Wired

Seeing as it’s a new century let me kick it off by trying to blow away some old ideas and help speed up a mini revolution: the wiregate carabiner. If you’re not convinced by the end of this article then maybe you’re climbing’s answer to Buck Rogers.

COLA TRADE SHOW 1995
At first I thought it was a joke. A paper-clip-gated carabiner? Surely someone was pulling my leg. But no, there it was, pinned to a board on the Black Diamond stand: the Hotwire. Dick Turnbull turned it over in his fingers, telling me how Mark Vallance at Wild Country had made one almost identical ten years earlier, but binned the idea because he couldn’t imagine climbers getting their heads around it. I had a quick play with it. No wonder it was binned—how was this thing going to be better than a conventional carabiner? It was light, granted, but who would dare use such a strange contraption? I put it back on the board and made a mental note to buy one anyway and give it a try.

WHY ARE WIREGATE CARABINERS SO STRONG?

Wiregates are stronger because their stainless steel sprung gate significantly exceeds the strength of an aluminium gate, which is the weak point in any carabiner. The stainless wire is actually the strongest part of the unit, with the aluminium body failing before the gate—closed, open, or minor axis—and in every test the wire gives a higher result than a conventional solid gate. Many old-school solid carabiners that have been converted to wiregates (Wild Country Wild Wire, BD Quickwire) are actually stronger than their solid-gate cousins, although they carry the same rated strengths because it’s too expensive to redesign the body.

The key strength difference lies in the reduction of gate-whiplash in a fall. Any modern carabiner with the gate closed is virtually unbreakable unless it’s loaded over an edge or damaged. Generally carabiners break when a high impact force coincides with an open gate. All modern carabiners must have an open-gate strength in excess of 7kN, which is usually enough to hold a fall, especially with half ropes and good fall factors. But failures still occur. This is caused by the spine striking the rock in a fall, forcing the gate open; the greater the gate’s mass, the longer it stays open. The low mass of a wiregate makes it far less susceptible to this effect.

FRENDO SPUR, JANUARY 1996
God it was cold. Contact lenses freezing, enamel cracking, bone-aching cold. I’d never lost so much gear on a route. On average we dropped one piece for every hundred feet gained—and the Frendo is 3,300 feet high. The problem wasn’t incompetence but cold. The carabiners just stopped working. You’d place a wire, clip the crab back onto your harness, then watch it fall off seconds later as the frozen-open gate rattled off your gear loop. In the end the only crabs that kept working were the half dozen Hotwires I’d brought on a whim. They proved far superior to my Macros, Tru-Clips and Hi-Lights, slowly migrating from the back of the rack to the front—which wasn’t far, as most of the rack went from the top of the route to the bottom.

REAL OR IMAGINED DRAWBACKS?

Many climbers worry that if a wiregate is loaded on its minor axis the rope will be cut by the wire. Tests on 10mm rope showed that because the wire is smooth and continuous, no damage occurred until loads exceeded 11.5kN, after which results were the same as solid-gate carabiners. Any cross-loading is dangerous, and all modern designs try to limit this. In my experience rope damage occurs more often with conventional carabiners, especially those with unshrouded gates. Another drawback of solid gates is the spring popping out and stripping the rope sheath. People should probably think more about the safety of the carabiners they’re already using.

The wiregate takes a little getting used to, but once mastered offers a bigger usable gate opening than a bent gate and less chance of the rope unclipping. Because wiregates often replace both rope and gear ends of a quickdraw, it’s sensible to mark them so damaged carabiners aren’t used for the rope. Wild Country solved this by colouring Wild Wires red for rope and blue for bolts.

LEFT UNCONQUERABLE, STANAGE 1997
Maybe the holds were damp from a brief shower, maybe I was tired from work, but I shouldn’t have fallen. Up the intro crack, into the layback flake, feet on smears. I skipped the cam, stuffed in a Hex, clipped it, climbed to the crux. Below I placed a cam, clipped with a bent gate. Then, out of respect for the route, I placed another cam and clipped it with a wiregate. Left foot out, reach up…graaah! I found myself eye to eye with my belayer, both dangling five feet off the ground. The Hex slid down the rope and clanged into the belay plate. Both cams were still there, totally bomber—the only problem was the bent-gate carabiner was no longer attached to the rope. I climbed back up, replaced it with a wiregate, and carried on, this time with less bravado.

LIGHT IS RIGHT

The most obvious advantage of wiregates is weight. At 36–49g, they save 10–20g per carabiner. On a modern rack of wiregates, Rockcentrics, Dyneema slings and mini screwgates, you can save over a kilo. On some models like the BD Hotwire this saving is ploughed back into thicker, stronger high-load areas like the nose.

MOUSE TRAP, GOGARTH 1998
My distrust of bent gates and my lack of coordination near big drops meant my rack had quietly become all wiregates. Gearing up in the zawn I felt a bit embarrassed—Mousetrap is the sort of route where you may as well take everything. Arlie led off, initially wary of the wiregates, but soon preferred them, complaining the few solid gates were gunked up from sea-cliff abuse. At the top, removing my harness, I noticed something odd: the rack was all there, yet felt much lighter. Thirty wiregates instead of thirty solid gates had saved over half a kilo. Arlie looked bored. “£150 worth of biners to save half a kilo—wouldn’t it be cheaper to go on a diet?”

SIMPLE THINGS

The wiregate fulfils the best design ethic: it removes rather than adds. Just two components, body and gate. This simplicity makes it more resistant to dirt, ice and salt. Gates still need washing and oiling, but they function far longer before seizing. Concerns about long-term fatigue are largely unfounded with good designs—Black Diamond test gates to over 300,000 cycles without loss of spring, whereas aluminium gates often fail sooner due to body wear.

Wiregates are still bits of metal and can be trashed. When buying, check the gates aren’t too stiff, and retire any that get bent or unreliable. There’s now a huge range available—some excellent, some awful. Try a few and decide for yourself.

AURORA, EL CAP, 1999
Five years after owning my first wiregate I now carried over a hundred. On A5 every piece matters. A climber and rack can weigh over 18 stone; add a 200-foot fall on an 11mm rope and every component counts. I’d seen carabiners break. Even if the theory about reduced whiplash was techno nonsense, if it gave me confidence to move above horror placements that was enough. Death Expando, stacked RURPs, sloping hooks—plenty to keep me awake. I looked down at the line of wiregates, the thin steel almost invisible. God I hate it when that happens. The belay was ten feet away. I’d be there in less than an hour. Maybe.