Wild Country
Helium (v2)

This 2nd generation of the Wild Country Helium's highly evolved design perfectly encapsulates the characteristics of a modern top-tier hot forged aluminum wiregate carabiner. Without a change in materials or radical change in design, it will be hard to produce a significantly lighter carabiner without downsizing the overall size or reducing the rope bearing depth - fundamentally changing the feel and operation.

A full hood provides clean clipping and unclipping, although it does suffer from a bulky nose typical of clean nose wire gates. The original Helium was the first I-beam carabiner - the hot-forging places material where needed for sufficient strength, but minimize weight and still provide a well radiused rope bearing surface. The fit and finish on the Helium are excellent.

This is the 2nd generation of Heliums, as it uses a 2mm rounded gate wire - earlier models were pictured with a flattened section at the top of the gate's bend. That flat style was pictured on the WC website through 2015, before a major website update in 2016 shows the rounded wire (but still not the updated nose of the 3rd gen design.