I have been following this from the get-go, and have not seen any such tests. Jim may or may not be planning to do so in his next round, (he's excited, Sterling's building him a new tower!) but I won't speak for him.

GO

"But remember that his tests were confined to two-point anchors"

You mean to tell me that all this nonsense has come about based on tests done on cordelettes on a 2 point anchor system? Now that is insane.

The tests That RG posted have been around a long time along with several others you could find on various sites stating various rigging/cord strengths and the test criteria to boot. Old news.

Climer

Has anyone been playing further with the ACR system that paulraphael suggested? I've got a trip to Yosemite coming up, and some time to play with this system and get fast at deploying it between now and then.

Before investing the time, however, I'd be eager to hear whether further use or testing by anyone has turned up anything new. (Paul, have you been continuing to use the system at the gunks and/or elsewhere? If so, how has it seemed?)

I used it as an anchor for solo-aiding a route a few weeks ago - liked it alot. It'll probably find its way onto my harness for the rest of the year....

Irish

paul used it out in the wind rivers a few weeks ago. and they're still alive...;)

yeah, chris and i used it all week at the cirque of the towers. sadly, no factor 2 falls to report on, but it was fast and easy every time we used it. including vertical cracks which we don't see much of at the gunks.

we actually used it less often in the mountains than at the cliffs ... about half the time at the cirque the terrain was easy enough that we just threw slings over rock horns and kept moving. but we used the acr almost every time we built gear anchors.

still no drop tests, formal or informal. but on a related note chris did a drop test on my green death alien last week, with no other pieces between him and the ground, and somehow lived to tell about it.

Thanks for the replies. Maybe I'll put one together and start playing with it a bit.

cool. let us know what you think.

now i just joined this thread and have not read all 7 pages. BUT from what i see in the above photos is that this seems to look good if a single piece breaks. BUT if the red dyneema sling is cut then bye bye climber! this seems to be a terrible set up just for that reason. why have 3 pieces fo gear and then basically hook it to have it rely on one sling? that is the same as using one piece IMO!

eddie

Eddie, a couple of answers to that. first, we know from history that the chances of one or two hand-placed pieces blowing are very good. the chance of the rigging material in an anchor getting cut is very very low. I've only heard of one case of this happening, and it was due to a disasterously constructed 2-piece anchor, which forced the sling to slice across a long arc of sharp rock when one of the two pieces blew. it's such low probability for webbing or cord in a normally built anchor to fail, that it's wasted attention to put too many resources into backing that up.

however, you can backup such an anchor easily by tying a backup knot with the rope onto your strongest piece. it takes just a few seconds.

my reservations about Alpine Equalizer-type contraptions is about versatility. i'm sure they work well, but i don't want to have to buy and carry a specialized gizmo that's really only designed to handle 3-piece anchors. I think Richard's invention that you show in that picture is a definite improvement on the original trango product, which has greater limitations.