UKC

Following on from a posting about Double ropes -

Has anyone ever experienced a rope failure? (or known of one) And we're talking modern ropes here not old rope.

In reply to Stevie989:

I have heard of modern ropes failing due to being cut & abraded, but I have never seen a confirmed report of an undamaged rope snapping.

In reply to Stevie989:

I've been climbing for 30 odd years and never heard of a rope snapping in normal use.

E

In reply to Stevie989:

I took a fall of around fifty feet, the fall factor would have been under 1 maybe 0.8 or so. I was climbing on twin 8.5's. When I took my weight off the rope that took the fall the rope proceeded to kink up very very tightly in knots above my harness, something had obviously snapped inside though the outer sheath was fine. I untied the rope let the twists fall out and re tied in order to get off the cliff, the rope was retired from then.....

Jb.

In reply to Stevie989:

So nobody has had one outright snap?

John - sounds like a monster fall!

In reply to Stevie989:

The only one accident I can recall at this moment:
"Kukuczka died attempting to climb the unclimbed South Face of Lhotse in Nepal on 24 October 1989. He was leading a pitch at an altitude of about 8,200 meters on a 6 mm secondhand rope he had picked up in a market in Kathmandu (according to Ryszard Pawłowski, Kukuczka's climbing partner on the tragic day, the main single rope used by the team was too jammed to be used and the climbers decided to use transport rope instead), the cord either was cut or snapped from a fall, plunging Kukuczka to his death."
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerzy_Kukuczka

In reply to Stevie989:

my contention is that anyone who has probably isn't able to tell us about it on account that they are dead. I believe it was the technical advisor to the UIAA that said 'ropes don't break [in normal usage]'.

In reply to Stevie989:

Check this out (sorry, it is in German, hope an online translator helps):

http://mdettling.blogspot.ch/2012/09/fixe-exen-bequem-aber-gefahrlich.html

A (not new, but undamaged) rope was cut by a sharp biner in a permadraw on an overhanging sportclimb and lead to a fatal fall. Please note: permadraws are highly dangerous!

In reply to Stevie989:

Unless something sharp is involved or there has been some chemical damage, it is not possible for normal use to break a climbing rope*

* disclaimer - unless they're really, really fat.

In reply to higherclimbingwales:

The though had crossed my mind but people do survive hitting the deck from high up and the times they don't tend to be publicised. I couldn't find reference to any though.

In reply to Stevie989:

Single climbing ropes have broken over sharp edges, and more than once, although I don't have references at the moment. But I'm almost certain there has never been an incident in the field in which a single climbing rope broke from just a fall impact without a sharp edge being involved, and I'm equally almost certain that both strands of a half or twin rope system have never failed, sharp edge or not.

I do know of a mysterious single rope failure that occurred while a guided client was being lowered. Fortunately, the client was near the ground and was not seriously injured. The rope was sent to the manufacturer, who determined after extensive testing that the rope had been chemically damaged. The owner was unable, or perhaps unwilling, to figure out how this might have happened.

Throwing your ropes down in a parking lot, for instance, is not a good idea.

In reply to PPP:


Many sympathies for the tragic death, and condolences to his family and friends.

I would like to comment though that I personally would not like to fall on a secondhand 6 mm rope bought in a market [as I wouldn't know it's history], because the rope is secondhand, and only 6 mm.

In reply to Stevie989:

Rope actually broke (not cut and not in vid) here but apparently it had been left out in the UV for quite a while. Two other rope "breakages" I am aware of linked to contamination with acid (sulfuric from car batt).

youtube.com/watch?v=wY6YsM5Rh0Y&

In reply to Stevie989: https://www.thebmc.co.uk/technical-reports

In reply to Stevie989:

I heard a few years ago the BMC were doing some testing with old used ropes to see if they could get them to fail, but they couldn't get any of them to snap.

In reply to Stevie989:

I cut up my original 20 year old rope, even though it had been little used and properly stored for years. I then needed a dynamic lanyard for use on climbing towers and wondered if the cut lengths of my old rope would do the trick, so I put a sample on our destruct test rig at work. It made 19kn, and stretched to nearly twice it's original length before snapping. I use the lanyard with absolute confidence. Dom.

In reply to Merlin:

Well, someone else managed...
http://www.sci.ccny.cuny.edu/~cleary/other/fall_test.html

In reply to PPP:

err no they didn't !

In reply to Stevie989:

I started climbing in 1982 using a thin hawser laid rope from the early 60s dug out from the back of a cupboard. It was stiff and still held a few falls and we abbed on it all the time. We were young teenagers but were aware these might not take a big fall and climbed with this in mind.
Incidentally my mates family got seat belts out a old Datsun cherry and hand sewed them to make my mates harness! The stiching started to go on an abb and lucky for him we got a loop of rope round him quick.

In reply to Stevie989:

Yes, but not while climbing. Seen a snapped 11m, static main haul line although it did take a 9-1 pully and > 3 people pulling and > 200kg static load and a knot stuck in a crack. Policy (and common sense) dictates that we use a safety too so everyone walked away.