Truly Tested: Spinner Leash

By Dougald MacDonald

North face of Andrews Tower, RMNP. Photo by Greg Sievers

Since last spring, I’ve been using  the Black Diamond Spinner to tether my leashless ice tools. I went mostly leashless a few years ago, and I’ve always worried about dropping a tool on big climbs. In fact, I’ve had a couple of scary bobbles. The Spinner is a sweet solution to the leashless dilemma. It girth-hitches to your belay loop with a 360° swivel device to minimize tangles, and it’s outfitted with easy-to-use clips for your tools and bungied tethers that extend for high placements.

I find these tethers slightly too short for long reaches on steep ice; you have to stretch the bungie a bit to get it to full length—it’s a minor exertion, but who needs any extra effort on vertical ice? Maybe BD should make a “long” for tall people.

But these tethers aren’t really designed for short ice and mixed routes—they really come into their own on multipitch routes and alpine climbs, when dropping a tool could be disastrous, and on such routes the Spinner definitely eased my mind. I could climb quicker without having to worry every second about dropping a tool. Sometimes I’d even let one tool hang from its tether, like an aid-climbing hammer, while I fiddled with gear or bare-handed a move; however, I’ve concluded that this is a really bad habit, and now I’m striving to avoid it. Only occasionally did the tethers get in my way, and now and then I had to untwist them, but I think this is just a matter of learning how best to use such leashes; it’s not a flaw of the Spinner set-up. (At 1:22 in this video, you can see a demonstration of one good technique.)

The Spinner tethers are rated to 2kN—that’s probably not enough to hold a fall if your feet cut out and you drop hard onto your tool, but it’s more than enough for body weight, which does offer a measure of comfort. That said, BD’s quality-assurance ace, Kolin Powick, has written a mild rant on this specific topic. His bottom line: Tethers are to keep your tools from dropping, not to keep you from falling. Fair enough, but I’m still happy to have that extra protection.

The Fang grips that I’d installed on my old Viper tools covered the clip-in holes, so I had to thread a loop of thin nylon tape behind the Fangs as clip-in points; they’re ugly, but they work fine. Newer Viper and Cobra tools don’t have this issue.

All in all, the Spinner is a great simple tool at $49.95—a total bargain for the peace of mind it offers to leashless climbers.

Colorado MoJo only reviews  gear that has been tested extensively in the mountains. We welcome reader reviews and comments.