• Back to Gear Log
  • Home
  • Up
  • Photos
  • Guestbook

Climbing Gear Log

Black Diamond gear

  • Black Diamond Stoppers (Nuts)
    Excellent nuts. These things are just easy to place in most cases, and I like the fact that they are tapered like offset nuts for transverse placements. I have 21 of these.
    (I have owned 29.)
  • Black Diamond Camalots (Cams)
    A standard for most climbers. Nothing feels better than placing a solid #2 camalot. I have 2 of these.
  • Black Diamond C4 Camalots (Cams)
    The newer model of camalots. These are noticeably lighter (especially in the larger sizes) and I love the cable loop at the end and the way the sling is stitched to stay in place. It's like they took every possible complaint one could have made about camalots and corrected them all. I have 5 of these.
  • Black Diamond ovals (Biners)
    I have 2 of these.
  • Black Diamond Quicksilver bent-gates (Biners)
    I have 2 of these.
  • Black Diamond Hotwires (Biners)
    I have 2 of these.
  • Black Diamond OvalWires (Biners)
    I have 3 of these.
  • Black Diamond Enduro straight-gates (Biners)
    I have none of these.
    (I have owned 2.)
  • Black Diamond Enduro bent-gate (Biner)
    I have none of these.
    (I have owned one.)
  • Black Diamond Enduro screwgate (Locker)
    I have one of these.
  • Black Diamond Positron screwgates (Lockers)
    I have 3 of these.
  • Black Diamond nylon slings (Slings)
    I have one of these.
    (I have owned 2.)
  • Black Diamond Spectra daisy chain (Daisy chain)
    I have one of these.
  • Black Diamond etriers (Etriers)
    I have 2 of these.
  • Black Diamond fifi hooks (Fifi hooks)
    I have one of these.
    (I have owned 2.)
  • Black Diamond Cliffhangers (Hooks)
    I have 2 of these.
  • Black Diamond Grappling Hook (Hook)
    I have one of these.
  • Black Diamond Talon (Hook)
    I have one of these.
  • Black Diamond Rotor (Hauling swivel)
    I have one of these.
  • Black Diamond ATC Guide (Belay device)
    I was fairly excited when this first came out, as it sounded like a better version of a Reverso, and one that would work well on both standard-size ropes and skinny half/twin ropes. However, I have a few gripes with it now that I've owned it and used it for a while. The first is its weight: just like the ATC XP from which it was derived, this thing seems way heavier than it needs to be. I guess the upside to this is, with its extra thick aluminum, it should last through years of heavy use, whereas some other aluminum belay devices apparently will start to wear and develop sharp edges after much heavy use. My other gripe is that, while the autoblock mode works wonderfully with skinny half/twin ropes, it's a huge pain to use with a pair of thicker ropes. There's way too much friction. I've only ever used it this way a few times, but on those few occasions I was wishing I had a good old Reverso. Since I bought this, the newer Reverso 3 and the Kong Ghost have come on the market (not to mention a few others), which are lighter and look a little less clunky than this device. But I've heard that at least the Reverso 3 isn't much better with a pair of standard-size ropes in autoblock mode, and that under heavy use its thinner metal still has the sharp-edges problem of the old Reverso. So perhaps there still is no single device out there that really does it all. I have one of these.
Site created by Will Conley
Last updated: Sun, 13 Sep 2015 01:06:22 PDT