First Look: Fixe Solution M2 Wire Gym Draw
Heading out the door? Read this article on the new Outside+ app available now on iOS devices for members! Download the app.
Your hands are starting to sweat as you stare down the next draw. You’re pumped, so pumped your arms feel like they’ll split open like over-ripened bananas. The last clipped bolt is ten feet below, and between awaits a looming crystalline slab.
In a move of desperation, you step up with one shaking leg and aim for the overhead dogbone. Your hands catch the nylon webbing right as your butt starts to come out like a folding chair Your hand slides down into the draw and you bite your lip and squeeze your eyes shut. After regaining control and getting the rope clipped, you examine your now bloody hand. Only a flesh wound, you think, but you were one of the lucky ones.
Lunging for draws is great for degloving fingers or popping pulleys. In response to the carnage, Fixehardware designed the Fixe Solution anti-finger trap permadraw. This bad boy has a large rubber ball between the fat dogbone and lower carabiner, making sliding a non-issue to the pumped and desperate. Bonus: The big rubber ball protects the wall from being repeatedly banged.
For gym owners, maybe members lunging for draws isn’t quite the issue. Maybe it’s that that children keep sticking their tiny fingers into hangers. In response, Fixehardware equipped their Solution draw with a built-in bolt cover, which screws directly into the wall in place of clipping into a hanger. For installation, pop the red top off, slide the bolt into the hole and screw the draw into the wall like you would a hanger. Replace the top for the end result: No sharp edges or “unscrewed” hanger accidents.
The nylon dogbone comes in at seven inches with five solid tracks. It is attached to the bolt cover via two anti-rotation pins on the rear side, which prevent unwanted, and potentially dangerous twisting. It’s no cable draw, but it should hold up just fine in a commercial gym.
The carabiner can withstand 30 kilonewtons of force along the major axis, which is on the high side for carabiner strength. The wire gate is stiffer than your normal quickdraw, but seems comparable to the average gym permadraw.
At $43.95 a draw, the Fixe Solution is not a cheap piece of equipment. Traditional gym permadraws are anywhere from one quarter to one half the price. Still, the extra precaution may mean your tips will live to send another day.
Gym Climber vigorously tests all gear it reviews for either 50 days or 50 pitches. This is a time-consuming process and limits the amount of new equipment we can present to our readers. Every year hundreds of new products hit store shelves, and most of these aren’t reviewed due to our stringent selection and review process. To better keep you more up to date on what is new, we present First Look. Gear in First Look has not always been field tested, but is gear we think you’d like to know about as soon as it is available. Some of the gear will be reviewed using our 50 days/50 pitches criteria, in future print and online editions of Gym Climber. We have opted to use affiliate links in our gear reviews. Every time you buy something after clicking on links in our gear articles you’re helping support our magazine.