"There was once a company called Halo, they made some holds called the Halo. We liked the look so I sent off a cheque to the owner and waited for the holds. The company went under... but we were assured he holds were en-route.....1 month, no holds turn up, so I sent a few emails. Couple of months.... still no holds. Couple of text messages.... no holds, but they are coming.... 8 months and STILL NO HOLDS. I gave up, I threw some money away essentially :(
Thankfully Climb It brought the molds, and sent us the reshaped versions of the holds, and what you're going to read in our review is us on some holds that should have been reviewed over a year ago, but due to poor timing it means you're reading this later than you should have been; sometimes life is just life, you have a good day, you have a bad day, sometimes your Halos turn up in the post :P - N out"
What we're looking at today is the Halos, from Climb It; consider this the holds don't come in a size smaller than XL and whichever way you look at them they're pretty damn big; (left to right: XL, 2 Xl, 4 XL)Once we had them there was no stopping to the crazyness that was being thought up, bear in mind that the holds are textured on the inside and slick on the outside so you have little or no hope in being able to use your thumb, we're talking open hand moves all the way, and depending upon you wall not easy open hand climbing; let's take a closer look:
So technically that says it all, but it doesn't, these holds are harder to stick than you think. Most (not all) of the inner areas are sloping outwards; you need to be dead on with where you're placing your hands to make sure you're good. One thing is for sure, unless you're fast on your matching or climbing on shallow walls, you will end up on your ass.... think we're joking? We set a route with these from the 45 degree wall all the way to the stairs, using the box and when we needed to added the Top Out Slopers for where we wanted something else.... what happened? There was a whole bunch of ass to mat action :) Then there was the time we set what we thought was a nice easy little route on the wall... easy? Nah, just plain hard
What we're missing from this video is the session that happened a few weeks later, when we set a move just on the edge of the 45 to the 30 degree wall... the original pull was hard, basically a jump to the 2XL hold, match and then move. Because of the angle most people couldn't even pull the first move; even the people that we thought would pull it with no problems. This just hammered the nail into the thought we'd had before, these holds are trickier than you think
From opening the box to actually to getting onto the holds, there is a couple of things that are apparent; 1) these are well made holds 2) tricky to hold onto, even with a match 3) we wish we'd had them way earlier!
Flat walls to very slight overhangs are where these holds are going to be best suited; anything over 30 degrees and you're going to be scrabbling for purchase, not because of the texture, but because of the way the holds are designed. We thought that these holds would be a hoot on the 45 and were just shut down, pulling off of the floor? Nope, sorry!These holds, even though they are very simple looking are more surprising than you'd think. The insides are textured but the angle of this area varies as you go around the radius, which despite the matching possibilities, makes them different and yet-the-same when you rotate them... you know what you're going to hit, you just don't know if you can either hold it, or what angle what you're holding is going to be on. Once you've seen one of these holds on a wall you KNOW what it it! You KNOW how to hold it... it's just when you hit it that you'll know if you can actually stick it... or not :) Core strength... if you don't have it, you'll get it, that's one thing that we got from the sessions that we have and still continue to have on these holds.
Gym use is a complete no brainer with these holds, home wall use? Sure, if you have space; the XL's are pretty big! I'm sure that Climb It could make some smaller versions of these, even just as finger pockets (more than just one pad please) that will cater to the home wall owner.
Versatility: Rotate, the holds aren't the same all the way around
Screw Holes: Nope, but they do need a screw
Overall there's not much you can complain about with Climb It's holds most of the time, these are of the same high standard as you'd expect from this ever expanding company. But there are some niggles with these holds, nothing major just minor things that could be made a little better; these holds don't have a pre-placed screw hole, which with these holds do actually need as we've managed to turn them when they're weighted. The edges of the holds where they meet the wall are sharp and are very prone to chipping, they could be rounded a little to lessen this impact.
The backs of the holds are flat and clean, well sanded despite their size. Our holds are bright as you like, and we like that way :) Having these holds as fully textured would have been cool on these shapes, but having the inside textured and the rest of the shape slick makes for a nice look and some crazy climbing, and they're skin friendly... not mad grippy like you'd expect, you will end up cleaning them a fair amount because you're going to be slinging chalk at these so you can stick; thankfully they clean up easily.
Only one of the holds is hollow backed, the 4XL and it still weighs in at 15lbs, the 2Xl runs just under 6 and the XL set that is four holds runs just under 12lbs. There's a couple of holds that could be hollow backed and it's an interesting decision for them to not hollow back the majority of holds to save material and make them lighter and make them a little cheaper.
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