Cracked Carabiners and Hacked Harnesses

Video of cimbing equipment failure points is fascinating—and a bit terrifying

Anybody who's spent time rock climbing or mountaineering knows that you first have to take a great big leap of faith. You trust that your equipment works—that, if used properly, the harnesses, biners, camalots, etc., should hold when placed under typical climbing duress.

But how do you truly know? You're basically hoping that the UIAA—the International Mountaineering and Climbing Federation—only puts their seal of approval after rigorous testing of each and every piece of protective gear. And they do, but it requires a lot of busted gear before they can do that. The video below shows UIAA testers pushing top-grade carabiners, harness, cams, pitons, and more to the exact point at which they shred.



It's comforting to know it takes that much force to crush items that could save your life, but at the same time, it's a bit terrifying. Remember: Until you learned better, bad movies like Vertical Limit and Cliffhanger made us believe equipment failure happened all the time. Luckily, that isn't really true, but seeing a harness get torn to threads and imagining someone attached to it makes my stomach swim a bit.

Via The Goat