match up exactly with the CCH aliens. In addition, Totem only offers their version in Blue, Green, Yellow, & Red. As was noted, these do not correspond to the CCH versions. FIXE maintains all of the different sizes, Black, Blue, Green, Yellow, Gray, & Red.

My one dislike about the FIXE aliens are their offsets. The CCH offsets had dual-colored stems, to reflect which size of the head was which side. The FIXE versions do not do this. Instead they have a one-color stem and a sling of the other color. To me, this is not as user-friendly. I do own an entire set of the FIXE offsets and they are great cams. I could probably re-color the stems myself if I was so inclined.

90% of my falls have been on aliens or X4s. I love them.

ClimbingOn wrote:I favor the FIXE aliens over the Totem Basics because the FIXE aliens match up exactly with the CCH aliens.

Considering CCH aliens often didn't match up to themselves, I'm not sure that really matters. Besides, the grey filled a very small gap between yellow & red, as an afterthought. I don't see why anybody who got the chance to do it all over again would've chosen to sized them the same way: making the red slightly smaller is a lot more logically.

the fixe ones are a bit easier to do maintenance on as you can easily replace the trigger wires yourself ...

the headwidth is noticeably wider on the blue though, well see if the new fixe aliens fix that

also for the black alien youll need to go fixe

as to why they were "special" ... you have to look back at what microcams were available around from the mid 90s till the early 2000s ...

you had the TCUs (metolius, wired bliss, etc) ... which were dual stem

you had the powercams/4cus ... which were dual stem with a wider head

you had the micro camalots ... basically what a rock empire/trango cam that you can buy today feels like

you had the various friends in the smaller sizes ... not an overly flexible stem

then you had the aliens which are still exceptionally flexible, had quite narrow headwidth for the time, had the softer aluminum that deformed in falls but "stuck" very well, the thumb loop, etc ...

with all the choices we have today its a testament to the alien that the "best" modern microcams we have are all heavily influenced and tried to copy the features of the aliens (mastercams, x4, zeros, totem basic) ... and arguably the original alien that has been around for decades still hasnt been surpassed by the new fancy cams

CCH Cable Pros and Alien III

;)