What’s New with the Dragon?
The updates to the Dragon pertain mostly to the head of the cam—specifically the lobes—which are wider and patterned with a grid-like etching.
The broader cam lobes serve the obvious desire for more surface area in contact with the rock. This is great both for minimising cam walking and for distributing force in a fall. The head width of the cam is the same, so we get that surface area without gaining weight.
The etching on the active surface of the lobes is meant to add texture and roughness. The active surface is also free of anodization on all four lobes, and these two facts constitute a broader effort to maximize the coefficient of friction of the cam’s active area.
DMM also claims that the grid pattern—and the beveled corners that attend that pattern—create more recessed area for crystals and micro-scale irregularities in the rock to snag the cam and help initiate the active functions of the cam. Conceptually, this is in line with increasing the coefficient of friction: keep the cam seated in place so that it can engage the instant downward force is applied.
I can get behind the idea of this crystal-grabbing geometry insofar as it seems reasonable, but it’s the sort of thing that is extremely hard to pin down and confirm when you’re out climbing.
I spoke with DMM briefly about this, and when I asked what sort of data they had to back up that claim, they mentioned that they were putting together a video summarizing their lab tests on the matter. We’ll post that up here as soon as it’s available. Pending that empirical data, we’ll call the engraving notion plausible, but unconfirmed.
Aid Climbing
You do lose your high clip on the Dragon while aiding, but this fact is a bit of a mixed bag. I took the Dragons (along with a whole slew of other styles of cams) up Lunar Ecstasy in Zion, which registers around 5.10 C2+ depending on who you ask. Because most of the free climbing appears lower on the route with the upper pitches involving lots of continuous aiding, I tied an overhand in the slings on the Dragon cams about an inch below the thumb catch which gave me plenty of room to clip in high. I also tied off one of the cam slings to use as a rivet hanger in a pinch (I hadn’t brought any proper hangers and my other slings were scattered throughout the traverse below).
Not only does this work, but because the Dragon has a relatively short stem, you can tie the sling in such a way that allows you to clip in even higher than the thumb loop on a C4 allows.
Granted, it’s not ideal to have the sling knotted like this when you are going to be free climbing above the Dragons. Aiding on these tied-off slings causes the knots to tighten down, so the constant tying and untying in order to switch back and forth between free and aid climbing compromises the gains from clipping in high, so this tactic is really best employed if you’re going to be doing sustained aiding.
Weight and Size
The thumb-loop-for-sling tradeoff doesn’t move the needle much in the weight category; the Dragons are pretty much in line with the Black Diamond C4s for weight. Both of these cams are heavier than the new Ultralight Master Cams from Metolius. The Dragon’s sling takes up much less room in a pack than the C4s with their more rigid thumb loops. The Dragons don’t disappear in a pack the way the rebooted Master Cams do, but they’re noticeably easier to carry than their Black Diamond equivalents, thanks to the lack of a thumb loop.
Bottom Line
The updated DMM Dragon cams are a gently polished version of the older Dragon, which isn’t a bad thing when your first iteration is pretty strong. The new Dragon will feel very familiar for Camalot users, so integrating them into your rack is pretty straightforward.
Any assessment of the Dragon starts at the sling and how much that tradeoff does for you personally. If the sling isn’t a deal breaker for you, these cams are a very worthy first set, or make a great second set if you’re attracted to the extendable sling for alpine climbing.
On the other hand, if you use Black Diamond cams currently and you’re looking for a second set for a local crag known for tricky placements (like Eldorado Canyon here in Colorado), or you’re planning on doing some aid climbing, then I would direct you to alternatives that use a different sizing structure so that you have less overlap.