ALERT: Bad fixed pitons

It has been brought to my attention that another Austrialpin knifeblade has broken under very little weight. In fact, it broke off when it was being clipped. There have been two incidents where these pitons are cracked and pull out. It is impossible to see if one is cracked. The recent one that broke was only in the rock a couple of years. The first one that broke was in the rock only one winter. Unfortunately, I have used these pins on various new routes including Ad Astra Per Aspera. As always, be cautious with fixed pins, especially these pieces of junk. I will make an effort to go back to Ad Astra Per Aspera and remove these and place better protection. There are a few other people that have fixed these. We will try to remember where and post the routes here. We will also try to remove them. I apologize for this junk, as I thought they were high quality pins.

tda

Here are photos of the pins.

Thanks for keeping up with this and going to the effort and expense to replace them. I appreciate your efforts and can donate a few BD pins if that will help with the expense.

Interesting. Good to know their pins are suspect. I wonder about their other gear . . . freaky that they'd break.