It’s important to make informed decisions when buying gear that you’re going to rappel from. I’ve made the following guide based on my own personal experience to help you get what you need.
My top eight tips for buying rappel gear are:
- Educate yourself
- Research before you buy
- Explore used equipment
- Go to a store with a good return policy
- Only use trusted brands
- It’s worth spending for your gear to last longer
- Know when it’s time to replace your gear
- If required, buy gear that’s activity-specific
These tips are designed to ensure that you make educated, well-informed decisions when buying gear. The purchase of gear is so important because it ensures your safety when you go out; by buying high quality brands and knowing what you need, you can minimize the chances that you get in to an accident when rappelling. Some of the tips are pretty self explanatory, but read below if you want to expand on them!
1. Educate Yourself First
One of the most important things before you walk into a store or log on to a website is to make sure you know what you’re shopping for. When I was buying my first set of climbing/rappelling gear, I walked in completed unprepared with basically no idea of what I was looking for. To a beginner, gear stores can be super disorienting: they’re jam-packed with confusing looking equipment and product descriptions that just don’t make sense.
Because of this, it’s essential that you educate yourself before you head out. Some resources I would recommend using:
- Online sites such as Mountain Project or their forums
- Climbing.com— great source for all kinds of articles, from beginner posts to handy tips.
- Books such as Mountaineering— The Freedom of the Hills can have entire chapters on rappelling
- Youtube videos provide great tutorials and can be handy for visual learners
- This site and others such as Don’tDieRappelling and Rockulus have lots of great information on them
You want to learn enough so that when you go shopping, you have the ability to make educated decisions. Cover the basics concerning what rappelling is, what dangers it presents, and what gear you need to mitigate those dangers.
Another really helpful source of information can be the people who work at the stores. Employees of outdoor brands usually tend to enjoy the outdoors too, and they’ll sometimes have year’s of personal experience that they can draw on to help you. Just a quick heads up, though: learn to differentiate between the information and opinions that employees will give you. Information you should listen to; opinions can be weighed, but shouldn’t be fully relied on.
2. Research Brands Online
Aside from just getting the basic information, you’ll want to know a little bit more about what you’re buying before you chose to commit hundreds of dollars.
Product review sections on Amazon are a great way to read what other people are saying about the gear you want to buy. Sometimes they can act as a really good red flag if a piece of gear is poorly designed or dangerous. I would say this is pretty rare, though, because most outdoor companies put their products through rigorous testing before they release it on the market.
More often, these sites are really good for finding the personal preferences of people who have purchased the gear. Say, for example, you’ve got your eye on a helmet, but your head tends to be in the smaller range. If you read a bunch of reviews online saying how the helmet fits large, you can save yourself the time of having to drive to the store and try it on.
There are also a few really good websites like Outdoor Gear Lab that provide not only in-depth reviews, but also product comparisons and recommendations. Using these can give you a more holistic view of what your options are for any given piece of equipment, and can help you make an informed decision based on personal preferences.
3. Look at Buying Used
Now, this one is a little bit more specific, because I only recommend it for specific pieces of gear.
The general rule I use is this: if your like is going to depend on something, DO NOT BUY IT USED. That means rope, harness, helmet…. put forwards the extra money and buy it from the store. Make sure the packaging is still on it. Trace it back to the warehouse, if you must (I’m kidding, but you get the sentiment).
The problem with buying used gear is you can never quite be sure what it’s been through in its previous ownership. A rope may look perfectly fine on the outside, but if someone’s been using it for years, the interior core could be damaged beyond repair. Harnesses are the same way. When it comes to safety, it’s just not worth taking the risk.
That being said, there are some pieces of gear where buying used can save you a lot of money. For example, clothes and backpacks can often be found online at heavily discounted prices and still be in excellent working condition. If you have a piece of gear in mind that you want to buy, consider doing a quick search to see if you can get it used.
So where do you find these hidden gems? Online classifieds like Craigslist or Kijiji are excellent sources. Facebook will also often have local buy-or-swap groups that can be climbing-focussed; spending enough time in these will turn up some sweet deals for rappelling gear. Finally, some stores like MEC or REI often do garage-sale events where people bring their old gear in and offer it at discounted prices.
4. Go to a Store With a Good Return Policy
One of the things about outdoor gear is that you often don’t know how something is going to perform until you get to see it in action. Just recently, I returned a pair of climbing shoes because they were way too tight on my toes, and I was able to get a full refund despite the fact that I had used them a couple of times.
Both MEC and REI, two of the most popular outdoors outlets, have rock-solid return policies that allow you to bring your gear into the field and use it before making a final decision. This allows you to see how your stuff will perform under real conditions.
Picture this: you go in to a store, try on a harness, and then decide it’s comfortable. After using it on a couple of rappels, however, you discover that when hanging from the harness— a position you didn’t have the opportunity to try while in store— one of the buckles digs in to your leg. If you don’t watch the return policy, you might be stuck with a piece of gear that’s uncomfortable and difficult to use.
Just a heads up about this tip and the one above: if you buy used gear, even from an accredited retailers, they usually have a no-returns policy. That’s another reason why I wouldn’t recommend buying any of your essential gear while used.
