Hoodoo	Hoodoo SL

Overview

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Hoodoo
(#1481)

Front	Rear

Technical Details

I acquired my Hoodoo as a donation from On Rope Canyoneering LLC in 2016.

The Hoodoo is milled from aluminum alloy and then soft anodized. Mine is 159 mm. tall, 100 mm. wide, and 10 mm. thick. The rope hole is 30 mm. high and 44 mm. wide. The top center thickness is 10 mm. The shaft length and width are 62 mm. and 30 mm., respectively. The auxiliary hole is 45 mm. high and 11.9 mm. wide. The eye measures 12 mm. by 12 mm. and has an O-ring inset. The main ("T") ears are 39.5 and 39.5 mm. long, the top ears 14mm., and the bottom ears 10 mm. My Hoodoo weighs 157 g.

One side is printed with "HOODOO," "On Rope Canyoneering," "Ø:8mm - 10mm," "USA," "Pat. Pending," a book-with-an-"i" icon, and "0616A0001."

Comments

The Hoodoo is a canyoneering descender and it falls into my miscellaneous figure eights with ears category. I must say, it seems like the canyoneering folks are the ones inventing most of the interesting new devices lately (i.e., 2015-2016).

The rope hole is shorter than normal, so it may provide too much friction on stiff or muddy ropes.

The eye is small and there are many normal carabiners and maillons that will not fit through it. This is a fatal flaw, in my opinion. A tiny eye restricts versatility, and eliminates the option of using two carabiners for redundancy.

The eye has an annoying o-ring insert. In my mind, this is just a bad idea that won't go away.

• The o-ring keeps the Hoodoo from moving freely on the carabiner.
• It makes attaching and removing the Hoodoo more difficult.
• It catches in the notch in some of the carabiners that will fit.

Plan on dedicating a special carabiner if you want to use your Hoodoo.

Canyoneering descender designers and users may love o-ring eyes, but I hate them. O-ring eyes increase cost without providing a corresponding benefit. I see too many disadvantages to the small o-ring eye design and no advantages.

• Reducing the chance of dropping the device in one unlikely scenario by adding another item to drop doesn't count as an advantage, proper technique solves the dropping problem.
• I'm told that the tight o-ring guards against cross-loading and rollouts, but proper harness design and proper technique completely eliminate this concern.
• An o-ring eye may keep the orientation of the rappel device more stable when unloaded, which might help speed the process of coming off rope. The one place that I see this being relevant is if you're floating/treading in water over your head, but proper flotation is a much better and safer choice to address this concern.

You may disagree with me about o-ring eyes, I don't mind, but the undersize o-ring eye alone is sufficient for me to eliminate the Hoodoo from serious consideration.

The Hoodoo is one of a growing population of canyoneering descenders that are essentially figure eights with a multitude of horns and/or ears that provide a variety of friction arrangements by looping the rope around various combinations of horns. I find this idea to be rather humorous - how many different ways to rig a device does one need?

The value and need for horns strongly depends on the rope being used. On stiff mud-covered PMI pit rope, descending with an eight sometimes requires hand-feeding. At the other extreme, rappelling on clean, thin, polyethylene "strings" can be bloody fast, and one can appreciate almost anything that provides more friction.

To be fair, I see nothing fundamentally wrong with the concept of multiple horns, I just don't think their value offsets the increases in device size and complexity. One can debate whether adding horns to a constant-friction device is a better approach than using a variable friction device (or even a constant friction device that provides the right amount of friction for the user), but it really boils down to personal preference. I prefer to K.I.S.S.

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Hoodoo SL
(#2491)

Front	Rear

Technical Details

I acquired my Hoodoo SL on eBay from On Rope Canyoneering LLC in 2018.

The Hoodoo-SL is forged from aluminum alloy and then soft anodized. Mine is 125 mm. tall, 94 mm. wide, and 9 mm. thick. The rope hole is 30 mm. high and 42 mm. wide. The top center thickness is 9 mm. The shaft length and width are 52 mm. and 28 mm., respectively. The auxiliary hole is 36.3 mm. high and 12.1 mm. wide. The eye measures 14 mm. by 14 mm. and has an O-ring inset. The main ("T") ears are 36.5 mm. long and the bottom ears 21 mm. My Hoodoo weighs 157 g. The ears are 36.3 and 36.9 mm. long. My Hoodoo SL weighs 121 g.

One side is printed with "HOODOO," "SL," "On Rope Canyoneering," "Ø :8mm - 10mm," "USA," "Pat. Pending," a book-with-an-"i" icon, and "0618B1229."

Comments

The Hoodoo SL is a canyoneering descender and it falls into my miscellaneous figure eights with ears category.

The Hoodoo SL eliminates the top ears in favor of making a more compact descender. The lower ears are wider but slightly less secure, and they lose some of their functionality with the top ears gone.

My comments on the Hoodoo apply to the Hoodoo SL as well.

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