Mystery Solving when Manual � Does NOT Help

So.

Which way is correct?

This way or

this way?

Long answer short,

it doesn't matter.

Now if somebody wants to argue with you

you can send this video.

However, if you'are wondering

why my carabiner is a little broken here

or you are that person who wants to argue.

Let me entertain you.

There is a boy oh boy

that was not that easy to figure out.

What happened?

Well, the rope is still here.

The GriGri's still here.

Oh

my

God.

Now a bit of context for those who don't

understand what's the big deal about this.

This is Black Diamond Gridlock,

it's a belay carabiner.

And we have a lot of similar

carabiners already on the market,

like this one for example.

And these carabiners usually have

a little loop at the bottom,

which you clip your harness to

and it prevents the carabiner

from twisting in

some less than optimal orientation

and cross-loading it.

Now I have a bunch of these

belay carabiners and on all of them

you clip your harness to the smaller loop

while you clip your belay device

to the bigger loop.

However with Black Diamond GridLock

you will see people clipping GriGri

to the smaller loop.

So, why is that?

Well, first of all
the manual is really confussing

It shows tube style device
connected to the bigger loop

It shows GriGri connected
to the smaller loop

And then it has a warning
if you crossload the device

But it's a warning it's not a skull

It's not a big no-no

So the question is:

Is it okay to connect GriGri
to the bigger loop?

So, to unravel this mystery

I thought the best is actually

to write to Black Diamond
and ask them to give us recommendations

And I got the response.
This is a question for Petzl

They recommended GriGri to be connected
at the small loop of the carabiner

and then they sent me a link to petzl

website which kinda doesn't make any

sense i was like

there is no way petzl would put a

competitor product on their website and

talk about how to use it well i went to

that link of course there was nothing

and just in case i decided to write to

petal

and the answer was petal does not

specify if grigri should be attached to

upper or lower basket they also included

that we should be aware of pear-shaped

carabiners because they have a tendency

to rotate and become poorly positioned

which means that pear-shaped carabiners

like this one connected to grigri are

more likely to cross-load during the

laying compared to d-shaped carabiners

they kind of don't let the grigri to go

to that side that easily which i can

confirm from my own experience so good

to know but it doesn't solve our black

diamond gridlock mystery so i went back

to talk to black diamond and this time

the response was as you can see we do

not specifically recommend against a

grigri loaded into a larger loop as

there is no safety issues in doing so

so

it seems that there is no official

no no no to do this but

where is all of this confusion coming

from then well let me say that this

carabiner is really really old design i

found an article dating like 10 years

ago which pointed to an issue of doing

this where in case of the crossload the

grigri can get jammed so since i wanted

to go deeper into this story i reached

out to my friend ryan from youtube

channel how not to to help me to

investigate it here is a black diamond

gridlock screw gate carabiner and a cool

feature about this is if you put it on a

belay loop

you open that gate one more time and it

keeps it in the back of the carabiner

but ironically if you put the grigri on

there

and you lock it then if your climber

goes slack for a little bit

and then loads it

oh no

it's cross-loaded ironically

and it's actually cross-loaded pretty

badly

so we're going to test this to see how

bad it really is an interesting side

note is if you put the carabiner facing

the other way

and so the black plate is towards the

back

it actually does not get stuck in any

circumstance

few things to note if you take any other

belay carabiner

properly designed it is impossible to

make your belay device jam in this way

it always

slides out

on load and second thing even if you

manage to cross load this carabiner it

should still hold up to seven

kilonewtons of force and from my testing

i've never seen forces higher than two

kilonewtons to the blair on really

really hard falls so it's more than

three times safety ratio however if you

get your grigri jumped in here the

grigri is being twisted as it wants to

go back in its normal position so i'm

not sure if grigri is gonna like that

let's find out

[Music]

oh that's stuck some real stuck stuff

right here for science

oh

okay let's try it again

oh wow see it's separating a plate right

there

well that's not good for the gravy

[Music]

so the rope is slipping around three and

that's usually pretty common the plate

is definitely

it's looser see if we can make this fail

[Music]

