Front View	Rear View

Technical details

I acquired this Edelweiss Diablo from Jose Benavides in 2024.

The Edelweiss Diablo is milled from aluminum alloy plate and then hard anodized. Mine is 188 mm. tall, 76 mm. wide, 11 mm. thick, and weighs 139 g. It has a 92 mm. tall, 55 mm. wide irregular comma-shaped opening, two 38 mm. long, 12.7 mm. wide belay slots, and a15.5 mm. circular eye. There are two horn sat the top of the Diablo that outline a 39 mm. wide, 10 mm. tall open-top "slot."

One side is milled with "DIABLO" and "EDELWEISS." The other side is milled with a climber icon, a book-with-an-"i," a hand-holding-a0rope icon, and "S16309."

Comments

The irregular slot on the Diablo is modeled after the one on the Cassin Logic. It is different from a slotted ("Sticht") plate or belay tube, so it is important to read the instructions. Unfortunately, my Diablo didn't come with any instructions and I was not able to locate any written instructions online. I found a video "Diablo : démonstration assurage auto-freinant avec corde à simple" on Vimeo that shows how to belay with the Diablo.

Unlike the very similar Cassin Logic, you do not want to run the rope over the upper horn while belaying, since it will not "fall off" as it does with the Logic. The Edelweiss THE 9 has a similar comma-shaped slots and I have directions for its use; however, the Diablo lacks the lower horn found on THE 9, so they do not fully apply to the Diablo.

The two slots allow using the Diablo as an oversized Sticht Plate.

Although versatile, the Diablo is one of the largest and heaviest belay plates in my collection. I would rather use a normal Sticht plate to save size and weight.

History

The earliest reference (dated June 16, 2009) that I've found for the Diablo is "Démonstration assureur Diablo et dégaine Panic" on the Compagnie des Moniteurs d'Escalade du Littoral (CMEL) blog. Archived Edelweiss web pages from February of that year do not show the Diablo, so I tentatively place the development of the Diablo in the first half of 2009.

On September 30, 2010, CMEL uploaded "Le Diablo à différentes étapes de fabrication" to Vimeo.

Gertjan van Pelt of CanyonZone sent me a picture of one in December 2009, saying

Do you already have experience with the Edelweiss Diablo, the new belay device from this company? In the Netherlands it is not available yet.

I wrote to Edelweiss in October 2010 to see if I could obtain a Diablo. They replied,

Thank you for contacting us. I regret to let you know that the Diablo is currently not available.

I interpreted that to mean that it was no longer available. Whether this was correct or not, I let the matter slide.

In October 2011, CMEL posted "Usages basiques du Diablo" on their blog.

The Internet Archive for the Edelweiss Web site is sketchy between early 2009 and mid-2012. After mid-2012, the archive improves. I was not able to find a record of the Diablo on the archived site after that time.

Olivier Peron Caillet wrote to me in February 2013 saying

I've bought a Diablo of Edelweiss, it seems to be a very interesting device, universal : 2 devices in 1 (Logic Cassin and Gi-Gi Kong ) and cheap : 19 €.

IMHO a better choice than:

• - ATS Sterling (not autolock for the leader)
• - Mascott Alptech (for small ropes only)
• - Twin Cassin (small ropes only)
• - Hydrobot Kong (not autolock descender)

Shortly thereafter Olivier sent me contact information for Mike Curz, the Diablo's inventor, saying that I could get a Diablo directly from him,. Due to many things happening at that time, I was unable to contact Mike and missed the opportunity to get a Diablo while they were still available.