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If you geek-out hard about alpine climbing gear, you will have noted that many manufacturers have begun to develop handy, moveable, pinky or trigger rests for Mountaineering axes. Some of the more popular axes with this feature are the Grivel air tech evo (equipped with the “slider”) and the Petzl Aztarex.
Grivel Slider
The consensus has been that the Grivel slider (available as an accessory) is nice but the bungee attachment (that keeps the slider up when not in use) breaks leaving you with a rogue slider. The slider also requires some trickery to adapt to a non-Grivel tool.
And the stowable pinky rest on the aztarex, while slick, is a major pain to stow/deploy.
the Petzl Aztarex with deployable pinky rest
With all these issues with the oh-so important modular pinky rest… What is one to do? Enter the new Petzl Trigrest as featured on the new Sum’Tec…
Petzl Sumtec with trigrest
The Trigrest seems to be the best thing going to date for modular pinky rests. Although this gadget is most prominently featured on the new Petzl Sum’Tec (which was introduced to North America at the summer 08 Outdoor Retailer show), it is also available for purchase as an accessory. Best of all, it fits on my favorite axe the Black Diamond Venom! The orange tab acts as a sort of friction lock (I guess a bit like a quick release skewer on a bike? if you will)
Petzl Trigrest in low position on BD Venom
Trigrest in mid shaft position
Undoubtedly, Petzl did not have this application in mind when offering the Trigrest as a seperate piece. In fact, they explicitly state that it is made for the Quark and Aztar axes exclusively, it seems to work quite nicely on this and I assume any other similar sized axe. I prefer this to any other mod out there that I have seen, becuase it does not require drilling and is comparatively inexpensive.
I’ll keep you updated on how it all works out in the mountains…
Mike
August 27, 2009 at 3:03 pm
After being a loyal user of the Grivel Slider for some time now, I recently had the opportunity to see what else was out there by playing around a bit with a colleague’s Sum’tec and Trigrest on a recent trip into the North Cascades. The verdict: The Sum’tec is great, but the Trigrest stinks. The beauty of the Slider is that it gives you a pinky rest and creates a genuinely viable leashless tool for swinging on steeper terrain. Obvious right? Too bad that’s exactly what the Trigrest doesn’t do. Unfortunately, the locking mechanism creates a bulky bulge on the back of the shaft, thus not allowing a real grip for swinging the tool, and making the pinky rest pretty much useless except in the mid-shaft piolet manche position, which isn’t really what you need it for. Boo. I say drill some holes in your axe if you have to, apply some machine screws to stop the Slider, use a little beefy bungee cord on the head and the Slider is still the best thing out there. Three mountain guides agree… {C}