5. Use Only Trusted Manufacturers
This follows the same line of logic as my recommendation for buying all of your safety gear new: your life isn’t worth saving a few dollars.
Look, I get it. Climbing gear is expensive. Like, insultingly expensive. Do I feel like I’m getting ripped off when I pay $300 for a rope? Yeah, I do. I feel like I’m being scammed.
The thing is, I’m not. Climbing gear is expensive because of the extreme lengths that manufacturers go to make sure their gear is safe. This includes years of r&d, scrutinizing quality control tests, and rigorous testing to meet the requirements set by both their internal guidelines and external safety regulations. Meeting these requirements inflates the cost for a company, and that’s why they need to charge you so much.
There’s a lot of shady websites out there who promise to get you gear for lower prices, be it a harness or a rappel device. I can’t stress enough how bad of an idea it is to order your stuff from a website that you’re not familiar with. Sure, it may be cheaper, but you have no idea what kind of safety tests have been done on the gear, or what kind of corners they may be cutting so that they can provide it at such a reduced price.
So, what brands can you trust? Here are a list of my personal favourites for buying rappelling gear from:
- Black Diamond
- Petzl
- La Sportiva
- Arcteryx
- Metolius
- Mammut
Those are the big-name manufacturers who have year’s of experience producing high-quality gear. However, as I stated above, don’t just take my word for it; do independent research before you buy and see what other people are saying.
Just because a piece of gear didn’t make the above list doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s going to be bad. In general, if a trusted retailer— like MEC, REI, Atmosphere, or any of the other large stores— carries the gear, it’s safe to assume that you can use it. If you’re ever unsure, reach out for expert advice.
6. Spend a Little Extra, Use a Little Longer
This relates to what I was saying above in terms of paying for the quality. As I stated, it has important implications in terms of longevity, but it can also matter for how long you plan to hold on to the gear.
The fact of the matter is, rappelling gear gets worn down fairly quickly. I know personal, I demand a lot of my tools; I use them in some pretty extreme environments, and I put them through some pretty rigorous conditions. Using gear like that can wear it down fairly quickly, so the replacement life for rappelling gear tends to be fairly short.
In that light, it makes sense to splurge a little extra and get something that’s truly high quality. When you find a piece of gear that you really like, you don’t want to have to worry about replacing it in eight month’s time— especially in a modern retail environment where product lines tend to be foreshortened. Paying a little extra up front may seem tough when you’re at the store, but I promise that it can save you in the long run.
Another good benefit to this is that it’s more environmental! The more often you replace your gear, the more frequently you’re creating waste. By hanging on to stuff longer, you’re helping to keep materials out of landfill.
7. Know When It’s Time To Replace
This tip might seem contradictory to the one above, but they actually go hand in hand.
Once of the hardest decisions to make for your climbing gear is knowing when to replace it. You’re constantly walking a fine line between not prematurely jumping the gun and spending unnecessarily money, and potentially heading out into the wilderness with an unsafe piece of gear (which you want to avoid at all costs).
There are some general rules to follow that can tell you when it’s time to replace something. I don’t have time to cover all of them here, but some of the more common ones:
- Helmets are only rated for one large impact. If you ever hit your head and think to yourself ‘Gee, that could have been bad if I wasn’t wearing a helmet’— time to get a replacement.
- If you ever take a factor two fall, immediately retire every piece of gear involved.
- Check your rope at the beginning of each season for core shots, sheath separations, or any tears that expose the inner section.
- If the webbing on your harness is frayed, it’s time to start shopping for a new one.
The above rules are just general tips; make sure you do your own research and educate yourself before you commit to a piece of gear. Some manufacturers, like Petzl, are making life easier for everyone by including visible wear indicators on their gear— strips of red that show once a piece of webbing is too worn out to be safe. Don’t count on this, though; you should always know enough to make a judgement call by yourself, without any outside influence.
8. Know What You’re Buying For
Different activities require different types of gear, and if you’re not sure what you’re going to be using it for, you can end up spending a lot of money for the wrong stuff.
This post is about rappelling, but even that itself is a fairly broad category. You need to know the specifics. Are you waterfall rappelling? Are you caving? Does your rope need to be dry treated? Do you want a rappel device that can second as an ascender? How long do you need to carry the gear for? How important is weight?
Answering all of those questions is an important step before you head out to the store. If you have a specific activity in mind— say, waterfall rappelling— then you should know the specific gear you’ll need for that activity, like a waterproof pack and a dry treated rope.
At the same time, though, you don’t necessarily need to have all of the answers. A lot of gear will function perfectly well in a more general role; if you’re just getting in to rappelling and you want to explore your options, it’s okay to just buy generalist gear and learn as you go. So, don’t be scared if you’re a beginner and don’t have all of the answers. If you’ve got something specific in mind, however, it’s important to know which pieces of gear will and won’t work for that activity.
A few general rules:
- If you’re going to be around waterfalls, prepare for the fact that all of your gear is going to get soaked (and this might make it less safe, depending on what gear it is)
- Similar to above, any gear that you want to use in winter should be water-resistant
- If you’re going caving, your belay device should work as an ascender and a descender
- If you’re rappelling to lower yourself from a climb, bring a device that can perform dual-rope rappels so that you don’t have to leave any gear behind
So there you go! Those are my tips on buying gear for rappelling.