Aliens stronger than Camalots? BD gives three-sigma ratings and CCH, at least at one point, was giving average breaking strengths from who knows what kind of sampling process (uh...let's test this one, dude). Forget about comparing those numbers.

Edit: A three-sigma rating means that a randomly selected piece will fail at a lower load than the rating approximately 3/10 of one percent of the time. Naturally, such ratings are considerably lower than the average ratings, in which a randomly selected piece will fail at a lower load approximately half the time.

I'd say that the chances that a BD piece is less strong than a similar-sized Alien is zero, and that a sensible person would take the BD ratings as upper limits for what might be expected from an Alien that isn't defective.

There is strong enough evident to say we know that Aliens fail at a higher rate than advertised.


Aric has demonstrated his knowledge and integrity. A good bit of his testing was done in public. You could have attended at more than one location.


The only tests and claims we have real reason not to trust were all made by CCH. Personally I would not trust them to test gear.

I'm not claiming that Aliens are stronger. I'm merely pointing out that with the advertised break strength for Aliens vs Camalots, Aliens are stronger. Obviously the advertised break strengths are suspect. How suspect is the question. Do we trust internet guy's break strengths or do we send them to CCH to get them tested and trust the break strengths that come back. Quite frankly I have too much anxiety to trust either and climbing is more than 50% mental. So I don't like having anxiety enter the equation.

I'm in the process of putting together a table comparing Aliens, BDs and Friends. I think my Aliens are going on eBay and I'm getting a new rack of Friends.

Mark - I live in WA now. Regrettably, I could not have attended... Although I'm sure that Aric is a good person and his tests were done to the best of his ability, he's not certified to be conducting such tests as far as I can tell. Consequently, there's some unreliability to his tests. That said, it makes me not trust CCH.

90% of climbing (and hitting) is half mental. Yogi

I'm not claiming that Aliens are stronger. I'm merely pointing out that with the advertised break strength for Aliens vs Camalots, Aliens are stronger. Obviously the advertised break strengths are suspect. How suspect is the question. Do we trust internet guy's break strengths or do we send them to CCH to get them tested and trust the ....... break strengths that come back. Quite frankly I have too much anxiety to trust either and climbing is more than 50% mental. So I don't like having anxiety enter the equation.
I had to line up the term "break strength(s)" . OCD kicked in.

Certified by who?
Also, hasn't this whole issue been discussed to death in thousands of posts here, on rc.com, the taco stand, mp, et al? Most folks made their personal decision a year or more ago. Why dredge it up now?

Sadly, this is the first I heard of it. There hasn't been much talk of it over here in the PNW. I happened to stumble on this the other day on this site. I'm thankful that someone bumped it up. I don't watch rc.com.

Certification or not (I'm sure there's an industry standard), we arrive at the same conclusion: there's enough doubt to not trust CCH.

OK, I'll repeat myself only because as you've said above, this is still news to you.

A non-"RECALL" Alien that Aric tested broke because its cable was not (anywhere near) well-enough brazed into the head:


The details of the test DO NOT MATTER - it was going to break no matter what, and more crucially, there was no way to inspect it (or of course to "trust" CCH). It's not about Aric's tests; it's that he had the curiosity to cross-section the braze joint, which speaks for itself, no?

Certification for a test or equipment to do a test in and of itself does nothing to add reliability to that test. It suggests reliability, which in this case was obviously completely backward! CHH certainly was not to be trusted, while there was no reason not to trust Aric's.

Then as Julie points out there were units that broke during test, that were obviously manufactured poorly enough to shun their manufacturer until they can prove far better reliability. In this case minor design changes would have likely been necessary as well as a someone knowlegable in QC.

I feel so strongly about this because CCH made one blunder after another, fixing nothing, and further proving how out of control their QC really was.

http://cascadeclimbers.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/888252/Re_Comments_on_aliens

http://cascadeclimbers.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/866915/Trango_Big_Bro_5_Recall

http://cascadeclimbers.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/715269/blownout

http://cascadeclimbers.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/592058/1

The last included a link to:
http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=242741&f=0&b=0