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healyje
Jun 17, 2009, 9:31 AM
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Some folks keep repeating the same mantras:
'I love my Aliens'
'But they work where nothing else will'
'I have used them a long time with no problem'
'It's a witch hunt'
as if four years of bad Aliens and Aric's testing are somehow aimed at telling people Aliens are a badly designed cam. Nothing could be further from the truth. The truth is:
THE ALIEN DESIGN HAS PROVEN ITSELF USEFUL AND EFFECTIVE OVER MILES OF DIFFICULT VERTICAL TERRAIN.
No one is saying the design of Aliens is bad. No one. But now Aric's and other's testing of various aspects of old and new Aliens has confirmed what a bunch of us have suspected - that CCH is an artisan craft shop, not a manufacturer. As such, various aspects of their product - strength, cam angle, axle hole posiition, lobe harness, brazing, etc. are all over the board - and guess what? THEY LIKELY HAVE BEEN ALL ALONG.
So what are we to take away from that and the fact a lot of folks have been happy with the performance of their Aliens over the years in some pretty demanding applications? I'd personally say a clear takeaway is that, with the right combination of 'production slop', you can get away with a lot and luckily still have Aliens perform acceptably on rock.
BUT, the problem isn't that they're all over the board, that a lot cams fail somewhat below their rated strength, or even that they can't seem to drill simple holes - no, the problem is CCH has proven again and again that a certain percentage of the cams they ship out the door can and will fail catastrophically with very light loads. The problem is CCH can't stop shipping bad and marginal cams along with the 'good' ones.
The real issue with wobbling 'all over the board' on the various aspects of their cam specs (even sloppy ones) is that state of being 'all over the board' the last few years hasn't been confined to spec tolerances which produce 'good' (or even 'good enough') cams. Instead, pick any production attribute of an Alien - brazing, cam angle, lobe (and likely axle) hardness, swaging, and even testing - and those occur and are shipped in a quality range that spans perfect to catastrophically bad. I can't say if this has always been the case, but it would appear that things must have started to go badly awry in the 2003-4 time frame and since then they have never managed to satisfactorily acknowledge, address, or resolve their inability to stop shipping products which can fail catastrophically.
Does that mean 'Aliens are bad'? NO!!! It means SOME Aliens are bad. In fact, some are so bad we are incredibly lucky there haven't been multiple fatalities as a result. Does that mean 'your Aliens are bad' - dunno, could be and unless you've fallen hard on them or tested them, no one can say. But I can say is we haven't seen all the bad Aliens that shipped between 2004 and now. In all likelyhood there's still some lurking out there on store shelves or folks' racks.
So the question to us both as individual climbers and as a community is whether this is the sort of behavior we should be supporting. Sure, 'we love Aliens' but at what eventual price given the grossly unsatisfactory communication, problem solving and customer service we've seen from CCH again and again since the first failure reported on RC?
Bottom line: You've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya punk? Personally, I don't, and even if I did I can't deal with supporting, condoning, or enabling the behavior we've seen from CCH - I will never buy a product from them again.
(This post was edited by healyje on Jun 17, 2009, 10:18 AM)
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basilisk
Jun 17, 2009, 10:03 AM
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healyje wrote: I can't deal with supporting, condoning, or enabling the behavior we've seen from CCH - I will never buy a product from them again.
If only people took all their consumerism this seriously.
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airdo
Jun 17, 2009, 10:43 AM
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Well said Healyje!
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pendereki
Jun 17, 2009, 12:08 PM
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Well said, basilisk!
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angry
Jun 17, 2009, 1:21 PM
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Every time you use an Alien, Healyje punches an orphan.
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shimanilami
Jun 17, 2009, 3:00 PM
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You are like a broken record playing Garth Brooks tunes. At first, some like it, while others hate it. But sooner or later, no one wants to listen anymore.
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k.l.k
Jun 17, 2009, 4:01 PM
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healyje wrote: . . . CCH is an artisan craft shop, not a manufacturer.
Good post. But I don't like this sentence because it suggests that the sort of crummy work we see coming out of CCH is or could be acceptable for a craft outfit. But it isn't. Craft shops should have HIGHER levels of workmanship than factory production.
The willingness of CCH to put out product as shoddy, ugly and inconsistent as what we are seeing-- and the fact that so many climbers accept that level of quality --suggests to me that the North American climbing community has finally lost all concept of a craft tradition, and that very, very many of us have grown up without ever having experienced good workmanship or serious craft. And that is really depressing, partly because we have so few serious craft people left. But mainly because rockclimbing itself is nothing if not a craft.
The last thing I'd want to see come out of this debacle is a sense among n00bs that well, this is what a craft looks like, so we better always buy mass-produced, big-brand stuff. Where's the REI?
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healyje
Jun 17, 2009, 4:27 PM
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shimanilami (and Angry / Roy Hinkley Jr.) wrote: You are like a broken record ...
That's only because a small number of equally consistent voices are having a tough emotional time dealing with the fact that CCH can't stop shipping Aliens that fail at low loads. Those few voices, despite ample evidence to the contrary keep whining on and on about 'their' Aliens, poor CCH, and what a 'witch hunt' it all is.
