Wild Country Zero Friends 0.1 – 0.3 Review

Wild Country cemented its name in climbing lore in 1978, when they patented a product designed by Ray Jardine. That is, of course, the cam… or as they dubbed it: the Friend. The mass production of Friends ushered in a new era of trad climbing, one less-and-less protected by chocks, hexes, and tricams. Thank goodness. Cams have evolved quite a bit since then, and various other companies have iterated on the design, with Black Diamond and Totem among those making the highest impact improvements in the past decades. But the Wild Country Friend evolved too, and it remains an excellent cam all these years later. In the smaller sizes, the Wild Country Zero Friends now hold their own special place in the market.

Wild Country Zero Friends Features:

• Narrow Head
• High-friction machined cam faces
• Flexible stem is protected by a Spring
• Ergonomic thumb loop and floating trigger
• Strong lightweight design
• 10 mm dyneema extendable sling
• Weight: 49g, 51g, 68g (as stated; .1, .2, .3 respectively)
• MSRP: $250 (per set of .1, .2, and .3)

In the Wake of the X4

Looking at a set of Wild Country Zero Friends, you may think to yourself, “Those aren’t X4s?” No, they are not, but you could be forgiven for thinking so. They look about the same, weigh about the same, have about the same range, and behave quite similarly in placements… They have quite a lot in common. The Black Diamond X4 line was retired in 2020 though, when the company launched their replacement, the Z4. That same year, Wild Country released the new Zero Friends.

The Wild Country Zero Friends are a natural next cam for me. For many years, I’ve climbed on X4s from .1 to .4, and I love them. I find that C4s and C3s in those sizes are too rigid, and I like the stability in smaller placements that comes with a very flexible stem. You might wonder why I haven’t fully converted to Z4s, since they live in that liminal space between the rigidity of the C3 and the flexibility of the X4, and the answer is largely because I already have a full rack. I’ve climbed on Z4s plenty, and I like them, but I don’t find myself needing the additional rigidity on placement that they tout. I’ve just always been happy with my wiggly little X4s. There’s so much about the Wild Country Zero Friends that reminds me of them.

Let’s start on the Zero Friends with ergonomics and aesthetics. Each size has the same design for the cam’s thumb loop and trigger. The thumb loop is broad and easy to access, and the trigger is narrow with a gentle upward slope to the edges. That design helps keep your fingers comfortably planted when you’re placing. The candy-esque, perfectly anodized finish of the Friends doesn’t do anything for function, but it sure does look clean. They look even cleaner than the X4s, in my opinion.

Handling is worth loads in a cam. Much of that comes down to the trigger pull. The spring design changes on the Zero Friends by size, where the .1 and .2 house the spring between the cam lobes, and the .3 embeds the spring in the middle of the lobes. The two different designs handle quite differently. For the .1 and .2, action on the trigger is smooth, consistent, and easy from the start (easier than my X4s, even). The .3, in contrast, has some inertia at the beginning of the trigger pull, before entering into its action. It’s more rough than an X4 or Z4, and has more of the character of a Metolius Ultralight.

Beyond spring design and placement, the handling of the Zero Friends is dictated by cable size. Like the X4s, the central braided cable on the Zero Friends reduces in diameter when you hop down in cam size from .3 to .2. The Zero Friends reduce cable diameter to ~2.5mm for the two smallest cams, which is notably thinner than the X4s. Simultaneously, the Zero Friends have more exposed cable between the thumb loop and the trigger when compared to the X4 by ~5mm. What happens to a longer, thinner cable when you put pressure on it? It wants to bend. Sure enough, the .2 and .1 are afflicted by an unstable wiggle if you pull the trigger with unequal pressure between the two sides. As you might imagine, this increases if you’ve bent the cable in a fall.

After the trigger pull, narrow heads make placing the cam easier. That’s true from the .3 all the way to the .1. Respectively, they are 4mm, 4mm, and 3mm narrower than their X4 counterparts. In my experience, it’s not often that you notice a 1mm difference in head width, but 4mm is almost the width of an entire lobe. You feel that difference frequently, especially in shallower or more uneven crack systems.

Walking. We all hate it. You thought your placement was perfect. You thought you were secure. No. The gentle, up-down, in-out pull of the rope has tempted the lobes of your cam to shimmy this way and that until your perfect placement is perfectly useless. Happily, the Zero Friends don’t have much of an issue with walking. That’s largely thanks to their very flexible stems, but also aided by decently stiff springs. Still, at some point, any 4-lobed cam will walk if it continues to be pulled. That’s where the doubled up sling comes into play.

When extended, the Zero Friends’ slings significantly reduced the tendency of my cam placements to walk. A number of companies feature extendable slings on their cams now, and they have for a while. The idea behind them is that they can reduce rope drag without you needing to carry an additional sling to extend the placement like you would for any other cam. Critiques of the design include additional weight, increased difficulty clipping into the un-extended sling, minimal additional sling length gained by extension, and reduced breaking strength in the extended position. All of this, positive and negative, is valid except for claims about reduced breaking strength (as tested by HowNOT2 here in an admittedly limited sample size).

Extending the sling on a Zero Friend gets you about 3 1/4“ extra distance. That won’t extend around any meaningful bulge or correct any serious zig-zag in your path upwards, but it will reduce the amount your cam is pulled out and side-to-side in any given placement. That being the case, it’ll walk less. During testing, I made a habit of regularly extending the slings upon placement, even for more plumb-straight routes, and it made a difference. When I lowered, my X4s were more likely to be at odd angles and walked about more than the extended Zero Friends I’d placed. Even though gripes about increased weight, difficulty of clipping the un-extended slings, and limited additional length are well-founded, the extendable sling does help to reduce walking.

Okay. End of the day, are they good to use? Yes. I enjoy using the Zero Friends. They place well, they’re light, and they feel pretty dang natural to me, as a person who’s used X4s for so long. I brought these cams all over in the past few months, climbing at Squamish, Yosemite Valley, and locally in Washington. They felt good on a variety of rock types, from soft sandstone to the immutable Sierra granite. The only time I didn’t like placing them was in the wet, slimy, late-Fall crack systems of Squamish. That was sketchy… though I’d feel that way with any cam. Cams just don’t like slime. Even all those years removed from 1978, when the end of passive pro seemed in sight, the nut has one edge up over all cams: slime.

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