New Alp Ring

Technical details:

Olivier Peron Caillet sent me this New Alp Ring in 2008.

The New Alp Ring is an anodixed aluminum torus with a D-shaped cross section, with the flat surface on the outer diameter. The Ring has a 55 mm. o.d., 40 mm. i.d., and is 10 mm thick. Mine weighs 27 g.

There are no markings on the ring.

Comments:

According to the instructions, the Ring is used to allow rappelling on doubled 8.5 mm. ropes with a Figure Eight. The instructions say to clip into the rope hole (the large hole) on your eight, and then pull a double bight through the eight's eye and then through the ring, and secure it with a single locking carabiner.

This sounds nice but there is a problem: what brand figure eight does this work with? Out of the 137 different eights that I had at the time I wrote this, only four had an eye that was over 35 mm. tall, and of these, only the Faders Classic had an eye with a suitable shape. The Ring's instructions did not show an eared eight, but there are a few of these that might work with the ring. Out of the 83 eared eaights that I had available, only the Fusion and the Kong Big "8s" seemed to match the Ring's size - and these eights are large enough to allow double-wrap rappels. So unless New Alp made or makes a matching figure eight that I don;t know about, I don't really see why one needs the New Alp Ring.