Front: Closed for Use	Front: Open for Rigging

Top: Closed for Use	Top: Open for Rigging

Side: Closed for Use	Side: Open for Rigging	Side: Half Open

Technical Details

Kevin M. Mai ZhongJie helped me acquire this #965 chest box from I Climb in 2023.

My I Climb #965 is 156 mm. wide, 58 mm. high, 78 mm. thick, and weighs 270 g.

The #965 is a single channel chest box consisting of a forged back plate, one roller, and a swinging gate with a push-button latch. The back plate is 5.2 mm. thick. It has 26 mm. tall vertical slots for attaching the box to a chest strap, 26 mm. wide horizontal slots for attaching shoulder straps, and a, 8 mm. hole below the rope channel that can be used to attach a bungy pulley. A shallow depression in the center helps keep the roller support block from rotating.

The roller is 40 mm. in diameter and 17.5 mm. wide. It has a 5.9 mm. deep, 13.5 mm. wide U-shaped circumferential groove that gives the roller a 28.2 mm. minor diameter. The roller axle is 8 mm. in diameter. It is riveted to a forged block attached to the back plate with a 10 mm. hex socket round head machine screw. The gate, to the user's left of the pulley, pivots on the roller axle. A spring-loaded, beveled pushbutton in the support block provides a gate latch. It must be depressed to open the gate, but the bevel allows closing the gate without pressing the button.

The box comes sewn into a rather nice chest harness.

The gate is printed with "iclimb®," a load diagram around the roller axle with one inward-pointing arrow labeled "24 kN O" and a semicircular arc with outward-pointing arrowheads each labeled "12 kN,".and "MAX Ø 13 mm." The support block is printed with "CE" and "EN12278."

Comments

The inner portion of the roller is farther from the back plate than it is for many chest boxes, so this box will not hold the climber as upright as many other boxes will.

The latch mechanism is nice, but it catches on a corner of the gate, requiring one to push the button a second time to open the gate. I find this to be annoying, and would rather file the gate to allow it to open with a single motion.

The supplied harness is nicely made, but with a massive back pad and four release buckles, it is too large and complicated for my taste.

There does not seem to be an EN standard for Chest Boxes for caving. The EN12278 standard is for pulleys, but defines "pulley" in a way that can apply to chest boxes used by mountaineers (but not cavers).

History

Yuan Hong Hing Co., Ltd. (元鴻興有限公司) is an ISO-certified Taiwanese firm. Their products' CE certifications are legitimate. The company did hot forging for Omega Pacific before Omega Pacific shut down. I Climb Safety is the brand name that Yuan Hong Hing Co. uses to appeal to Western markets.

In the summer of 2024 the I Climb web site showed the #965 with a new back-plate. The roller mechanism may be unchanged, but I'm not certain. I do not have one of these, nor have I tested one.