Rappel/Rigging Rings for your Master Point

Closely tied to the trending girth-hitch and clove-hitch master point "carabiner" anchor systems I'm suggesting that using closed "rigging" rings in this anchor is a better option for a few reasons. While you could tie a clove-hitch on a closed ring it is much simper and faster to use the girth-hitch option. There are other benefits and a few different models that might work for you. I share some comparisons of them and thoughts in this post:

https://northeastalpinestart.com/2021/09/24/tech-tip-rappel-rigging-rings-as-master-points/

If the goal of this post is to get traffic to your website, then good on ya. No judgement here.

I’ll provide my opinion, in the event that it might benefit someone looking to optimize their gear choices for climbing.

It seems clear to me that bringing a rap ring for master points is just totally unnecessary. In fact, bringing a rap ring at all is totally unnecessary 95% of the time.

1. A closed rigging ring can’t be accidentally opened or left unlocked. Forgetting to lock your masterpoint locker is just totally unacceptable. There’s just no reason to bring a specific piece of gear to remedy something that should never ever happen. At least two human lives rely on that one point. Take another .5 seconds to look at it.
2. Using a rigging ring means you save a locking carabiner in the anchor construction. Or, instead of bringing a rap ring, you could just bring another locker with you, which can serve so many other purposes for the other 90% of your climbing day.
3. Adding a rigging ring to your regular kit means you will have one to leave behind should bailing be necessary (they are all cheaper than most locking carabiners). First things first, you don’t need a rap ring or a locker to bail off of a fixed point. Sacrifice some cord and pass the rope through the cord. Climbers have been doing this for over a century. If you feel like you need to pass the rope through something metal to reduce friction, leave whatever carabiner gives you that warm fuzzy feeling, locker or otherwise. You’ll get way more use out of that one carabiner for the other 99% of your climbing career that you’re not bailing off of something obscure. As far as price is concerned, I paid $7 for my mad rock super tech screw gates, which are lighter and more functional than the only usable sizes of rap rings in this review.
4. A rigging ring is “omnidirectional” so you do not need to worry about optimum loading, short axis loading, gate loading, etc. The fact of the matter is that you don’t need to worry about off axis loading with any lockers, anyway. (Look at Petzl’s testing for actual forces that actually occur in a real fall.) Let alone this specific application where the carabiner literally has a fixed orientation from the girth hitch.
5. In most cases a rigging ring is lighter than a locking carabiner. The only rings with enough space to actually be functional are the tiny rolled aluminum one (which this is a totally ridiculous application for); and the larger ones that are heavier than many lockers.

You lost credibility with the serious review of the tiny aluminum rap ring. Those things are crap, pretty sure there were some pull tests back on the Taco which showed they were garbage for anything but alpine rap stations. It seems like on one hand people need three PAS's just to sport climb, but then they want to put a non-redundant fuse at the master point of an anchor that will break first!

Except for the largest ring, everything else you show looks terrible with carabiners levering out at weird angles. 

Demetri V wrote:

If the goal of this post is to get traffic to your website, then good on ya. 

Ding ding ding!

How hard would it be to untie a loaded girth on a ring, vs a carabiner?

Anyone tried two non locker ovals, gates opposed with the girth hitch master point? Too small? Too hard to untie after loading?