those are some nice photos smike and densio

Thank you, Talus. I liked yours from Gertrude's Nose in the other thread. They made me reconsider a polarizer. I'd stopped using it because of vignetting, but I think I'll try again.

Here's a new one:

crux move on Apoplexy....

Check out the top ropeside biner; that's the cross-loading issue with the skinny slings we were talking about in the other thread.

I don't think so. Looks like the sling is squarely in the radius of the bend at that end of the spine. The rope is on the other radius. And even if it was x-loaded, in a fall things would orient themselves correctly, far, far below the minor-axis strength rating.

The sling is definitely caught on the gate notch; I have the same OP JC wires and see this all the time.

The rope side is OK; so the question is will the biner rotate in a fall, will the sling slide off the gate notch? Or will the force be applied so quickly that it'll pull the gate notch outward?

Anyway, I don't want to hijack this thread, just wanted to point out that it happens in the field.

I find it funny that the picture of Appoplexy, while looking so familiar, didn't come to me because I am so used to seeing it as I come up into the move.

Y'know, I look down and see biners in funky positions all the time on full-length slings, and it eventually got to me, which is why I started using rubber bands (pony tail keepers, actually) to hold the sling in position on the rope-end biner. Then came the "news" that you could manage to clip such set-ups in such a way that the sling was not attached to the biner except by the rubber band.

So this leaves me with two highly unlikely but dangerous scenarios: one is that a rope-end biner that has flipped into a bad position somehow fails to reorient during a fall and either cross-loads or unclips, and the other is that I somehow manage, without noticing it, to unclip the rope-end biner.

In a situation like this, the decision is clear to me. One situation I have complete control over and responsibility for, and the other situation I have no control over. The rubber bands stay on. (Well, maybe not, if enough of my partners refuse to use my draws...)

Good demonstration:

Skip forward 1 minute if impatient

Caver is correct.

Regarding cross-loading, the theory was almost tested when the climber took a nice whipper a move or two above that photo, but it wasn't on that biner.

Here's a new one (right click, view image, to see it bigger):