What is the difference between a runner and a sling

It has a recognizable aesthetic and is available in two different colors: a bright orange color that makes it easy to spot and distinguish, and a grey-rock colored version that blends more into the rock climbing wall environment. The Metolius Equalizer Sling is a very long sling that is easily looped to create two and three point anchors.

It also comes with a handy storage pocket that can be easily detached from the sling. Gear slings are a way to carry and store your gear. It has straps that are easy to adjust for a good fit. It has a buckle that is easy to adjust.

A daisy chain has multiple loops that allow you to re-attach yourself at different lengths to an anchor point. They are safer, more convenient, and more adjustable than using slings or quickdraws at the anchor. They are also useful for attaching yourself to your jumars, and for clipping other gear pieces in use to prevent you from dropping them.

Daisy chains are meant for uses that support your own body-weight. They are not designed for hauling heavy gear or to take impact of a fall. Just like all sewn slings, the strength of a daisy chain is in the stitching. The CAMP Daisychain uses a clever twist in each pocket to prevent coming unclipped in case of a accidental loaded fall. Rip out all the pockets, and you are still clipped to the runner portion of the daisychain. A personal anchor system is similar to a daisy chain, but instead of being all one long runner stitched together, it is made up of a chain of individual loops.

Each loop is a full strength loop. The Metolius Personal Anchor System is 42 inches long and has five separate full strength loops. It was designed to be a safer alternative to daisy chain systems by reducing the points of failure. The Black Diamond Link Personal Anchor is a great personal anchoring system with 4 color coded loops rated for 22kn each.

It works perfectly for anchoring yourself at the top of a route while cleaning your gear or to a belay station. The Sterling Rope Chain Reactor is popular because of it has long loops making it easier to handle connection the loops.

While it is available in all black, it also comes in some great color combinations. It is great to be able to tell quickly by color which loop is the end loop. Climbing Webbing is a strong nylon fabric woven together.

It is useful for slings and for a lot of other climbing gear. Webbing built to climbing specifications is heavier, thicker, and slicker than military spec webbing.

Any situations in which shock-loading is possible or knots are required will likely call for nylon. Still, a full rack of dyneema draws might save a half pound over nylon, and it will take up less space on your harness. Know your systems and habits, and make educated choices. Thin dyneema can sometimes tangle more easily, especially when bar-tacks are long. But, thicker webbing is often useful — if you need to do a couple moves of impromptu aid, thick slings will make your life easier.

Your ideal sling size may also depend on how you rack — some climbers prefer to put their slings in alpine draws on the harness, while others throw everything over a shoulder. Another simple trade-off: dyneema slings are lighter but more expensive. If you have the means, pick the sling s that seem best suited to your needs.

Cinching down knots with some help from the household test assistant. First we took all ten slings trad climbing and put them through their paces on usual tasks: alpine draws, anchor building, slinging features, etc. I then tied well-dressed knots in each sling, cinched each one down with the same amount of force, and timed how long each took to unknot.

Finally, I took the slings to some local schist, found sharp edges, and did my best to tear them up. At the end of it all, tester impressions were aggregated with test results to score slings in three areas:. How well does the sling fulfill its basic duties? Can I do everything I need to do with the sling? How easy is the sling to use? How often do I find myself stuck, slipping, or snagging with the sling? Just so you know, this page contains affiliate links.

This means if you make a purchase after clicking through one, at no extra cost to you we may earn a commission. The 10 slings we tested. About the Author: Willis Kuelthau. Willis is the rare local who was actually born in Boulder, Colorado, and he has been climbing mountains since he was small.

He appreciates all styles of climbing and enjoys skiing and running on the side. He attended college in Massachusetts and currently resides in Los Angeles. He loves cats, green tea, and endurance climbs. Top Pick: Sterling Dyneema Sling. Nylon Pick: Sterling Nylon Sling. Lightweight Pick: Mammut Contact Sling. Draping them over one shoulder and around the neck is a common solution to this problem, but even more popular is the alpine quickdraw.

An alpine quickdraw is a shoulder-length sling that has been shortened by tripling it up with a carabiner on each end so that it is roughly the same length, and functions in the same way, as your average quickdraw. It also allows slings to be easily racked on harness gear loops, which can make them easier to access and deploy quicker mid-lead than unslinging one that is wrapped over your neck and shoulder.

By removing the carabiner from the free-hanging end, then re-clipping it into only one strand of the tripled sling and pulling, you can switch quickly from an alpine quickdraw to a full-length runner ready to clip to the rope. For this test, we took each sling and repeatedly tripled them up into alpine quickdraws, then released them again into full-length slings, and rated them based on how well they performed this task.

We deducted points for any hang-ups or issues we encountered. Two main factors dictate how easy it is to form or extend an alpine quickdraw. First is the width and bulk of the sling.

Wider slings are more likely to overlap each other when tripled up in the crotch of a carabiner, creating friction and often preventing the sling from equalizing its length when forming the quickdraw. The second is the length and bulk of the bar tack, which varies from sling to sling, despite equal strength requirements.

Longer and bulkier bar tacking have a greater propensity to hang up on one of the two carabiners, which can once again prevent the sling from equalizing itself when pulled taut into an alpine quickdraw. It should come as no surprise that the top performers for this category are the thinnest slings that have the lowest profile bar tacking.

Once again, the Mammut Contact Sling , at a mere 8mm of width and featuring an innovative bar tacking pattern that is the lowest profile of all those tested, is the top performer.

