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Dave gives the new Wild Country Proton Quickdraw a test out and overview.
The Proton is Wild Country’s most complete sports climbing karabiner, tuned to perform in the toughest arenas.
Performance****
Style *****
Value
The first thing I’d like to point out that the quickdraws we were sent for review are not the same colour as the retail one’s. So please do not go looking for black and white draws – they will retail with the grey draw. The carabiners, however are the same as the retail version.
The Wild Country Proton is a quickdraw designed for sport climbing and has features that are well suited for that purpose. The look remarkably similar in design to the DMM Alpha Sport quickdraws we reviewed earlier in the year. There are however, small design differences that set them apart.
The quickdraw has a great 25mm sewn draw that was easy to grab and pull up on. The ends were narrower to accommodate the carabiners. The webbing had a compimentary colour scheme that looked really nice and gave a quality experience. Lots of bar tack stitching gave complete confidence in the 22kN rating.
The carabiners had a great clipping action and I couldn’t fault them, the ergonomic back bar fitted snugly against my forefinger for both clipping into bolts and feeding the rope into them. I particularly liked the bent gate, which is more pronounced than the DMM Alpha Pro. The straight gate had a curved feature that added a little extra friction and held the gate open when held in a stick.
The Wild Country Proton didn’t hold open as securely as I would have liked in my clipstick (I was using a BetaStick for the test) as when it knocked against a bolt or I was fumbling the gate snapped closed. So this could be an area that would benefit from a small redesign in future models.
At the other end the bentgate carabiner was held securely in place using the ‘Vice’. This worked very well, looked robust and the carabiner never moved on. I would not advise taking the biner out as it was absolutely desperate to get back on again!
Both carabiners had wide internal surface areas to maximise rope and bolt placement as well as being engineered for weight reduction.
We had a couple of 17cm draws for test and the range comes in 3 lengths 12, 17 and 25cms with the 17cm draw weighing in at 121g. They also come in sets of 5
So overall a great sport climbing quickdraw and addition to the Wild Country range. They will work well in all sport climbing situations whether you are cranking a hard redpoint in Water Cum Jolly, on sighting 40m routes in Catalunya or steaming your way up multi pitch heaven in the Wilder Kaiser the Wild Country Proton quickdraw will be a high quality addition to your rack.
SRP: £12cm – £19, 17cm – £19.50, 25cm – £20, Sets of 5 12cm £88 and 17cm £90
Climbing Gear Reviews 
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