Gear failure

4 yr old yellow alien, takin 2 or 3 low factor falls , failed upon body weight

Any info on how it was placed? It looks like you had it tipped out and unbrella'd the cam.

Tipped out placement umbrella failure? They aren't camalots, but I still climb with failiens...

I'd need to ask my buddy .. He was the hangdogger... Maybe its the trad gods punishment for that ... So keep that in mind next time your at the crux between going for it or hanging ..

Bad placement, your fault.

Ray Pinpillage wrote:Bad placement, your fault.

How can you POSSIBLY tell that from one picture and act like you are 100% sure thats the case?

BSheriden wrote: How can you POSSIBLY tell that from one picture and act like you are 100% sure thats the case?

I don't think it was placed bad, because my buddy said it was a good placement.. He's been climbing for 40 yrs. he must know what a bad placement is... So .. Next

Ray Pinpillage wrote:Bad placement, your fault.

Are you a police officer or such? I think that cause you sound like one.. Please no offence .. Cops are cool sometimes

Holyshootdude wrote: I don't think it was placed bad, because my buddy said it was a good placement.. He's been climbing for 40 yrs. he must know what a bad placement is... So .. Next

Why did you quote me?

The placement was good .. It was body weight .. It not like if one takes a fall and the placement was good ... And now we can assume that it walk.. It possible... In this case the climber hung on it, and if he with 40 yrs of pushing climbing and still going at it ... Now I'm getting of topic... Just try to believe the cam was good and failed or I wouldn't of posted this ... I broke a blue aliens new style but the fall was pretty high factor .. So of course the forces exited the rating of the cam.. I don't know ... I think of starting to climb with masrecams or bd .. Anyone have preference on small gear.. I loved aliens but now I change

Sure looks like a tipped out cam placement to me: the trigger wires are broken and the cam lobes have gone inverted. Or perhaps it was placed behind an expanding flake, same thing mostly. It's clear from the lobes that the piece is in newish condition.

But, if your partner has 40 years of experience, he should be able to tell you how the cam failed.

OP's post if it was a car.

4 yr old Focus, braked hard a few times, crash yesterday.

DON'T BUY A FOCUS GUYZZZ!!!!!111!!

ie way top little info, and too quick of a conclusion.

the only piece that has failed me in all my years of climbing was a red alien about 8 years ago ... remember the little alien heads on the fabric.. it blew out on a small wipper.

NorCalNomad wrote:OP's post if it was a car. 4 yr old Focus, braked hard a few times, crash yesterday. DON'T BUY A FOCUS GUYZZZ!!!!!111!! ie way top little info, and too quick of a conclusion.

That's not the point... Just wanting to inform.. Don't put words in my mouth... San Francisco

BSheriden wrote: How can you POSSIBLY tell that from one picture and act like you are 100% sure thats the case?

OK, fine. Let's give him the benefit of doubt and call it bad rock. Either way the failure is from loading a cam outside of its range.

How exactly did this "fail"? If it was in a good placement and the trigger wire spontaneously broke, it still wouldn't invert and pull out that. A cam does not need the trigger wire/spring to hold in place with body weight. The only thing broken on that is the trigger wire. So either the trigger wire "failed", in which case it wouldn't have ripped out of a good placement, or the cam became inverted, and ripped out and broke the trigger wire in the process.

See my post in the accidents forum about a recent Moore's wall ground-fall. Same thing happened. The climber (who was also experienced) placed an alien under a flake where it could open up past the lip of the crack. He took body weight on it, it inverted, broke the trigger wires, and pulled out, leading to a ground fall. The cam looked just like this one in the end.

csproul wrote:How exactly did this "fail"? If it was in a good placement and the trigger wire spontaneously broke, it still wouldn't invert and pull out that. A cam does not need the trigger wire/spring to hold in place with body weight. The only thing broken on that is the trigger wire. So either the trigger wire "failed", in which case it wouldn't have ripped out of a good placement, or the cam became inverted, and ripped out and broke the trigger wire in the process. See my post in the accidents forum about a recent Moore's wall ground-fall. Same thing happened. The climber (who was also experienced) placed an alien under a flake where it could open up past the lip of the crack. He took body weight on it, it inverted, broke the trigger wires, and pulled out, leasing to a ground fall. The cam looked just like this one in the end.

Yup, exactly. This is what you would expect to see from putting weight on a severely tipped out alien. The tell-tale sign is the broken trigger wires. In a well-placed piece, the trigger wires don't have any weight on them. The fact that they broke like that means with near certainty that piece umbrellad. Aliens (and most (all?) other small cams) don't have cam stops to prevent this from occurring.

In short, the only "failure" here is in the placement. Neat pic of what happens in a severely tipped-out placement, though

Put in another way: all of the LOAD-BEARING elements of this cam are totally intact and pristine. If you were able to orient all the cams back into place correctly and get it into a crack...and assuming that the quality control was done correctly at the factory...the device pictured would still be full strength in good rock. The broken stuff shown here was never intended to hold more than about 20 pounds of load.

If, as you say, "the placement was good" and the rock is intact, the only way for the cam to get out of the rock would be by destroying either the stem cable or the cams, and those both look fine. So either the rock blew or the cam was too small for the placement and it "umbrella'd". In other words, the placement CAN'T have been good, because the trigger cables CAN'T be loaded in a good placement.

I don't mean to give you a hard time here, so I'm sorry if it's coming off that way, but your life depends on being able to assess a solid placement, and a cam that blows out under body weight and destroys the trigger cables while leaving the cams and stem in perfect condition was never a good placement, just my $0.02.

its a small cam ... they can fail whether by being blown apart (read the latest in the gear review thread) ... or placed improperly, or it walked slightly

ive blown apart 3 small cams in the past 2 years ... and have had several pull in what looked like good placements on solid squamish granite ... take enough whippers and youll pull or blow out small cams eventually ...

the reality is that if youre onsighting pumpy climbs right at your limit ... there will be times youll end up with less than optimal placments due to the pump/rock ... which is where you need to make the split second decision of whether to take the whipper, or hangdog, or place another piece (not always possible) ...

if yr repeatedly whipping and hangdogging on gear, make sure to reinspect it after every fall ... and back it up with another good piece

and put a draw on yr pieces whenever practical ...

i trust a small nut over a small cam anyday

gear pulls, gear blows apart, rock fails, you make less than optimum placements at your limit (but all MPers make perfect intraweb placements =P) ... the more you whip the more youll encounter it

deal and plan for it

;)

An alarmist and inaccurate title to thread. The same piece has held falls but couldn't support a slump? This is NOT gear failure. Bad placement, plain and simple. 4 days or 40 years, judgement isn't infallible.

So Holyshootdude it looks like you have learned your lesson on hear. I could be wrong, but no one who has commented is a climbing gear inventor or engineer. Most of the comments on hear are anecdotal. Some of them probably have some truth. The best way your are going to get answers is to have your friend who failed it write up a detailed summary of what happened and send it off to Fixe so they can analyse it and recreate the event. They are the experts with that cam and will probably be able to give you the best answer I hope. So save yourself the frustration in the future if you really want the truth and go to the people who have the experience and resources to find the truth. Good Luck!

Matt King