Frequently Asked Questions

Avant gear is designed and brought to market by a small team in Northern Arizona. Avant was founded by elite trad climber Brent Barghahn. We are now a team of a few core climbers running the brand.

Avant founder, Brent, worked for a decade in product design at large companies, including inventing gear at Black Diamond (Any fans of the C4 large cam trigger keepers? That was a Brent creation!). That experience has been used to bring super clean solutions to these niche product demands. 

Nope! We specifically make accessory gear to tune your climbing systems, but nothing is structural or PPE oriented. You are own you own for ALL risk assessment relative to implementation with PPE equipment. 

We believe in our gear, and think you will love it! But if you don't, we offer a 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Please just respond to your order confirmation email with your issue, and we'll do what is needed to make it right.

All orders are shipped within one business day! 

Shipping usually takes 3-5 days within the US. International shipping takes 1-3 weeks depending on the country. 

We use UPS, DHL, or USPS, depending on the destination. If you need a specific carrier, please email us prior to the order. We've shipped general delivery to Yosemite or J-Tree plenty of times

Yes! We offer international shipping for a flat rate $12.

International orders may not have tracking all the way to the destination. All non-express international shipping options are fairly slow, and may take a few weeks, so your patience is appreciated. 

If your package has been lost in transit during delivery, we will replace or refund your item!

But first, please do your part in contacting the delivery company with the tracking information in your order confirmation. Once the package has been declared lost and undeliverable from their side, we will then give you a refund or replace the order.

The best way to change your order is to respond to your Order Confirmation email. If an order is shipped, we won't be able to make any changes to your order and you would need to place a new order.

Yes, there are many options on the market for sport climbing quickdraws, but ALL of them pinch the sling closed. If used on a cam, these options will break if a quickdraw or alpine draw is clipped into the sling loop and weighted.

Our carabiner stabilizers are cleverly designed as the ONLY cam specific option which allows the sling to stay open, to be clipped, and even weighted. The Flip-Stop will not break in normal trad usage. Your cams can be extended with draws without any negative affects by the stabilizer. 

If you don't think it is a problem, don't worry about buying this niche gear! But, when climbing off sized cracks at the creek, thin trad redpoints, or just trad cragging on the daily, the efficiency of stable cam carabiners will be noticed and appreciated. Everyone's rope side sport climbing carabiners are held in place for a reason..

The Flip Stops can be warmed up in hot water to be more stretchy. Or, for especially large nosed carabiners, they can be installed over the wiregate and slid down the gate to the final location during install.

No, we do not recommend installation on extendible slings due to an extra failure mode of accidentally unclipping the carabiner out of the sling loop during sling extension.

The carabiner appears normal while held in place by the rubber, but will fail during low load. This is relatively easy to spot in practice, but this is a risk for those unfamiliar with Flip-Stops, or while climbing in dark or adverse conditions, so we can't recommend usage with any extendable slings.

Unlike the warning above, with a standard short cam sling, the loop simply isn't big enough for the carabiner to unclip out of the sling loop during usage, the failure mode would only happen during first install.

But, the Flip-Stop is a very slim design with excellent visibility to ensure the carabiner is through the sling loop. It is very easy to confirm this during install. But please, follow the installation steps precisely! 

No. In our extensive trad climbing experience we've actually seen the racking carabiner unclipping from the sling as being more of a risk than any sort of back-clip unclipping scenario. Our stabilizers completely remove the carabiner detachment risk. The back-clip risk is the same as the millions of sport quickdraws being used at crags. 

No, we have not noticed any affect on walking cams. For rope movement to move a cam placement, the rope needs to be pulling the carabiner tightly against the cam sling - this pull force is translated through the tensioned cam regardless if a keeper is present or not.

Modern cam slings are plenty flexible to mitigate rope movement anyways. If a key marginal placement is at risk of walking, you can always extend the piece or place the cam extra tightly. 

It may seem like this problem can be solved just as well with a basic rubber band - that was out starting point too. But, after breaking dozens of rubber bands per season (and littering the cliffs) it was clear a more refined solution was needed.

The Flip-Stop is carefully sculpted to be both highly effective and unnoticed in usage. The clever shape does not add visual clutter or racking bulk. The engineering grade materials chosen are high end TPU (think Voile Ski Strap) to be nearly unbreakable in general climbing usage. 

Yes, you can aid climb like normal with your cams. The one exception is that the sharp steel edges of the AlFiFi adjustable daisy may cut the Flip-Stops if you Fifi into the cam sling with that device. 

No, the lanyards are specifically designed to fail safe at a low load (35lbs) and safely break away if snagged under high forces. The lanyard breaks at the bungee cord under this load, pulling away from the neck, and will need to be replaced

This is the primary failure mode for all Top Rope Solo systems. Even loose clothing can easily be sucked into the pulley and block the teeth. You MUST use a second backup device. However, our lanyard was specifically designed with this concern in mind and features a rigid rubber section on the pass-through loop to reduce the amount of excess cord, which futher mitigates this risk. 

We don't have a specific recommendation for a TRS system, but two progress capturing pulleys seems to be the standard. It's up to your own risk assessment to choose details beyond that. Our lanyard is simply an orienting device and doesn't affect PPE device choice. 

Nope, we were first to bring the quick-adjust slider and the pass-through device connection to market! Though, these were quickly copied by others due to their usefulness. Of course, DIY neck bungee solutions go back decades beyond any purchasable solutions. 

Learn Lead Rope Solo techniques on Brent's personal blog: brentbarghahn.com/climbing-blog/redpoint-rope-soloing-revised-2023

The 5 pack is a great starter set. Usually they are used every 2-4 meters depending on the terrain, so 5 is enough for most climbing. More shouldn't hurt, but also requires more LRS dedicated quickdraws. 

The cinchers fit all mid to large size carabiners regardless of body shape. They are flexible rubber, and form tightly over any carabiner shape, especially with the hot water soak step described in the instructions. An I-beam carabiner does hold the Soft Cinch in place slightly better, though. They are not compatible with the smallest wiregates (BD Minis, Nano 22s, EDELRID 19g...) due to not enough gate clearance. 

The rubber devices both should last about a season of heavy LRS use, but are "consumable gear" and do wear out. 

The Soft Cinchers should be fairly robust with a light hold, only wearing slightly from the rope movement over time. The Slide Cinchers have a much stronger hold, and thus faster wear - they will "wear in" to your diameter of rope first, and then last a long time as that wear level once set. It is worth noting that the rope movement of a bungee anchor will cause much faster cinch wear.