Innovative, Durable, Light & Safe

Carabiners & quickdraws

Innovative, durable and lightweight masterpieces

Pear or D-shaped. Straight or bent. With or without a nose. With a wire or conventional gate. Locking or non-locking. Carabiners come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. As a key part of the safety chain, they work hard every day.

You need them to belay your partner, rappel, set up belay stations, transport gear, or attach to protection in the form of quickdraw slings. Climbing carabiners make life in the mountains or at the crag not only safe, but also easier—especially if they have good handling properties.

All of EDELRID’s innovative spirit goes into our carabiners. We constantly work to test all conceivable ideas and find innovative technical solutions that set new standards with regard to functionality, weight, and comfort. It is therefore not by chance that one of the lightest carabiners on the market with a conventional gate, the MISSION STRAIGHT and BENT (29 g), comes from our forge. A further EDELRID technology is BULLETPROOF: This combines the advantages of aluminum and steel in a single carabiner. The steel insert in the BULLETPROOF carabiner’s apex prevents premature wear as a result of rope friction and the formation of sharp edges by rock anchors, thereby extending the life of both your rope and your carabiner and improving both safety and sustainability. At the same time, the use of aluminum keeps the weight low. We also offer a non-anodized carabiner, the HMS BULLETPROOF ECO, as an eco-friendly alternative to an anodized standard carabiner.

We climbers love our gear

Carabiners and all their little details particularly excite avid tech enthusiasts. Like other gear, carabiners have to be looked after and regularly inspected. We show you how to do this here.

Carabiners can essentially be divided into four groups:

Normal carabiners
Locking carabiners
Special carabiners
Gear carabiners

Normal carabiners

Normal or basic carabiners have a non-lockable gate that can be opened by pressure at any time. This makes them easier to use than locking carabiners, but also easier to open accidentally. As a result, normal carabiners are ideal for situations where the speed of clipping and unclipping is more important than the additional safety provided by a locking mechanism. Normal carabiners are used in quickdraw slings, for example. You can buy them individually or as a pre-assembled quickdraw set.

Locking carabiners

As the name suggests, locking carabiners can be locked by a variety of mechanisms. To open them, you first have to release this mechanism. This is particularly important if the safety chain would be broken as a result of the carabiner failing. Always use locking carabiners for belaying, rappelling, setting up belay stations, or roping up on glaciers.

Locking carabiners can be divided into manual locking (screwgate) and auto-locking (slider, twist lock, or triple lock) carabiners.

Manual locking carabiners have to be actively locked; auto-locking carabiners lock automatically as soon as you allow the gate to close.

The Perma Lock mechanism developed by EDELRID is a hybrid of these formats that additionally locks the sleeve on the locking mechanism. The integrated pressure lock blocks the carabiner’s rotating sleeve, securing it against unintentional opening.

Special carabiners

These carabiners have been developed for special uses and possess special features that expand their functionality. For example, our AXIOM carabiner has an integrated pulley in its spine that minimizes rope friction. This can be extremely useful when using directional anchors on a roof while sport climbing but is also often used to set up hoist systems or block and tackles.

Gear carabiners (not PPE)

Gear carabiners today come in all possible forms. You can use them to attach your chalk bag or shoes to your harness or your water bottle to your backpack. Many gear carabiners are also used purely for decoration, for example on a backpack zipper or as a key ring.

 

Gear carabiners must never be used to belay people! They are not certified as personal protective equipment (PPE) and are not designed to hold heavy loads or withstand high impact forces.

If you want to find out more about ‘which types of carabiner are used for climbing’, simply check out our Knowledge Base article: “Which types of carabiners are used for climbing?”

We’ve also compiled a couple of articles on the ‘risks and dangers while handling carabiners’.

  • Which types of carabiners are used for climbing?
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  • Risk and dangers while handling carabiners
    View now