Sneak Peek

This year, the British manufacturer Wild Country has unveiled the second major change to Friends since they were introduced way back in 1977. (The fi rst was the switch from rigid to fl exible cable stems.) Although the company said the new Helium Friends should be on sale in the U.S. by mid-March, production samples were not available in time for our testing. We’ll do a full review as soon as we can test the fi nal product. The nine Helium Friends have the same numbering and approximate size range as the Friends we’ve known for years—for most climbers, a 2.5 or 3 will protect the perfect hand crack, a 2 will be tight hands, and a 1.5 will be desperate rattly fi ngers. But nearly everything else about the Helium Friend looks different. Most striking are the hot-forged cam lobes, with complex shapes and fl ower-petal cut-outs to save weight, as well as the extra-long stem—a full 2.5 to 3 inches longer than stems on the Technical Friends they are replacing. (In the biggest cams, the stem is 8 inches long.) A longer stem should let you reach higher and deeper placements. While keeping the constant 13.75° camming angle and single-axle design they’ve used for 34 years, the new Friends are said to have signifi cantly greater range and overlap with adjacent size cams. Gone are the 1.25 and 1.75 Friends used by crack climbers to dial in the perfect fi t in desert splitters. We’ll be curious to test a couple of things about Helium Friends. In addition to these cams’ general ease of use and durability, will people with small hands or those used to palming the end of a cam like the longer stem? And is there a signifi cant advantage in placing or retrieving cams with the jumbo stem? One thing’s for sure: After selling nearly 1 million Friends over the years (according to Wild Country’s website), this company is not resting on its laurels.