Eddie Bauer First Ascent Belay Knife

I thought it was interesting when I saw First Ascent named this knife the "Belay" knife. I wasn't quite sure if my climbing partner would like the thought of the image of me standing on a belay stance wielding the First Ascent "Belay" knife. Sort of a "Touching the Void" thought process going on at Eddie Bauer, I guess.

Anyway, this is a pretty cool knife. They claim it's the lightest knife and I believe them. It's got a very light plastic handle, and a nice high quality blade. There's an eyelet at the top of the knife to hang it on your rack and it opens and closes quite easily. This is a knife I carry with me all the time - -it carries well in my thigh pocket or in a pocket on my pack.

Two things about it keep it from being great. FA claims it's a one hand flip open, even with gloves. In theory that's true with the way the knife is designed. In practice, with gloves on, it's hard to open the knife with a thumb flick.

Second thing is they like to promote that it has a bottle opener. I don't know about you, but I don't carry bottles up to the "Belay". I do carry cans of food sometime and would prefer they have a can opener on the knife. Or better yet, just skip the idea that a knife designed to cut rope and work around camp, needs to be a multi-tool of some sort.

So buy this knife if you want a good quality, very light, very useful KNIFE and forget about flicking, can opening, or "Belay" use.

-g

Good knife for the price—if you can find it.

Bought this knife new, while Christmas shopping. The colors attracted me :). I like this knife.

It has a few quirks: bottle opener is hard to open. Noticed one of the rivets loosening after about a year of use. 

I like this knife, but the blade rattles (moves back and forth) when open quite a bit which is a large drawback for me.