How to Clip a Quickdraw Carabiner

A quickdraw, in rock climbing parlance, has nothing to do with your ability to draw a gun and shoot fast. Instead it refers to two carabiners joined by a length of nylon, Dyneema or other load-bearing material. This length of load-bearing material between the carabiners is called a dogbone. One carabiner of the quickdraw is meant to be clipped into a bolt fixed in a rock or climbing gym wall, while the rope is clipped into the carabiner at the other end of the quickdraw to catch a potential fall as you climb.

Things You'll Need

  • Quickdraw
  • Climbing rope
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Instructions

    • 1

      Clip the straight gate carabiner of the quickdraw into the bolt. If you're climbing inside a gym you can usually skip this step, as gym quickdraws are often permanently fixed in place.

    • 2

      Grap the rope as close to your harness as possible and run your hand down it until you're able to pull up about an arm's length of slack. If you have to pull up more than than much slack to reach the quickdraw with the rope, it usually means you're trying to clip from too far down and should climb a bit higher before clipping the quickdraw.

    • 3

      Press the rope into the carabiner on the dangling end of the quickdraw; this carabiner is often distinguish from the bolt-end carabiner by having either a bent gate or a wire gate or both. There are several different ways of clipping the rope into the carabiner; the simplest may be to hold the rope against the gate of the carabiner with the fingers of your hand and squeeze, applying pressure against the spine of the carabiner with your thumb. This squeezes the gate of the carabiner open and causes the rope to fall right into it.

    • 4

      Check to make sure that the rope is correctly oriented in the quickdraw carabiner. As you climb up past the quickdraw, the rope should enter the carabiner from the back (against the rock wall) from the bottom and then pass out the front of the carabiner (away from the rock wall) up toward you. If the rope is oriented the other way around--emerging upward from the back of the carabiner--this is called backclipping and is a very dangerous practice; see Resources for an illustration of why backclipping is so dangerous.