New Petzl Express dogbones have apparent design flaw that resulted in failure

When I recently replaced my old dogbones with new Petzl Expresses(reusing original biners), I was concerned that the top loop was too tight. This would prevent the top biner from hanging nicely on the bolt while the rest of the draw did its dance.

Sure enough, yesterday we took them out for the first time, and I noticed while someone else climbed a warmup that one of them was getting caught on the gate of its top biner. Then, I went to take pictures of someone on a route that she had sent before. It has permadraws until the top where the variation she did had just bolts, with the crux being after the first one.

After clipping, she made a few moves and fell on our new dogbones for the very first time. When she came to rest, safely in space, she was on the permadraw with the quickdraw on her knot. The gate of the top biner was outside of the nose.

The cool thing is, I was taking pictures. The following are zoomed in:

where it should be

starting to move

moving...

moving........

2nd to last

Last image of bolt before fall

The Beta is to have your hip in the wall, so she pushed the draw up, like others had before. But the dogbone held that biner and seems to have placed it on the threaded bolt, where some crazy happened during the fall. My believe is that with a looser loop, this wouldn't have happened....

maybe not designed for that shape and style biner?

I have spirits in some of them, and they do the same thing.......

Glad noone got hurt
Dogbone design probably did play a role, but I also heard, you should hang the draws with the gates facing the opposite direction of where you are going for this exact reason. I've never seen any actual cases of incorrectly oriented draws unclipping up to now, so thanks for posting these pictures.

Vanya Perevozov wrote:Glad noone got hurt Dogbone design probably did play a role, but I also heard, you should hang the draws with the gates facing the opposite direction of where you are going for this exact reason. I've never seen any actual cases of incorrectly oriented draws unclipping up to now, so thanks for posting these pictures.

yeah i was taught that the rope should run in the direction of the spine for this reason.

This is a joke right? The knot is literally inside the bottom biner (and tensioned, I am sure of it). The biner/draw combo looks terrible. The draw is apparently clipped the wrong way. Move this thread over to the trad climbing forum and watch the hilarity ensue.

Tom Sherman wrote:This is a joke right? The knot is literally inside the bottom biner (and tensioned, I am sure of it). The biner/draw combo looks terrible. The draw is apparently clipped the wrong way. Move this thread over to the trad climbing forum and watch the hilarity ensue.

your right thats why the biner is lifted off the bolt the knot is caught on the bottom biner.

This is why I don't post things to MP very often, there are folks that will find issues with a Labrador puppy.

One of the purposes of a quickdraw is to insulate the motion of the rope from the biner attached to the bolt, so that it hangs on the hanger. When you hold these draws by the middle, both biners stay fixed as if it was a very light dumbell. That constitutes a very large difference between them and all quick draws I've been using while sport and trad climbing for the last 20 years.

In that time I and I've considered direction of travel more important when deciding how to clip. For example, what do YOU do when going right? I for one clip to the left like the photos. I suspect I am not alone in considering it 6 of one/HDOTO when going straight up.

And it should be, I mean, I literally have photos of a draw lifting a biner out of alignment. My old dogbones would never have done that.

Sorry I didn't mean to come off like an attack dog. But with the thread titled "X-Product has apparent design flaw" it just seemed like another one of these get a rise out of ppl posts.

Yes those draws do look too short/stiff, but I think that's why some like them.

(Not trying to hate here/ not saying this is what's going on)
If I was hang-dogging bolt to bolt I would be extremely careful the first few moves away from the bolt. If your line is tight there, any movement of your hips will strongly impact the draw.

Yes, the spine should face the direction of travel, but how do any of you know which way that is from these pictures? You're seeing a blow up of a couple feet of the route. For all we know the route goes up and right form the bolt right after this move. The upper carabiner should be loose. Period. If it isn't then that carabiner doesn't belong on that draw. If no carabiner fits the dogbone, it a shitty dogbone. You, yourself, said you were concerned that your upper carabiner was too tight. You probably should have been more concerned and not used that dogbone/carabiner combo.

