Edelrid Pure Slider

CGR road tests the wonderfully engineered Elderid Pure Sliders for their Vorsprung Durch Technik

Performance ****

Quality*****

Value****

I must confess that when the Edelrid Pure Slider landed on the desk I got very excited (but then I get excited over a pair of approach shoes), they looked absolutely brilliant. Super sleek, awesomely engineered and I just couldn’t stop opening and closing them.

The Edelrid Pure Slider is the new self-locking carabiner from a German climbing company steeped in history. We have tested plenty of Edelrid products and always found them to be excellent quality and the Pure Slider was no exception.

Hot forged and sporting a solid gate the Pure Slider could easily be mistaken for a normal carabiner and with a bit of practice you could use them that way.  They are outrageously light for a locking carabiner with a stated weight of 42g, the CGR scales weighed one in at 44g so you definitely won’t feel them weighing you down. It has a strength rating of 23kN with the gate closed and 8kN for gate open and across the gate and is reinforced in all key areas. The keylock closure was great as the biners didn’t snag on cord or wires.

Edelrid Pure Slider – easy to use and speeds up belay building.

The slider was extremely simple to operate-just slide down and push the gate open. This became automatic with just a little practice and was easy enough to operate with thin gloves on. Of course the typical human brain can conjure all sorts of scenarios in which the gate might accidently open, such as the rope sliding over the mechanism or a sling twisting over it. But in all my 30+ years of climbing I have never had any sort of carabiner accidently opening and the stories I hear are usually freak occurrences. So the probability is the locking mechanism will work perfectly well in most conditions – as it has for us throughout the test period.

The sleek nose didn’t snag and the slider was easy to operate.

We’ve been using these all season now and find them really useful in all sorts of summer conditions – belays, clipping the pack to the belay and in all situations that need a locking carabiner except for belaying (although the HMS Strike SafeLock would be ideal). They would be ideal whenever you feel you need to have a locked carabiner, on a traverse for the first runner, we’ve been using them as screwgate alternatives to great effect.

The only situation where we feel the Edelrid Pure Slider wouldn’t work is in winter climbing where we feel it would ice up pretty quickly and be difficult to release – but then I’ve had plenty of normal screwgates ice up. That said it’s interesting to get the view of Daniel Gebel, Head of Product DEvelopment at Edelrid, we’ve only used them in summer conditions and will schedule an update in the winter.

We all agree that they would be great for all Alpine and multi pitch climbing where weight saving is important. A few Edelrid Pure Sliders should be on the rack of any serious Alpine and multi pitch rock climber.

SRP: £16.00

Stockists

Why not receive our latest reviews and gear news via your inbox by following our blog: perfect for all gear freaks! Just sign up via the home page link in the sidebar. We never keep an email list (too much hassle – we’re out climbing) and we would never, ever pass your email address on to someone else (no, no, no that would be very unethical).