Standardization. Wouldn't that be nice? Hell is other people's racks. If we could just get the manufacturers to agree on sizing and sling/plastic color coding.... I'm leaning towards some offset Masters and the color coding of those presents a whole new set of issues. wtf Metolius?

At the same time, I am having the worst season for plugging the wrong sized cam. I took all my Aliens off this year and swapped in the Mastercams. Now I can't eyeball the right size to (literally) save my life. I'm fine until I get to 0.5 Camalot then its a total crapshoot.

Wah.

I was wondering that as well.

But I really have no interest in rehashing this yet again, so if the guy wants to doubt me, my qualifications, my intentions, my equipment, my testing, etc so be it. Doesn't really bother me one bit. I'm not really sure how he missed the multiple threads on RC, ST, Gunks, CC, MP, NEclimbs, SP and the half dozen other sites I ended up defending my work on, but so it goes.

I will say one thing to him though... Take a look at the ratings CCH gives for their gear. Then go to someplace like McMaster-Carr and take a look at the ratings given for the size and type of cable CCH uses for their cams. Notice anything funny? Perhaps something like CCH rating one of there sizes to a higher force than the rated breaking strength of the cable used to make it? I forget which one it is offhand, but it should be easy enough to him to figure out and should make you highly skeptical of the ratings CCH gives their gear.

BS. You're living under a rock. As demonstrated by MarcC (who lives in SLC, UT) and his research.

No offense, but I haven't met anybody in the past year who didn't know this. Not at Smith, not in the cascades, not at any gear shop, not at any climber parking spot...it's a standard joke on cc.com and even Bill Coe has gotten rid of his old aliens.

Hey, living under a rock happens to everybody!

Y'know, not everyone gets to spend their daze plugged into teh interwebs. I have met a fair amount of people who honestly didn't know.

And a fair number more who put their head under a rock voluntarily - I'm sure you've all seen recent threads saying "what about aliens? aren't they the awesomest?" where people are only looking for a chorus to preach to.

So I think the question is - how to concisely, cogently explain it to someone (even if it's the Nth time for you) such that they *get* it, and put down their damn Aliens already.

As amazing as this may sound, it is true. I agree. There really are folks climbing trad who have not heard about the issue. Like Julie, I have met several within the last year.

TS

I guess I have been living under a rock. I don't spend time on CC.com Crackers, mainly for the very reasons you just demonstrated. Folks on there act like a bunch of childish whiners. And for the record I have a friend in Smith who's a guide and a former gunks regular with connections to Metolius who knew nothing of this. So I'm not the only one.

Thanks everyone for the info, especially Julie, Aric and RG. I'm going to be looking for someone to proof test my Aliens. If anyone knows of such a place please pm me. Thanks.

Gabe (O) tested his by pulling them in series with a 4-kN piece of accessory cord. Once the cord breaks, you know the Aliens are good to 4 kN ...

which is something, but 4 kN is not a lot, and still leaves the question of whether they're only good to 6 kN, and whether you've damaged them in testing - which is so very unlikely with a 15 kN piece (which is, by 3-sigma testing, well stronger than that even), but if you came close to the actual unknown breaking strength of a weird Alien, it becomes imaginable.

So you could also just move on down the road to C3s or Master cams or whatever, and put it all behind you.

The real credit goes to Aric, for cross-sectioning those brazes. That step took the discussion from speculation about why cables were pulling out of stems, to proof. That picture is worth more than a thousand words - it's worth a few lives saved.

The other manufacturers pretty much kept their opinions to themselves to prevent accusations of bias or bad intentions. But that doesn't mean they didn't look into it themselves and have opinions; it just means that they know better than to say anything publicly. In private they were quite candid about where they stood on this mess, and the ones I spoke with were quite appreciative of me taking this on since they weren't able to.

BTW, the test results from one of the manufacturers got posted on CC a while back (through an intermediary). Pretty much the same results I got. There's probably a link to it here in this thread somewhere.

Oh, and I found my notes- it's the Gold Alien that has the goofy rating. It uses 5/32" 7x19 cable for the Regular and 7x7 for the Super Long and is rated to 3300lb, but 5/32" galvanized cable is only rated to 2800# for 7x19 and 2600# for 7x7. Both 5/32" 7x7 and 7x19 in Stainless are rated to only 2400#. Never managed to get my hands on a Gold Alien, so can't say if it's an overly optimistic rating or a typo in the cable size.

I sent you a gold last year!

Damn you all, you have me doubting again. I previously put that stuff behind me and kept three on my rack (Green Yellow Gray). The green one has saved my life, can't I keep using it?