Monday 21 July 2014

Petzl Ange Finesse Quickdraw Review

Over the past couple of months I have been testing a few sets of quick draws. The first of these to get a look over by my "expert" eye are the Petzl Ange Finesse Quickdraws.
As with any other draw these are made of 3 major components, 2 carabiners and a sling. The Ange carabiners are quite an interesting design featuring just a single wire for the gate. You can think of it a bit like a very narrow solid gate biner. This should have made them rather light however, weighing in at a 28g for a small or 34g for a large, gear wads will know that this is hardly groundbreaking. To lock the two end of the carabiner together when closed the gate fits into a groove in the nose of the biner. This prevents the rope getting stuck in the gate while clipping. Nice.
In quickdraw form 2 different colors are used for the biners. Blue or orange are used to indicate the rope end and silver indicates the protection end.
The quickdraws come in a range of lengths, all using the same width slings. Pretty standard really. These slings are heavily stitched, which must add a bit to their weight, and ever little helps when going super-light. When you compare these to other quickdraws in their price range, then these really aren't that light.
If you are a sport climber then you dont want these! Firstly the thin gate is very difficult to clip and secondly they don't work with clipsticks!
Despite me being quite excited about getting these to begin with they have largely been relegated to attaching my climbing shoes together.
I give this a rating of 1 thumb down. For being advertised as a super-light draw they totally disappoint.