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Rescue 8
Small Rescue 8
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I acquired my Mad Rock Rescue 8 from Alonzo Guerra in 2012.
The Mad Rock Rescue 8 is forged from aluminum alloy and then soft anodized. Mine is 171 mm. tall, 171 mm. wide, and 16 mm. thick. The rope hole is 65 mm. high and 72 mm. wide. The top center thickness is 13 mm. The shaft length and width are 48 mm. and 41 mm., respectively. The auxiliary hole is 32.1 mm. high and 16.3 mm. wide. The eye measures 37 mm. by 40 mm. The ears are 32.5 mm. long. My Mad Rock Rescue 8 weighs 258 g.
One side of my Mad Rock Rescue 8 is printed with "MAD ROCK," "EXCEEDS NFPA," and "45kN."
The Mad Rock Rescue 8 is one of the following family of nearly identical forged aluminum rescue eights with ears:
Some of these eights are made in Europe, and some in Asia. Some are rebranded eights made by one manufacturer for others.
Each of these eights is 170±1 mm. tall and 170±2 mm. wide. Their weights fall in the 269±20 g. range. Although similar, these eights are not identical, and close inspection will reveal some minor differences in their shapes. Thickness variations account for much of the wide weight range. None of these affect their performance to any noticeable degree.
The Climbing Technology Ltd. eight is similar, but the ears are shaped differently. The Climb Right, Version B has a similar design, but it is a milled eight and is significantly smaller. There are several Kong steel eights that also have similar designs, some about the same size as the Kong Big "8" (805.06) in the table, some smaller.
The eyes and ears on these eights are larger than they need to be for most uses. The belay slot is a reasonable size for a Sticht slot, and insetting part of the slot into the useless portion of the upper rope hole reduces the length of the eight.
Like all rescue eights, these are too large and too heavy for an individual-use eight, and I see no reason to choose them in normal caving or climbing applications. I don't interfere with natural selection, not wanting to deal with the politics, but I question whether these are really the best option for rescue applications. They can be used, but there are smaller and lighter devices that will work better for anything I'm likely to do. The bigger-is-better crowd seems to like them, but I don't rappel on battleship mooring hawsers and I have no need for these.
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Small Rescue 8|
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I acquired my Mad Rock Small Rescue 8 from Mad Rock in 2009.
The Mad Rock Small Rescue 8 is forged from aluminum alloy and then soft anodized. Mine is 109 mm. tall, 80 mm. wide, and 19 mm. thick. This is a bent eight, if it were flat, the thickness would be only 11 mm. The rope hole is 35 mm. high and 53 mm. wide. The top center thickness is 11 mm. The shaft length and width are 35 mm. and 25 mm., respectively. The eye measures 20 mm. by 25 mm. The ears are 13.1 mm. long. My Mad Rock Small Rescue 8 weighs 91 g.
The convex side of the shaft on my Mad Rock Small Rescue 8 is printed with "MAD ROCK" and the concave side has "kN25" in raised forged letters.
This is one of the following family of nearly identical "mini"-size figure eights with ears:
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Each of these eights is 109±1 mm. tall and 80±1 mm. wide. Their weights fall in the 89±5 g. range. Although similar, these eights are not identical, and close inspection will reveal some minor differences in their shapes. None of these affect their performance to any noticeable degree.
These eights are smaller and much lighter than most figure eights with ears. While the advantages are manifest, there are two practical disadvantages:
The holes in the ears provide a place to tie a keeper cord, if you believe in such things. To me, the nuisance of keeping the keeper away from the main rope outweighs their value.
The rope hole is shorter than normal, so these eights may provide too much friction on stiff or muddy ropes. If these were flat (like the similar Kailas Multi 8), they would create more friction than most eights. The bend allows them to be rigged two ways with differing amounts of friction, one with less friction than the Kailas and one with more.
Other small eights have similar bends. Examples are the Chouinard
Version B, Faders Versions A and B, Frendo
Version B, and the Trango Penta. The significant difference is that this eight and its equivalents also have ears. Better yet, the ears are placed low where they can function effectively without increasing the size of the eight. The idea behind ears is that they reduce the chance of an eight girth-hitching. They are not strictly needed, as girth hitching is neither likely nor more than a minor nuisance to a competent user. For eared eights, I like this design enough to give each example a star.
Mad Rock calls this a "Small Rescue 8," but it does not fit my idea of a "rescue 8," whatever that is.
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