What's in the Collection?

The site contains 270 carabiners displayed with photos, with many more in processing.

Click on any of the photos above to visit the pages for some of my favorites, and to get an idea of my collection.

By Category

See links below (or the buttons near the top of the page) to explore the collection directly by category. Or view All Carabiners in a single table.

• Triple-Action Twist Lock
• Twist Lock
• Slide Lock
• Screw Lock
• Other Locking
• Multi-Gate
• Non-Locking
• Gated-Hook
• Accessory Carabiners

Gallery View

The more visually inclined, you may prefer to browse and navigate through an all-photo Gallery View.

Virtual Exhibits

For a focused look at parts of the collection Virtual Exhibits.

Rest of the Stuff

I am mostly focused on locking carabiners or interesting design dead-ends. Check out the About page for more on the criteria guiding the collection.

Or see the Recent Updates section for the newest changes to the site.

Visit the Terminology Guide for information on the ways I've classfied carabiner features.

The Other Thoughts contains ramblings based on questions I've gotten when teaching about carabiners.

Why Carabiners?

I am fascinated by mechanical objects, how they are designed, and how those designs reflect the needs of the users. I also love the world of vertical rope disciplines - recreational tree climbing in particular, but I have also spent time professionally on ropes courses and teaching rock climbing.

As a gearhead, one thing I've always enjoyed is sharing gear with others, and seeing them understand an aspect of the rope discipline in a new way through that piece of equipment.

As a reader, I find simple personal websites interesting - something I've become nostalgic for as more content has moved to Web 2.0.

This site is an expression of my collecting and climbing hobby - a continual work-in-progress representing my personal collection & musings. It is not a how-to guide, or any sort of authority on how to use vertical equipment.

Please seek proper instruction, and consider my remarks on this site with the same level of seriousness as us having a casual discussion about carabiners over a pint.

I welcome any questions/comments/suggestions through this contact form.

-Sam

Disclaimer, Information Quality & Future Plans

Climbing is Inherently Dangerous & Humans are Only Human.

Yup, this is a personal page and project, which I maintain for fun as a hobby. Again, how carabiners are used or misused can cause serious injury or death. Please do not rely on information on this site to make choices about personal safety.

Photos

These days I try to shoot 7 angles of the carabiners for the following reasons:

View	Benefits
left profile right profile	overall views of carabiner type, shape, markings
gate open	nose shape and latch mechanism
gate face	any gate-face features and general idea of the width of the carabiner, nose guard, etc.
gate face: oblique	view of the interior spine, as well as better definition of features on the side of the gate.
spine	spine markings or textures, overall width
spine: oblique	mostly reveals the gate interior: gate shield, coverage from any locking mechanism, interior hinge area

If it would reveal more information, I try to repeat these shots if the carabiner has movable parts such as screw locks or side-gates. Thus, for the most recent additions, I am taking 13 photos of a typical screwgate.

Overall, I have plenty of room for improvement with these photos. Many spine and gate orientation photos are somewhat blurry and need to be reshot (especially the older ones) I think they can still be instructive as-is, so I'll leave them up for now. One day I'll set up a proper lightbox and dedicated studio space. Right now, I'm focused on getting the information up in a somewhat accessible manner. If you are looking to answer a specific question about a particular item, let me know and I can reshoot it for you.

You may also spot some cat hair from Orion or Cricket.

Carabiner Information

Carabiner information in parentheses () is placeholder info, and I'm researching the correct/original info. This is most commonly found in carabiner names and version numbers.

My apologies for any errors, if you see one or can point me to relevant information please reach out. Opinions are my own, from the perspective of a tree climber, rock climber and ropes course professional.

I also need to read more industry papers to help refine some of the terminology I use to describe design aspects, as well as classification criteria for those terms.

Other Fixes and Future Plans

Lastly, I plan on working to improve table sorting and filtering, but it's functional for now, especially when combined with a browser's native Find-on-Page function.

If you want access to the raw tabular data for some reason, that can be arranged.