Petzl
Fifty years of French vertical-safety engineering, and the spine of most rope access kits — including ours.
Gear to be prepared for anything.
One manufacturer at a time — who owns them now, what they actually make, and who each one is not for.
one hundred thirty-one brands rated · forty-six guides · seventeen journal entries
Guides
Questions people actually ask
All forty-six guides →Can I use a climbing rope for tree work?
No. ANSI Z133-2017 requires an arborist climbing line of at least 1/2 inch (12.7 mm) with a minimum breaking strength of 5,400 pounds and working elongation no greater than 7 percent. A dynamic rock climbing rope is thinner, stretchier and built for a different job. Its sheath and stretch also make it a poor host for a friction hitch.
Read the guide →How does an avalanche beacon work?
An avalanche beacon is a 457 kHz radio that transmits a pulsed signal in send mode and receives it in search mode. A searching unit compares signal strength across two or three antennas to show direction and a distance number. That number tracks signal strength, not measured meters.
Read the guide →What do the numbers on a carabiner mean?
A carabiner carries three kN figures: major axis with the gate shut, minor axis, and major axis with the gate open. All three are breaking strengths measured by a slow pull in a lab, not working loads. The letter beside the standard number says which class of connector it was certified as.
Read the guide →Do you need a chartplotter if you have a phone?
Not always. A phone running a chart app is a capable navigator, and for a small open boat in familiar water it can be the primary. A chartplotter earns its place through integration: it is the display for radar, AIS, sonar and autopilot on the NMEA 2000 network, and it runs off ship's power.
Read the guide →Brands We Love
Who makes gear worth owning
All one hundred thirty-one brands →
Battle Born Batteries
Reno, Nevada — LiFePO4 house banks from a public company, which means every number on this page arrives with a date attached.
ACR Electronics
Fort Lauderdale, since 1956 — the rescue beacon that talks to a government satellite system and never asks for a subscription.
Sterling Rope
Maine-made life-safety cordage since 1992 — the rope the other five brands' hardware runs on.
Harken
Pewaukee, Wisconsin, since 1968 — two brothers, a plastic ball-bearing block, an Olympic sailing habit, and the employee-owned company that now owns SMC.
CAMP Safety
From a blacksmith's forge in Premana, 1889 — the brand that made professional PPE light enough to forget you're wearing it.
The Journal
Notes from the trail
All seventeen posts →
Carbon monoxide on boats: why half the victims were outdoors, and what a detector can't do
The space under a swim platform can hold six times the concentration that's immediately dangerous to life. A compliant marine CO alarm may take fifteen minutes to sound at a fraction of that. Both facts are true, and together they explain who the detector actually protects.
Your flares expire in 42 months. Almost nobody can tell you what to do with the old ones
Federal law requires you to carry visual distress signals, requires you to replace them every 42 months, and then goes quiet. Firing them off is a felony, the trash is illegal, and two counties in California will take them.
The only life jacket with an expiry date: inflatable PFDs, and who tells you when they fail
An inflatable PFD is the one piece of life-saving equipment aboard with consumable parts. It also sits outside the CPSC's jurisdiction, so there is no public recall database — which makes a manufacturer's own advisory archive the only systematic record that exists.