I'm with Chas on the C3 - Alien comparison; I think C3's win hands down for Gunks climbing, and I have "extensive experience" with both and, indeed, am still carrying Aliens on my rack as well as the C3's and have, on quite a few occasions now, been unable to place an Alien and then gotten a perfectly good C3 placement in the same spot.

The bottom line is all the features in the world aren't much use if you can't place the piece, and C3's narrow head goes all kinds of places Aliens (and certainly Zeros, which are way too wide in my opinion) won't go.

But speaking of features:

1. Alien "soft" aluminum. I doubt this is a benefit and, in fact, suspect it is a drawback. My guess is that the effect is to get Aliens to "stick" under low loads, but fail due to cam deformation at higher loads. Maybe good for hard aid (which is one of the reason the Yosemite guys like them) but not good for free-climbing pro.

2. Alien "range." First of all, I don't believe the range figures Julie quotes from CCH represent useful effective range. Eight millimeters for a green Alien sounds awfully high to me. Useful range is going to be half that (from about 10% to about 60% extended). In fact, pieces in that size really don't have a range; they need to be placed almost fully compressed. Such range as they have allows the cams to compensate for crack irregularities, and that's about it. Secondly, such additional range as Aliens may actually have come at the expense of holding power. Not sure this is a good trade-off, although perhaps the softer lobes can't handle the additional compressive forces of a smaller-range alternative anyway.

I do agree with Julie's observation about a size gap between yellow and red C3 which is just where the green Alien excels.

3. Flexible stems. Less leverage means less likelihood of rotation and that's a good thing for sure. It also means more potential difficulty in removing stuck cams, because the stem can buckle and so transmit little or no retracting force to the cams. Personally, I haven't had any problems in the Gunks or Red Rock with C3's rotating or walking. In the Gunks, one can often arrange for placements that restrict rotational motion. Combining this with full-length runners on potential rotators, jerk-setting the cam whenever the stance allows, and double ropes to keep rope angles as small as possible seems to have worked for me and my partners, but of course YMMV.

Basically, yeah. Seems like you're relying on the floppiness of the Alien stem and the possibly poor design decision of using soft metal in lieu of appropriate slinging and selection of placements that inhibit rotation. When you transfer the same technique and expectation to C3s, you perceive a greater propensity to rotate, so you blame the gear and design rather than skills.

As to experience with Aliens, I don't need dozens of pitches of climbing with them to identify those two aforementioned factors as the two primary reasons that I never bought Aliens. Actually, just playing with them in the shop was enough to convince me to defer purchase. Regarding the stiff stems on C3s, as an early adopter in the Gunks of the first production Friends and Metolius TCU's and the requisite learning about rotational and walking issues, it never even occurred to me that someone would see that as an issue.

See comments from Chas and RG.

Rich, I am also taking the range #s CCH provides with a grain of salt! Even despite that, I do feel the difference.

Good to hear that you've adjusted well to C3s. I guess - I just miss my green alien, and we've only had C3 since a few months now, so I'm still holding my breath on whether I'll be okay or not. I've come across a few spots that only C3s will fit, too, but ... waaah, want green alien, boo hoo.

But dude, you're still climbing on Aliens?

Yeah, still climbing with Aliens. I did have them tested (by CCH...!) Right now I have red, grey, yellow, green, and blue. I don't use them in mission-critical situations, but think of them more like fixed pins, which means I'll probably need something else nearby. There are equivalent sizes of course in C4's for the red, grey, and yellow, but their head width renders them ineffective for many Gunks placement options. The green is still useful, but sadly has to be treated with suspicion. The blue is just a small-size double and rarely gets used by itself.

I thought the red, yellow, and grey were going to be replaced by Mastercams, but now I think I'm gonna wait a bit until some of the uncertainty about them sorts itself out.

I commented on this upthread. I had a 'perfectly good, well slung C3 placement flop out of a vertical granite crack, first time I used one. Having run it out another 10ft through groundfall territory as a result while my partners watched in horror and without telling me, I swore I'd never go back. But this latest crop of issues with small gear sure does make one wonder. Aric, can you bust a few C3s so I have absolutely no alternatives left.. :-)

I'll bust whatever people send me, Ian...

At the moment there's a big pile of gear from Joseph Healey at RC/CC (bunch of hybrid Aliens, a Blue Mastercam, a Gold Linkcam and some other random stuff) and I figure a dozen or so Aliens headed my way, so there will certainly be another round of testing coming up using the new, UIAA max roughness fixture. Depending on what shows up when I've got a smattering of WC Zeros and RE Durangos I can throw in the pile.... Especially if RC user Roy Hinkley Jr decides to put his money where his mouth is.

-a.

Min:


Max:


Of course, my math skills are not very good. What's 21.5 - 13.5?

GO

Let's see:21.5 - 13.5 = 8 mm, so a useful range of 4 mm for the green Alien, as we already noted.

When I do the same measurements...

...on a yellow C3, I get

25mm - 17mm = 8 mm, so the same useful range as a green Alien although through bigger values;

for a red C3,

20 mm - 13 mm = 7mm, so useful range of 3.5 mm.

These are just by eyeballing the cam on a ruler, but the results suggest no significant range differences. I didn't check these eyeballed values against the BD specs. Perhaps BD is only giving useful range rather than the potentially misleading full expansion range.

The red C3 at 60% expansion (biggest useful placement) is 17.2 mm, whereas the yellow C3 at 10% expansion (smallest useful expansion) is 17.8 mm---this doesn't seem to suggest a gap, but still in the field it seems like one needs the green Alien for some cracks in between red and yellow C3. This is probably because a more compressed green Alien looks a lot better than a red C3 60% expanded.

Apparently not.

quite. lost the other half of my 'quote' someplace, dulling my intended ironic emphasis. To quote the Smiths, "I can laugh about it now, but at the time it was terrible"