Review on Black Diamond Serac Clip Polished by Yousef Abood

This Black Diamond review rejects. This is in line with their recommendations but seems overly critical, although overall I'm pretty positive. The Serac Crampon has an awkward leverage issue. In fact, the same problem probably applies to most, if not all, Black Diamond cats. But whether you notice it or not depends on your boot. Problems arise from the pointed upper ends of the lever. Ideally, the lever should lie flat against the surface of the back of the boot. So the lever should have a concave shape that follows the shoe. But the Black Diamond lever has the opposite shape. The inside edges of the sides of the lever face IN, effectively resulting in a convex shape. This gets worse towards the end of the pages, which aren't very rounded. You can see the original shape on a pair of Neves used only for ski boots. You may never notice it because it only becomes a problem if you have a relatively soft back of the boots, for example if they are leather. And it's probably not as rare as it is with my Scarpa boots. So what happened? I took my new Serac to the Swiss Alps. I felt some pressure on my heels on the first lift. Then I got strong blisters, which also burst. I thought it was a problem with my shoes which were not new but in good condition. But when I started the next climb early in the morning (only then in crampons again) they pressed on exactly these blisters and caused great pain. I had to turn over almost immediately and tried to ease the pain by improvising something between the shoe and the lever. I still had no idea that cats were the root cause of the problem. Half an hour later, somewhat calmer, we drove off again. But for a number of reasons, including loss of time, we had to turn back. Back at the cabin I discovered the real reason. If you look at the photos of my boots you will see the dents caused by the levers in both the shoes and the heels! No wonder I had these blisters. This is really very bad! These levers can ruin your entire climbing holiday from the start! And they almost did. I was fortunate to work on a better solution. With my pocket knife I was able to change the shape of these levers as they became in the picture. Not perfect yet but it made a significant difference and saved my next 2 climbs and the rest of my vacation. It just screwed up the beginning of this climb and I cut my arm (of course). An advice. DO NOT remove the straps from the lever as I accidentally did. Putting them back in is very difficult. This requires the end of the strap to be very clean, and that's another story. So a small detail. But it can really cause a lot of trouble. And Black Diamond really needs to work on it, which shouldn't be that hard! Note that these levers are likely to be present on almost every model. So let's get to the straps. As usual I trimmed them conservatively, carefully with a hot electric knife. I didn't want to make them too short as I wanted to use them on other boots. But these endings are still getting worse. The problem is that there doesn't seem to be a good way to hide those ends while protecting them from your own cats. The problem is caused by the space left by the plastic strap on my clip version. So this is a request to Black Diamond to find a way to save on straps. I don't know anything yet. Now for the positive side. My serac is a bit shabby. They have been used on 3 serious ascents, most of the time on the rocks. You survived well. They were also used on steep snowy slopes in various snow and sometimes ice conditions. They have served me well, which is no small feat as there have been injuries on some of these slopes. This is my second pair of Black Diamonds. I'm still very happy with the customization system. Also, the strong plates held up well to prevent clogging. I can't tell if it really matters.