Guys, right up front, I'm new to all this. When I first got interested in climbing, I started looking at rec shops at carabiners. I live about 10 miles from Rock Creek Outfitters and about 10 miles (another direction) from the On Rope 1 shop owned by Bruce Smith.

I like the Omega-Pacific auto lock Jake carabiner and bought one. I was playing with it one day and ran a piece of 9mm prusik cord through it an pulled one end with no force or restraint on the opposite end of the cord. The rope twisted the lock to the open position and the carabiner opened, releasing the rope.

Thinking I did something wrong, I tried it again, and again, and again. It did it every time. I went to one of the shops, don't recall which one, and tried it on another Jake; it did the same thing.

I repeated the test on every screw lock I could get my hands on and absolutely none of them opened. So I proceed to buy screw locks and avoided the auto locks with a passion because I could easily demonstrate failures.

After seeing how easy it is to inadvertantly open an autolock, I was stunned to learn that ANSI does not approve the screw locks for tree work. The only problem I've seen with a screw lock was on a Petzl Attache when after a climb I couldn't unscrew it and had to use pliers.

Could it be that ANSI's position is _base_d on early screw lock designs that may have had some problems?

I guess I'm just a little confused by the wide acceptance of auto lockers that are so easily openned?????