Not that we dream about travel water bottles… That’d be weird. We definitely do not do that, just to be clear. The word carabiner is etymologically rooted in the German phrase for “spring-hook” and was originally a means for riflemen to keep their “carbine” slung over their shoulder and at the ready. The design was adopted by firefighters and eventually made its way into the mountaineering world through one Otto “Rambo” Herzog in 1911. The size, weight, and strength of your carabiner are all intimately tied up, but relationships might not be as straightforward as you assume. There are many different philosophies that you use to approach your gear selection, and your own personal climbing style is going to have the biggest impact on the gear you select. Today, any collapsible water bottle worthy of your attention will have BPA-free materials, typically polyethylene, TPU, or silicone, which provides the collapsible flex for easy storage. Look for ones with reinforced seams, which improve the bottle’s durability, and smart features like clips and carrying handles that can double to keep the bottle compressed when collapsed. For carabiners, form is very much related to function, and the shape of your carabiner can impact everything from the clipping action, to load distribution, and even the baseline structural strength. The first carabiners were pear and oval shaped, and while these designs are still often employed by contemporary climbers, there are a few newer shapes that you’ll see a lot of in your time at the local crag. D Shape

We have, however, been testing this Vapur Eclipse Water Bottle for over a year, and we’ve been thoroughly enjoying it. Let’s dive into the review. Vapur Eclipse Water Bottle Shape - When it comes to carabiners there are 4 main shapes used by most climbers and then a number of custom shapes that have been adopted by company’s creating “carabiner-like” products. We’re going to leave the quasi-biners out of the discussion and focus only on the standard accepted shapes for climbing biners. If this is really important to you, it could be worth getting. You can always store it in a separate part of your bag and only attach it when necessary. But in our testing, we never really had a need for it. If you have a dishwasher, cleaning this bottle is pretty damn simple—you can just pop it in and you’re good to go. If you don’t have a dishwasher (ie; you’re traveling) it’s still pretty damn simple. We’ve just been filling it up with warm soapy water, letting it soak a while, and then giving it a good rinse. (A really good rinse… You don’t want to be drinking soapy water.) Any recreational climber within most disciplines will use offset D shaped carabiners far more than any other style out there. It’s basically the same as a basic D shape, but tapered in such a way as to save weight and maximize the ease of clipping. You can never really have enough of them.Occasionally you’ll hear this shape referred to as an HMS carabiner, in reference to their compatibility with a Munter hitch belay. The wide, flat head of the carabiner makes it a great masterpoint option. Be prepared on your adventures with our premium stainless steel Carabiner 500ml water bottle! We combine the convenience of a disposable plastic bottle with the reliable and eco-friendly benefits of a reusable bottle. The Carabiner bottle is suitable for all cool drinks- from water to juice. In the following guide, we’ll outline the major types of carabiners by shape, gate, strength, and other qualifying factors. In addition, we’ll try to recommend the best type of carabiner per activity and hopefully decrypt some of the industry jargon that comes along with any outdoor activity. Shapes A: They can and they will if you employ one that isn’t made for climbing or you’re using climbing clips in critical spots that don’t have a sufficient kN rating and you ask it to catch a large climber. Keep in mind too that (real) carabiners are rated along both their major (long) axis and their minor (narrow) axis. If you have the carabiner employed in such a way that the force of a falling climber would be brought upon the narrow axis there’s a good chance it’s going to fail if asked to catch someone. So how you deploy the biner is as important as the biner you deploy. Q: How many carabiners do I need for climbing?