The very light and narrow Petzl Pur-Anneau Sling and the Sterling Dyneema Sling, which includes a small bar tack covered in a rubberized plastic cover to eliminate sewn tabs that can hang up on carabiners , are the second-highest performers in this category. Slings are simply single loops of thin webbing, so as you might expect, they are very light pieces of gear. Compared to the weight of a pair of shoes, a cam or a whole rack of cams , or even a locking carabiner, slings present what may seem to be an insignificant weight while climbing a route.

However, we believe that no opportunity to cut weight while not compromising on performance should be overlooked, especially when climbing, because every single thing on your body has to be held by your fingers. Since you can buy lighter slings that are equally as strong as heavier ones, why wouldn't you?

Let's be real, though, and admit that we don't think the weight of your slings is going to be the deciding factor between sending a big route or not. In fact, to be able to tell the difference between these slings most precisely, we had to weigh them in grams rather than ounces.

At times there was only a difference of 1g between different slings, and even if you multiplied this difference by 10 for the number of slings you might carrying on a route , 10g in the best case, or g if comparing the lightest to the heaviest 19g x 10 slings , is still only a difference of.

Worth pointing out is that weight is one of the key advantages a Dyneema sling over a Nylon one, as Dyneema is significantly stronger at the same weight, meaning for a comparable strength sling, they can be far lighter and thinner than Nylon.

To determine a sling's weight, we ignored what the manufacturers published on their websites and instead weighed each sling on our independent scale immediately upon receipt before we used them and any dirt had a chance to impact the results.

We found the Mammut Contact Sling to be the lightest at a mere 19g, although this was disappointing when compared to the 14g figure quoted on Mammut's website, a discrepancy that we can't explain. The heaviest slings are the ones made out of cord, with the Edelrid Aramid Cord weighing in at 43g, and the Beal Dynamic Sling weighing a whopping 78g. These cord slings offer specific advantages to help you see past their extra weight, and regardless we would likely only carry one Beal or a few Edelrid , at most anyway.

Due to differences in fiber and the pattern of the weave, different slings come in different weights, thicknesses, and shapes, even though they are all of equal strength. The width of the slings that we tested ranges from 8mm on the small end, up to 18mm on the larger end, and 6mm to 8.

Some slings are made of a flat piece of webbing, while others are tubular in shape, which means they are thicker. In many ways bulk is a more pertinent assessment of a sling's particular advantages compared to another than weight is. Our harnesses have a fixed amount of storage space on the gear loops, and reducing the bulk of our slings means that we can carry more gear if we need to, or have less bulky items to get in our way while climbing a pitch.

The thickest slings in this review are more than double the width of the narrowest slings, so the potential to cut down on bulk is significant, and should not be overlooked. Slings that are thinner and take up less space understandably receive higher marks for this metric. We started by comparing the widths of each sling, and then also factored in their thicknesses, which often has to do with whether they are of flat, tubular, or cord designs.

Once again, the Mammut Contact Sling is the least bulky, as its 8mm width is two millimeters slimmer than the next closest competitor. The Nylon options we tested, which need to be around 17mm wide to be equally as strong as the much thinner Dyneema options, are of course bulkier. Bulkiest of all are the cord slings, especially the Beal Dynamic Sling , which is as thick as a piece of climbing rope, and is also rather stiff.

Climbing slings are an essential part of every climber's rack and come in a surprising array of choices considering how simple a piece of gear they are.

While any sling that you choose to buy will perform the job well, we feel there is no reason not to select the very highest performing ones if you have the chance. In general, Dyneema slings offer the best combination of performance and weight, but will cost you more. Nylon slings are a good alternative if you need to save some cash.

Cord slings are great for specialty purposes, and having one or two on your rack can really help, but you wouldn't want an entire set of them. We hope that we have helped make your sling purchase easier and led you towards the best product for you. We wish you happy climbing!

GearLab is founded on the principle of honest, objective, reviews. Our experts test thousands of products each year using thoughtful test plans that bring out key performance differences between competing products. And, to assure complete independence, we buy all the products we test ourselves. No cherry-picked units sent by manufacturers. No sponsored content. No ads. Just real, honest, side-by-side testing and comparison. Share this article:.

Our Editors independently research, test, and rate the best products. We only make money if you purchase a product through our links, and we never accept free products from manufacturers. Learn more. Need to purchase the best climbing slings and runners for your trad climbing adventures?

Our expert advice will help, as we've purchased and tested over 30 different slings in the past 9 years. This review includes 12 of the best and most popular choices available today, which can be used for extending protection to reduce rope drag, building and equalizing anchors, and even as threads or slung horns for protection. Our climbing testers have put these slings to the test on giant alpine routes in the Bugaboos, huge classic multi-pitch routes in Red Rocks, and on many fun days on the rocks in between, assessing and rating them along the way for optimal performance.

Read on for the best recommendations. Top 12 Product Ratings. Displaying 1 - 5 of Mammut Contact Dyneema. Petzl Pur'Anneau Sling. Black Diamond Dynex Runner. Sterling Dyneema Sling. Trango Low Bulk 11mm Sling. Show full specification details Hide full specification details. See all prices 3 found. Handle 9. Knots tend to become welded and harder to untie quickly. Handle 7. Blend of Dyneema and Nylon fibers boasts the advantages of each.

Comes in a large selection of lengths and widths for anchor building versatility. Handle 6. Aramid has very high abrasion resistance.

Stiffness makes it easy to sling horns just out of reach or push through threads. A bit bulkier and harder to triple up than softer slings. Features the same dynamic stretch as a climbing rope. Score Product Price Our Take Metolius Open Loop Sling.

Edelrid Aramid Cord Sling. Black Diamond Nylon Sewn Runner.