I recently did an Alps trip and have several pairs of crampons - but needed a pair with heel lever only for class C mountaineering boots. I have sone Petzl Irvis Hybrid - but would be doing a fair amount of rock scrambling so I wanted all steel. An outdoor gear salesman ended up selling me the Blue Ice Harfang crampons and I used them for 5 days in the Italian Alps on a moderate mountaineering traverse with lots of glacier travel, skinny alpine ridges, ice up to 50 degrees and some easy rock.
To start - adjusting these is a bitch. You have to take the strap out off the first slot and wiggle everything - and to get them tight you crank so hard you think the wire bail or heel lever is going to break. Once you get them on they feel okay… until you use them for 12 hours. After 12 hours the dyneema strap starts to stretch. If I had spent 5 minutes reading out these crampons I would have known the strap has a tendency to stretch… unfortunately I didn’t and discovered this while down climbing a rocky stretch of glacier riddled with crevasses. The strap stretched and the heel popped off. When it happened the front strap stayed fairly tight so I was able to front point to a spot where I could out them on. Unfortunately we were in a bad place with lots of exposure to rockfall so I couldn’t take 10 minutes to adjust them (which is how long it takes to make simple adjustments) - so I had to half-ass strap them on and continue down climbing. They ended up coming off several times that day because I couldn’t adjust them properly in the field.
Luckily the angle was fairly low where they popped off - so I was never really spooked - but earlier that day we had climbed a traversing ice pitch above a giant bergschrund and had they come off during that traverse it would not have been ideal.
So major flaw number 1: they stretch. Tell anyone who buys them to soak the crampon in the bathtub for a couple hours and then adjust. And then to adjust again after their first day.
The second major flaw is that the heel lever and wire is really flimsy. The wire is so small that in order to you adjust so they’re tight enough to stay on in technical terrain you have to crank so hard that the wire feels like it’s going to snap. After I adjusted them to not pop off I spent the rest of the trip worried that the heel lever wire would snap. The wire never broke - and maybe I was just being overly worried - but compared to every other crampon I’ve ever owned it looked and felt flimsy and I didn’t trust it. Likewise the wire is so thin that the heel lever shifts easily - so when I was front pointing up rocks my boot heel would twist and the heel lever would slide back and forth. It never actually popped off - but I literally checked my crampons every other step for 4 days - something I’ve never had to do before (and hope to never do again).
So major flaw number 2: the heel lever wire is so thin that the heel lever slides on the wire and moves in flexible class C boots (I was wearing a pair of Ribelles). When selling these to people find out what they’re climbing. If they’re using these for summer mixed climbing explain that the heel piece is not that secure and that they risk having it fail in mixed terrain.
The third major flaw is durability. The fabric straps do not hold up and will likely need replacement after a few trips. I used these for 5 days and the ends of the Dyneema strap are so frayed that pulling them / threading back through the slot (to adjust for stretch) has become almost undoable. I can still get the strap through the slot - but after another trip I doubt I’ll be able to adjust without cutting / burning the strap to get rid of the fuzz. Likewise the webbing toe bails are frayed and will likely have to be replaced after another trip. In short - do not sell these to people for summer alpine climbing without the caveat that they’re buying gear that will need replacement after a couple trips.
In short - I don’t recommend these crampons for alpine climbing - either summer or winter. I think they’d be fine for ski mountaineering where you have a stiff boot with a heel that does not flex - but not for summer alpine mountaineering.
