Update on the prowire, these biners are choice. I have the anodized ones for color coding and they're even better than the venerable prowires. Highly recommended for the discerning gear freak.

Pending On Rock Review we'll give it a 4

A shoe demo at the gym the other night gave me the chance to fondle and/or play with some new gear expected out later this year. All were prototypes but seemed damn close to production models. On the list for tonight's discussion - OP's Link Cams and DMM's Shield and Spectre.

OP Link Cams - A lot of speculation has gone on about these cams and I have to admit I too am a pretty skeptical guy with certain things, this cam being one of them. Well, the rep let me play with one he had (the larger yellow one) knowing from past meeting I'm a gear freak to beat all gear freaks. First impression when he handed it to me "Damn, that;s not nearly as heavy as I thought it would be." I'd say it was like an old camalot in about the same size. So the whole "they're going to feel like an anchor" bias went out the door. Next test: Cam retraction: Trigger pull is very smooth. The springs are fairly stiff so these are not cams to use when seriously flamed out. I'd say the springs are stiffer than most mainly because you need to have them expand and retract so much further. At the beginning they feel just like a camalot or friend. The pulls distance is long as well (again, because of the huge range) so mini handed people may not like them. I didn't have any issues though. Also of note, as the cams retract there are "blips" in the pull when the cams unfurl from big to medium to small. Essentially as the joint between the different cam sizes are reached there is a "soft" spot in the pull. This will come into play in a minute. My local gym had a crack I could go play with the cam on so off I went. After playing with it in several placements here is what I noticed. First off, these babies aren't for very shallow placements. As the cams retract they pull down the stem making little pockets and bottomed cracks non-options. Not a big deal since I don't think you'd use it for that anyway. Next, there's something ridiculously cool about putting this cam in a crack that keeps getting narrower as it goes up the wall and being able to slide the cams up without it getting over compressed. It simply goes from a #2 to a #1 to a #.75 like that. Sweetness - you need to try it to understand but I was impressed. Also of note was this sucker seemed to handle flares well too. You need to take a little time to fully compress the cams and let the outer ones expand into the flare but with a little practice I got the knack for it. Good stuff there as well. Lastly, the steel inner lobes really seemed to bite into the (fake) crack well.

Hmmms: I was impressed with this cam and fully put it into the "need to play with it more" catagory. There were a few hmmms that came up however. First off, I noticed as the cams unfurl that the joint between the lobe sizes seems to be a no-mans land for the cams. It's like they're hovering at the tipped out possion. This leads me to think that the cams range isn't one continuous arc but three sizes separated by very small "go up or go down" areas. Not a huge deal unless you're at IC and the crack is exactly the size of the "in between" area. The other hmmm is how these suckers really place outside - I'll need some granite at Squamish to judge that though so until they're out on the market I'm left with the fake crack speculation.

Overall I was impressed with these units. 2.5 : 1 ratio has to be seen to be understood. OP is under no delusions that people are going to carry 10 of these up a climb (although they could make for an interesting experiment climbing at IC - carry 10 and you've really got 30 sizes?) I see them being great on alpine stuff where you only want a few pieces or for anchor setups on long multipitch climbs and I knows they'll absolutely kick a__ for speed climbing and crack jumarring. One on each aider and off you go. Check em out and see what you think. I'll probably look into getting one or two given the chance to play with them a little more. I can always leave them behind...

I noticed Gary gave a great review but seemingly didn't give any "stars" this will offset that a little - Biners show up next week so I'll do my review soon after.