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OmegaPacific biners - a word of warning 27-Sep-2005 At 1:51:56 PM ben wiessner

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So it seems that the outcome of this thread is that the OP 'biners are fine, and the initial incident of the rope getting shreaded was due to "operator error" on behalf of the belayer at the time. A happy ending eh!

However I'm not happy with that outcome - no doubt in part because I was the belayer at that initial incident!

While I don't claim to be an infallible belayer, it may be worth noting that at the time of the incident I was actually being assessed by a member of the indoor climbing centre to be deemed competent to belay a lead climber at their centre. He was observing me and he never saw the biner slip such that it was crossloaded, it must have happened just as the leader took his practice fall (indeed he agreed that I had shown adequate skills and I passed the belaying test!). Although cross loading is essentially the fault of the belayer, this incident demonstrates that it can happen so fast that it may not be noticed (let alone rectified) until damage has been done, even if there is more than one pair of eyes on the belaying.

I don't think the results of the study run by Omega should be paid much attention: the potential for bias is massive! Let's be a little objective here huh!??

That said, good on em for taking it seriously. But I won't be buying any of those biners :)