The modern carabiner gave climbers a dependable way to fix their rope to the belaying device or the wall without having to tie in or run a rope through the piton they had just hammered into the wall. Carabiners have the added advantage of speed and single-hand operation, a definite boon regardless of their application. You’ll occasionally see other specialty carabiners in your climbing life. Prime examples are the wide opening carabiners you’ll see on ziplines and via ferratas or multidirectional carabiners that are built to specifically withstand loading in a few directions Gate Types Aaaand here’s where the wins end. (Sorry—we’ve got to be honest about this stuff. It’s kind of our job.) The asymmetric D - This is far and away the most popular carabiner shape. This type of biner typically has a slightly larger gate opening than a standard D which makes hooking ropes etc that much easier.For the second year running, this bottle takes the best filter prize. The Brita Stainless Steel Filter Bottle is sleek, leakproof, and very well-insulated. There are multiple color options, and the design of the lid makes it easy to clean. The silicone bite straw is a nice shape and texture that feeds oral fixation. The flip cap is the most effective and functional of any bottle with this feature. It's lightweight and light on the wallet compared to others in the category. Before testing, we didn't even realize how useful a filter bottle could be to everyday life. Vapur’s newest innovation is offering a filter straw for their bottles. This clips into the cap, allowing you to fill up the bottle with “dirty” water, and have it filter the water as you drink. We’ve found this to be just “okay” in practice—mainly because a LifeStraw is a lot better in terms of flavor. The Vapur filter will filter all of the bacteria and whatnot, but it won’t change the flavor, which isn’t ideal. Vapur Eclipse Water Bottle With Filter Harness - Carabiners and state-of-the-art ropes are all very well and good but without a harness you’re not going anywhere (that is, if you have any sense). The harness is your connection to the protection system. The rope attaches to the carabiner which attaches to the forward loop on the harness. The harness goes around your waist and extends down to grab hold of the upper portion of your legs. If you fall, which will likely happen at some point, the harness keeps you from plummeting to a nasty end. The Hydro Flask Wide Mouth with Straw takes home this year's Editors' Choice award. This honorary trophy is well deserved for a contender that is best in class across the board. It is impressively well-insulated and has one of the best feature sets of any bottle we've tested. Once the scores were in, it was clear that this bottle stood above the rest. The open mouth and simple construction make the Hydro Flask easy to clean. We love the easy breezy flip-up straw cap. And with a comfortable finger carry loop, you barely need to lift a finger to tote it around. From a branding perspective, regardless of what color or style you choose you’re going to get one Vapur logo. Nothing crazy, and we like that. As far as materials go, these are made with a BPA-free polyethylene and nylon that’s welded at the edges to hold it together. And while the Eclipse comes in two different sizes—one-liter and 0.7 liters—they’re both basically the same size when compressed. The majority of the space is taken up by the carabiner and the cap with just a little bit of extra fabric that’s rolled up. Vapur Eclipse Water Bottle Collapsed

The Vapur Eclipse Water Bottle is great for what it is—an ultra compressible water bottle that is optimized for travel. It just may be the water bottle of our dreams. The simple and supported design makes them the strongest of all of the different carabiner shapes, provided the spine is carrying the brunt of the burden. They’re a straightforward and utilitarian option that can find suitable applications in many different styles of climbing. You will find carabiners made from aluminum and those made from stainless steel. There are carabiners that are oval-shaped and those that have an asymmetric D-shape. Size - Carabiners come in all different sizes. This is especially true now that the market it being flooded with lots of quasi-carabiners designed to hold keys and potted plants instead of falling climbers. From a practical standpoint the larger the carabiner the easier it is to manipulate. And that’s particularly important if you’re 200 feet up an ice fall trying to hook a biner into a screwhead with hands that are numb because you’ve been extending them up over your head for an hour. But large carabiners aren’t to everyone’s liking. You really need to try a few different sizes with and without gloves and get a feel for which works best for you hand. Typically the more experienced the climber the wider the range of sizes they’ll employ.

D shaped carabiners were another one of the major early contributions made to carabiners as climbing protection, making its first appearance sometime in the ’40s. They’re designed to shift the load towards the strong spine of the carabiner, and also help to mitigate any accidental loading of the gate that might happen from shifting.