Clove hitching carabiners on alpine draws?

You never have to unclip fully.

Steps
1. Clip one single Biner to single strand of sling
2. Run one Biner through second Biner
3. Clip the U shape two strands of sling created

Unclipping
1. Remove any two strands running through either Biner will allow third strand to stay connected

Read this thread twice now. First thing to know is when you make alpine draws out of dyneema slings, you want to TRIPLE them, that resolves the issue of needing to remove the biner fully. If you only double then sometimes the biner goes free and can be dropped.

The young kid who died in Italy did so because whoever made up the draws did not actually have the sling clipped to the biner, they just used the rubber thingys to attach with.

The woman who fell to her death from the anchors appears to have used the rubber thingys too, albeit more correctly, and it is surmised she had an episode like the one indicated in the Petzl video upthread, with the original situation being found by some climbers in the UK. In that case they showed that just getting a sling snagged up in the pack was enough to cause a potential unclip situation in a fall. The sling just has to pass through the gate once.

Keep in mind when you clove the sling to the biner, the potential exists not only to weaken the sling, but to load the biner more toward the gate side, which is weaker than the spine.

Wow, talk about a solution in search of a problem.

Ted Pinson wrote:1) when you extend an alpine, there is a moment where the QuickDraw is fully off the sling and could theoretically be dropped,

Simply. Not. True. (I won't even try to understand how "the quickdraw is off the sling" makes any sense at all)

And if the OP's second concern is to be believed, well, let's just say that trad climbing is not for him.

Gunkiemike wrote:Wow, talk about a solution in search of a problem.

The reason I occasionally clove the rope-end 'biner is so that the DMM roller will actually stay in contact with the rope and not flip over.
I decided that the rubber band thingies were really no benefit to me.

Gunkiemike wrote:Wow, talk about a solution in search of a problem. .... if the OP's second concern is to be believed, well, let's just say that trad climbing is not for him.

Dylan B. wrote:Not only is this a solution in search of a problem...

I mean... It may be a pretty rare problem, but I don't think OP is amiss to at least consider possible ways to prevent accidents like this: rockandice.com/lates-news/t…

EDIT: and here's a thread with some more anecdotes mountainproject.com/v/uncli…

Gunkiemike wrote:Wow, talk about a solution in search of a problem. Simply. Not. True. (I won't even try to understand how "the quickdraw is off the sling" makes any sense at all) And if the OP's second concern is to be believed, well, let's just say that trad climbing is not for him.

And yet, someone (and not a noob) died from the second concern.

I agree, it's a rare issue, and one that probably happens once in 10k falls or more. However, when it's a key piece and I'm at a stance, I'll either clove it or add another biner. Or whenever I have extra biners from my cams (I rack 2 cams per
biner up to #1 camalot) I use the extra biner on the rope end.

I think mitigation of possible (though unlikely) failure points when convenient is a good thing.

It's a bit like when I have two trees near where I plan to rappel. They are different sizes, but either would be sufficient if I only had one option, do I choose the smaller or the bigger? Obviously, unless you are saving anchor material you take the bigger tree. That's how I look at the rope end biner debate. Clove or second biner is the bigger tree.

I don't think we have any reason to believe that clove-hitching carabiners on full-length slings will do anything of significance to prevent the unclipping issues that have been in the news recently.

We don't know for sure how or why the rope comes out of carabiners. We do know three possible mechanisms, one is a turn of rope opening the gate, as can happen with back-clipping a sport draw. A second is gate bounce from the carabiner hitting the rock opening the gate. A third possibility is cross-loading of the gate. (I haven't listed "gate vibration," because, as I recall, it turned out to be an artifact of a testing protocol in which the falling weight rode on tracks.)

Of the three mechanisms, the only one that might be mitigated by binding the carabiner to the sling is the third one, cross-loading, and this is the one thing we know didn't happen in the recent incidents, because none of the gates were observed to be blown outwards afterwards. As for the other two mechanisms, there is as much reason to believe that binding the carabiner could increase their likelihood as decrease it.

Binding the carabiner makes clipping it slightly easier and might possibly prevent cross-loading, although it seems exceptionally unlikely that an unbound carabiner could possibly stay in the crossload position when loaded. And that's about it. I think binding a carabiner with a clove hitch is a bad idea, because if the clove hitch loosens slightly, it could slide over the gate and then you would have a cross-loading incident for sure.

If you are concerned about unclipping, you either need to double the carabiners or use lockers. I always carry three or four superlight lockers to use on long slings that I think are critical. More and more people are setting up a quickdraw or two with lightweight lockers on both ends for mission-critical placements. I think these steps make more sense than trying to fix an ordinary carabiner to the end of a long sling.

Gunkiemike wrote:Wow, talk about a solution in search of a problem.

Exactly. Beginning and intermediate climbers shouldn't attempt to reinvent what we do. Trad draws don't need any 'improvements' and even if they did those improvements would have happened decades ago. If you want more 'security' then follow rgold's advice above.

Its a good thought man. Shit happens, you will drop gear. There is a lot that can go wrong while climbing and honestly dropping gear should be one of the least of your worries (other than your ATC, not cool).

metoliusclimbing.com/rabbit…
If you're really worried about it, you can always buy these and triple them up.

Actually these metoliusclimbing.com/long_d… would be better than tripling rabbit runners, which are kinda wide.

Unfortunately, Metolius doesn't sell the long runers without carabiners.

one benefit of long draws is that there is little risk of them unclipping their strands when they are on yr harness

more than once ive went to extend a skinny sling, pulled on it and the sling came off from one of the biners because it unclipped a strand when it was jiggling on the harness ...

now folks may say "so what" ... but when yr on a pumpy placement, that extra bit of time to fix it can cost you ...

if one does choose to use a clove on an extended slings tail end ... it would take two strands to unclip for failure, not any one single strand ... you can also use the extra turn of the sling around the biner (as pictured earlier)

the downside is of course that if you carry em this way the bottom biner is fixed

if one is really worried and the sling can simply not fail, simply put in a second opposed sling and biners ...

biners break, even locker, slings get cut

;)

rgold wrote:Actually these metoliusclimbing.com/long_d… would be better than tripling rabbit runners, which are kinda wide. Unfortunately, Metolius doesn't sell the long runers without carabiners.

Oops, yes that is what I meant to link. Thanks.