Mountain Gear Harness Testing Program

Mountain Gear, Arc’teryx and Rock and Ice have teamed up to offer a program where you can send in your old harnesses for testing, and in return you’ll get a $25 discount on Arc’teryx stuff ordered through Mountain Gear. This is a great idea, I bet a lot of people would probably send their harnesses in for testing without the little bonus, but that should give us lazy folks the motivation to actually do it.

After Todd Skinner’s death, caused by belay loop failure, I think a lot of people suddenly became interested in how well harnesses hold up over time. I had one friend who had been using the same one for ten years, after the accident he quickly replaced it.

It’ll be interesting to see what kind of results they get. It seems like in many tests, climbing gear holds up much better than anyone thinks it will. Check out some of the testing that Black Diamond has done, there’s some really interesting results over there.

Of course, if you ever have any doubt about any of your gear, it’s always best to take the conservative road. This stuff is pretty damn cheap compared to the cost of a serious injury, or even losing your life. I heard a story once of a well known sponsored climber who had to bail off a big wall, and even though they got gear for free, they were rapping off single cams and nuts because they were being cheap bastards.

Sheesh.