What are the carabiners being used in these Spirit dogbones?

Tom Sherman wrote:This is a joke right? The knot is literally inside the bottom biner (and tensioned, I am sure of it). The biner/draw combo looks terrible. The draw is apparently clipped the wrong way. Move this thread over to the trad climbing forum and watch the hilarity ensue.

In addition, I noticed that with the hip turned in I wonder how much of the issue is with the thigh pushing the knot, biner, quick draw. I have often started a sequence and have had something similar, that is the sequence is going to move the gear into an unwanted position. When possible, I redo the gear or rearrange the rope. So the problem could have been averted with a simple bit of moving the biner away from the knot.

That said if the draw does not sit on the biner like you want that does not necessarily mean there is a design flaw, your biners may not be the correct biners for that draw. Have you tried them with other biners??

Thats one of the disadvantages of a thick stiff draw ... And why in some respects a sling or skinny dyneema draw may in some ways be "safer" (those have their own issues of course)

While thick draws are great for handogging ... They have less play due to the stiffness

When it is a "cant fail" placement using a second opposed draw guarantees the placement wont fail because of the biner

Thats all there is to it

Also this basically happens on bolted climbs, with a glue in it likely wouldnt be an issue ... Theres no protrusion for the biner to catch on

;)

csproul wrote: You, yourself, said you were concerned that your upper carabiner was too tight. You probably should have been more concerned and not used that dogbone/carabiner combo. What are the carabiners being used in these Spirit dogbones?

You are right, I should have held off. However,
1: I'd never actually have it happen to me
2: My draws with spirits on them acted the same way
3: What the hell do I know, I grew up thinking Petzl thought things through....there must be a reason, etc.

Bottom line: when one flips though the photos, the top biner and dogbone move together as if it were upside down. That ain't right.

Oh, Wild Country Heliums

"New Petzl Express dogbones have apparent design flaw that resulted in failure" seems a little sensational.

From my experience it takes a bit of a breaking in period. After a few climbs/a little abuse the loop on the dogbone loosens up. I've shared your concerns, though. As others have said, clipping with the gate facing away from the direction of climb would probably have mitigated this problem.

Bad bolt design… Should have been a button head…

I don't have any new spirit dogbones, but I have plenty of the old ones with Spirit carabines and with other carabiners. The top biner is very loose on all of mine. Did they change the size of the upper hole that much? Incidentally, I also have a bunch of WC helium draws and the upper biner is also loose on all of those too.

So I know the spine should ideally follow the route up but I have been told and seen in practice that with this style of hanger there is only one best way to clip into it without potentially cross loading the bolt side carabiner, which is the way it is clipped in the photo correct?

Interesting! Glad nobody got hurt. I'm surprised Petzl manufactures them that tight--I do think of Petzl as much better sorted than a lot of gear companies. It looks like the I-beam spine was a big contributor in that particular sequence--would never have thought of that potential biner design issue myself.

When squished flat, my old draw's top loop is 46mm long. The new one is 31mm, so about 2/3rds of the original size. I said earlier that my spirits are a tight fit too, but they on closer inspection are a little better than the Heliums. They are however still snug, and not what I'm used to with the old ones, where I would simply put any keylocks on top and wire gates on the bottom and that was that. It simply didn't occur to me after all these years that I had to treat my gear like a car that took only premium fuel. Gear should be versatile.

As far as direction, properly working draws had been making us complacent about that. And to be fair it wasn't a "critical" placement anyway, and there wasn't the intention to go very far above it. But in the future we intend to pay more attention. I replaced them after all, in an effort to be safer, so best to learn what one can......which is why I posted it.

Bearbreeder, it depends on the glue in. I belayed a climber whose bolt-side biner came unclipped from a fat Rumney glue in that had not been countersunk. He was seriously injured. Newer Ti glueins probably don't have this issue.