Black Diamond Impact

A pad further...

The new crash pad Impact has the same size and the same thickness than the well known Drop Zone from Black Diamond (older Franklin Climbing). The ones who know this pad haven?t forgotten it has been for quite long available now. The Impact is actually a simplified version of the Drop zone. Most of the members of our team already have a Drop Zone - and been very pleased with it - we?ve been very impatient to test this new Impact pad.

The Impact doesn?t have any place to stuff equipment, this sounds bad for carrying guidebooks, wallets, etc... witch or often kept in the pad while bouldering. If you want to get your stuff back in one piece, this sounds obvious.

The interior of the pad is made of a soft part of 6,5 cm recovered by a harder one of 2,5 cm for the first impact of the landing. Excellent result while testing. The landing is even soft when falling off highballs of four or five meters. We noticed that the foam of the pad got softer after using it much but this is the same thing with every pad.

The Impact is built with the taco design, witch means you can easily fold it. It is closed with two slings and an iron buckle. All this is solidly attached to avoid breaking something. The system is simple and the pad is opened very quickly. Concerning the fact that the pad doesn?t open very well because of that fold that appears after using it much, you can avoid that my opening it systematically at your house or in your car. You will see the fold much less by doing that. And naturally this type of pad takes much place, but you'll always have the possibility of removing the foam by unzipping the pad after a couple of years to give it a new life. Other really good point, the Impact is very good for sleeping.

The Impact proves it is an excellent landing mat. Even better than the drop Zone. The Impact is 25% cheaper and the dimensions are the same.

The BlocBox

To put away a bunch of important stuff, Black Diamond thought about something else, a bag separate from the pad where you can easily put away a guidebook and a pair of shoes. You can easily put this bag in the folded pad. No more destroyed guidebooks at the end of the day.

This bag has also a thickness of foam to use it over small rocks or roots. For a sit down start for example.

The BlocBox is a good extra. But we didn?t find it was that useful while bouldering. To take more equipment you'll probably use a backpack and as a protection against falling the BlocBox is quite limited. In this case just buy other small mat. You can easily stuff it in your big pad.
And we can?t say the BlocBox is cheap. With a price of 61 Euro, there are better alternatives.

Technical details Impact

Dimensions	104 x 122 x 9 cm
Color	Alloy
Weight	4,4 kg
Public advised price	181,00 EUR
Info	www.bdel.com

Technical details BlocBox

Dimensions	55 x 80 cm (fermé)
Color	Alloy
Weight	875 g
Public advised price	61,00 EUR
Info	www.bdel.com

Jan De Smit & Jonas Bracke

 

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