what happened

well the rope is still here

the grigri's still here

oh

my

god

that's a very interesting result

oh that's gold

wow

huh you tell me this carabiner

still functions it even looks

i mean it's scraped up a little bit but

wow

wow

so just jacks the plates apart

at seven kilonewtons if it's not

slipping at five or two and a half

oh wow

but that was the journey we just went on

so although in real life scenarios it's

really hard to generate forces anywhere

close to that however grigri started

suffering at around five kilonewtons or

maybe even less it didn't really like

that

twisting action so take this as a

warning and this mystery doesn't end

here because we received this picture

from the follower of us and he was

replying down gets a few meters down

uh

readjusts on the rope on the wall and we

hear this loud

ping and like uh he bumps down

a small piece of metal comes flying off

the wall which landed close to us so we

found it and when you got down to the

bottom you can see that the nose is

broken off in the caribbean defense even

though the nose did explode

um still functional

there's a pin and there's a gate

it's not

he didn't fall to his death so i mean he

had a backup on anyway are you still

using it

no definitely not

no

you just like shred your below loop or

something it's just like super sharp on

the inside edge how hard do you think

the load was no

he was there any slack in the system or

no not really dude weighs about

80 75 maybe kilos we were repelling it

was a dynamic rope he was rappelling on

i can imagine it could be two things i

thought initially it was probably what

you suggested

um which is

that i think so since the forces were

really low on this incident it raises a

lot of questions the first theory we had

was that maybe grigri was twisting

against that little nose and broke it

however from ryan experiments as you saw

it's probably really unlikely so another

potential cause could have been improper

loading of the carabiner on the harness

the gridlock is supposed to look like

this with the belay loop in the back of

the carabiner but if you don't put it

back there and it's not locked

it's not a problem

but if it is locked we'll find out

how much of a problem that really is

[Music]

let me make sure i see what happened

first

oh it jumped

oh

it jumped god damn it so since ryan ran

out of black diamond carabiners to break

welcome to my testing lab

where my setup is an actual harness with

very thick belay loop i'm hoping that

it's not gonna slip

through the nose like in ryan's case and

since i don't have a fancy machine to

break things i'm gonna drop weights

and for those who worry about my safety

constantly

i don't even know how to put this on

that was

2.4 kilonewtons and it slipped through

the interesting part that this gap is

super super tiny

compared to all of this belay loop maybe

this part of metal also flexes a little

bit so now i'm gonna put the thickest

part of the harness on the nose

let's see what happens

[Music]

hmm

well let's try again okay

i'm trying

something else this time

to see how this will go

i think i broke it

yep i broke the nose i felt it shot into

my

nipple

[Music]

this part is so so

sharp and your belay loop is falling

through this super sharp edge

i think i wrecked my harness a little

bit

and after analyzing the forces you can

see that the pin broke around here

around one and a half kilonewtons only

and then the peak of the force was when

the harness hit the bottom of the

carabiner so if you load this carabiner

incorrectly this little piece is not

hard to break and it leaves a very very

sharp edge which goes over your belay

loop

now the story doesn't end here

we test it on another belay device to

see what happens

[Music]

oh damn

okay 12.6 kilometers it smells like gun

powder right now

it broke

my blade of ice

that's crazy and this thing was super

strong in our belay device brake test

video

it was twerking on the

the two lobes i think

wow

all right so we broke a bunch of

carabiners and belaying devices

and i kind of had to find another

gridlock to make this outro so this is a

little future me so back to original

question is it okay to do this where the

grigri is connected to the bigger loop

well if you want a little bit safer

you can clip the carabiner other way

around

and as ryan discovered this is less

likely to get jammed in here however

it's a little bit more complicated to

clip everything this way if you're

right-handed so for left-handed people

this is probably even better now if you

want the safest option of course you can

clip the grigri to the smaller loop

however it's such a big journey to do

that but i'm really not a fan of this

who came up if i did to wiggle it in

there in that small loop and then do all

of this shenanigan so i kind of think

that black diamond could have improved a

thing or two in this design but it was

really fun to collaborate

with ryan and push this carabiner to its

limits so if you want to see more videos

like that consider supporting us

or just write a comment for the

algorithm that helps a lot as well

and enjoy climbing

safe here