Yeah, a real witch hunt alright - any of you remaining loyalists want to volunteer to whip 30' onto a dozen of them bought straight from retail in a decking situation? Come on boys, pony up on your side of the aisle and demonstrate your faith. You seem to have no problem suggesting others who might not know about any of this do it with their lives.
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roy_hinkley_jr
Jun 17, 2009, 4:50 PM
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healyje wrote: Yeah, a real witch hunt alright - any of you remaining loyalists want to volunteer to whip 30' onto a dozen of them bought straight from retail in a decking situation?
And here is why you sound so moronic. No intelligent climber would do that with ANY small cam. Heck, a truly smart climber wouldn't trust a single bolt in that situation. Until the witch hunters even the playing field by seriously testing a lot of different cams, there is no evidence that current Aliens are a safety concern.
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adatesman
Jun 17, 2009, 5:54 PM
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healyje
Jun 17, 2009, 6:01 PM
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roy_hinkley_jr wrote: healyje wrote: Yeah, a real witch hunt alright - any of you remaining loyalists want to volunteer to whip 30' onto a dozen of them bought straight from retail in a decking situation? And here is why you sound so moronic. No intelligent climber would do that with ANY small cam. Heck, a truly smart climber wouldn't trust a single bolt in that situation. Until the witch hunters even the playing field by seriously testing a lot of different cams, there is no evidence that current Aliens are a safety concern.
It's a rhetorical question Roy. But how about you boys ponying up a single fact to support this truly bold statement:
roy_hinkley_jr wrote: ...there is no evidence that current Aliens are a safety concern.
Please explain how that is true when we've had multiple catastrophic failures of post-recall cams stamped 'Tensile Tested'. Really, do explain it all away Roy - we're all ears.
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petsfed
Jun 17, 2009, 6:20 PM
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roy_hinkley_jr wrote: healyje wrote: Yeah, a real witch hunt alright - any of you remaining loyalists want to volunteer to whip 30' onto a dozen of them bought straight from retail in a decking situation? And here is why you sound so moronic. No intelligent climber would do that with ANY small cam. Heck, a truly smart climber wouldn't trust a single bolt in that situation. Until the witch hunters even the playing field by seriously testing a lot of different cams, there is no evidence that current Aliens are a safety concern.
I know of several people in this thread who have done precisely this with several different brands of cams. So try again.
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sspssp
Jun 17, 2009, 6:29 PM
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healyje wrote: Bottom line: You've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya punk? Personally, I don't
Well if you don't feel lucky, maybe you should quite rock climbing while you are ahead. 
For instance many parties in Yosemite climb on aliens. I've been reading the Yosemite accident reports for years. There have been many, many climbing fatalities or other serious injuries. I'm not aware of a single one that can be attributed to an Alien failing.
I don't see that the danger from Aliens is significant compared to the chance of dieing from, say, a head injury from some other cause.
So I guess I still feel lucky. 
(This post was edited by sspssp on Jun 17, 2009, 6:58 PM)
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healyje
Jun 17, 2009, 6:33 PM
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sspssp wrote: I don't see that the danger from Aliens is significant compared to the chance of dieing from, say, a head injury from some other cause.
It's definitely a matter of personal choice and taste - I don't mind taking risks when I pick a line or bust a move; gambling whenever I reach for my rack is a different matter altogether. That may work for you, it doesn't for me.
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curt
Jun 17, 2009, 7:48 PM
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adatesman wrote: roy_hinkley_jr wrote: healyje wrote: Yeah, a real witch hunt alright - any of you remaining loyalists want to volunteer to whip 30' onto a dozen of them bought straight from retail in a decking situation? And here is why you sound so moronic. No intelligent climber would do that with ANY small cam. Heck, a truly smart climber wouldn't trust a single bolt in that situation. Until the witch hunters even the playing field by seriously testing a lot of different cams, there is no evidence that current Aliens are a safety concern. And in case you hadn't noticed (which would be surprising given that its been pointed out repeatedly), I've tested lots of other brands and models of cams. Another thing you may have not noticed (or understood) is that most of the other manufacturers all have implemented 3 Sigma testing on their gear, which means there's little chance of bad ones getting out and there's nothing to find.
People who continue to claim that there are no real problems with Aliens remind me of people who keep right on smoking, after being diagnosed with lung cancer. Some people simply live in denial--and no amount of scientific testing or data collection is going to change their beliefs or their behavior. It's fine with me--Darwin was right.
Curt
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adatesman
Jun 17, 2009, 7:52 PM
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sspssp
Jun 17, 2009, 7:59 PM
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healyje wrote: sspssp wrote: I don't see that the danger from Aliens is significant compared to the chance of dieing from, say, a head injury from some other cause. It's definitely a matter of personal choice and taste - I don't mind taking risks when I pick a line or bust a move; gambling whenever I reach for my rack is a different matter altogether. That may work for you, it doesn't for me.
I agree completely with the matter of personal choice. I'm certainly not trying to talk anyone who is not comfortable with Aliens climbing on them.
However, that was hardly the tone of the original post:
healyje wrote: Well, do ya punk?
