Carabiner

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This is an article about climbing and safety hardware. For an article about the weapon, see Karabiner 43.

A carabiner or karabiner (colloquially: crab, krab, or 'biner) is a metal loop with a sprung or screwed gate. It can quickly and reversibly connect components in safety-critical systems; for example, a common use is to attach a rope to a fixed anchor.

Image:Carabiner2.jpg

Carabiners are widely used in sports requiring ropework, such climbing, caving ("Single Rope Technique"), canyoning, and sailing, and in industrial rope access work, such as construction or window cleaning.

Carabiners used in climbing tend to be lighter and faster to use than carabiners used in industry. For recreational climbing, almost all carabiners are made from aluminium. For rope rescues and industrial uses, where the weight of the carabiner is not an important factor and larger working loads are encountered, steel carabiners are commonly used. Some carabiners used in industry do not have a sprung swinging gate but have a screw shut gate that generally can only be opened and closed using a special tool. In climbing, most karabiners do not have any locking device, due to the necessity to cut down on weight, and be able to quickly open and close one's karabiners with one hand. Karabiners used for belaying climbers as they climb, however, will tend to be locking, or "screwgate" karabiners (see below).

The word comes from the German expression "Karabinerhaken". Yet German climbers would always call it shortly "Karabiner". Note that, in German, "Karabiner" also means "carbine" (a short rifle).

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Mountaineering

See also: Mountaineering

When sold for use in climbing in Europe, karabiners must conform to standard EN 12275:1998 "Mountaineering equipment - Connectors - Safety requirements and test methods" which governs testing protocols, rated strengths, and markings.

There are broadly two sorts of karabiner used in climbing, with some subdivision within those: non-locking karabiners and locking karabiners. Non-locking karabiners are the simplest; there is a sprung swinging gate that can be opened to insert or remove a rope, webbing sling, or other climbing hardware. The gate will snap shut under pressure of the spring. Locking karabiners have the same general shape as non-locking karabiners, but have an additional sleeve around the gate. The sleeve can be released along the gate and when it is at one end of the gate the gate cannot be opened (except by releasing the sleeve and moving it to the other end of the gate). This provides security against the karabiner opening accidentally, for example if struck against the rock or if caught in a loop of rope. The sleeve can either be mounted on a screw thread or by a more complicated auto-lock system, which snaps back into place when the gate shuts. Mountaineers also frequently use a short sling to connect two non-locking carabineers to each other, creating a quickdraw.

Karabiners with one particular shape are known as HMS karabiners. These are intended for belaying with a Munter hitch (sometimes known as an Italian Hitch).

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Fashion

Carabiners are also useful in everyday life, as keychains and to connect items of luggage; for instance, low-quality carabiners are available to those wishing to follow the trends set by climbers without investing in genuine safety equipment. They vaguely resemble mountaineering carabiners, but are generally thinner, more colorful, and have an extremely simplified latching mechanism, without even a pin to allow the gate to carry load.