This attitude that anyone climbing on Aliens is F#@!#@ stupid whereas climbing otherwise is [apparently] risk free is what rubs me wrong.
And I think people lose sight of how dangerous rock climbing is and they probably have less control over many of the risk than they think. You can be safety minded, but even very safety minded individuals have made mistakes like rapping off the end of the rope. You can wear a helmet (and an amazing number of climbers dont), but you can still be killed by rockfall (at least in a place like Yosemite).
I just don't see that climbing on aliens changes my risk curve in any meaningful way and I think the accidents analysis backs that up. An awful lot of leaders in Yosemite have taken many lead falls on Aliens (I'm only one among many). And for instance, although the use of Aliens in other places is probably less, they have still seen a lot of use. I've ready about many hundereds of death in Accidents in North American Mountaineering and I remember zero incidents involving a failure of an Alien. But the problems at CCH still suck. Not least because it wouldn't surprise me to see Aliens go off the market.
But each to their own.
cheers
(This post was edited by sspssp on Jun 17, 2009, 8:04 PM)
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healyje
Jun 17, 2009, 8:27 PM
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So your basic proposition here is that climbing is dangerous and having bad Aliens out there is no problem because it's dangerous?
Flying is dangerous too, would it be no problem for you if you knew we had bad airliners flying and whenever you got on a plane you didn't know whether the plane you were boarding was one of the bad ones? Would it be no problem that the manufacturer continued to crank out bad planes in the mix with good ones?
Taking risks is a personal choice. But to say that unidentified bad Aliens in the mix with good ones on retailer shelvers and climbers racks is just part of the overall risk of climbing and therefore acceptable or no big deal is certainly a novel way of thinking. Hey, we just saw again you can die driving to a climb - does that mean it's o.k. or no big deal for CCH to continue to produce bad Aliens? Some pretty twisted logic there?
"Do you feel lucky" - harks straight from the fact that if you're placing Aliens you haven't fallen on hard or haven't tested, then you have absolutely no idea whatsoever wheither it's one of the bad ones or not. The same goes for buying one - when you pick one off the rack or order it on-line you have no idea whether its good or bad. Climb on it without knowing and you better be feeling lucky.
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roy_hinkley_jr
Jun 17, 2009, 8:27 PM
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adatesman wrote: So what is it Roy, you gonna send some cams my way to prove you're right?
Not until you stop testing X and then claiming it is actually Y. A flawed testing program cannot prove anything. If you want to test the brazes, then test the brazes. If you want to test holding power, then test holding power in more than a meaningless lab test. If you want to address cam centering, then do the proper calculations instead of a pseudoscience system with numerous flaws.
Look, I know you're doing what you can with no budget and a limited understanding of what you're attempting and that is commendable. But it doesn't change the fact that you aren't delivering what you claim. Ideally, a real organization would be doing this stuff but there ain't none in the US that gives a shit. The rags don't, the AAC and ACC don't, and the competitors can't. It sucks but that ain't gonna change anytime soon. Maybe you can get the CPSC involved but that's unlikely given the mediocre testing so far.
If you don't like the way CCH does business fine, don't support them. But claiming a safety problem exists without real proof doesn't give you much credibility.
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petsfed
Jun 17, 2009, 8:29 PM
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sspssp wrote: healyje wrote: sspssp wrote: I don't see that the danger from Aliens is significant compared to the chance of dieing from, say, a head injury from some other cause. It's definitely a matter of personal choice and taste - I don't mind taking risks when I pick a line or bust a move; gambling whenever I reach for my rack is a different matter altogether. That may work for you, it doesn't for me. I agree completely with the matter of personal choice. I'm certainly not trying to talk anyone who is not comfortable with Aliens climbing on them. However, that was hardly the tone of the original post: healyje wrote: Well, do ya punk? This attitude that anyone climbing on Aliens is F#@!#@ stupid whereas climbing otherwise is [apparently] risk free is what rubs me wrong.
I know what you're thinking. "Did he fire six shots or only five?" Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?
/cultural references are clearly lost on you
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hafilax
Jun 17, 2009, 8:36 PM
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My conclusion is still that people don't put big forces on their gear. How many whippers did McLeod put on those RP's before they snapped? The UIAA standards are extreme and are designed around ensuring that gear used in an anchor won't break in the most severe of conditions.
There is compelling evidence that Aliens are inconsistently made but that few break in the field compared to how they fare in pull tests. How many Aliens have you seen with lobes mashed and axles bent to the extent seen in Aric's tests? I've seen some minor mushrooming and no bent axles but nothing close to where it would pull out of the test jig.
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adatesman
Jun 17, 2009, 8:48 PM
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IsayAutumn
Jun 17, 2009, 9:34 PM
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Has CCH responded to any of your testing, Aric? I know you originally tested a bootied Alien (and one other, correct?). That may have been the impetus behind this more thorough test, which now has me fully convinced. Even if you did have an axe to grind with CCH, there's no way you would have gone to such lengths to grind it.
So, did they reply to either your first "test" with the bootied cam, or this later test? Forgive me if this has been stated recently...I don't remember seeing it.
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