In reply to phja:
> MY question is how long should a rope be for via ferrata? I'm thinking the "nervous" parts of a grade 2 via ferrata are only likely to be small...could I cut the rope to 12 or 15m to save weight and faff?
I did a bunch of Via Ferratas with my kids just a few weeks ago. Following Mike's (Casa Alfredino) very sensible advice I made sure my sub-50kg kid (all the VF sets seem to be rated for people 50 kgs up) was roped to me all the time. I originally took about 28 mtrs of 8.6 triple rope, but after noticing some damage to the sheath (it was this rope!
http://www.ukclimbing.com/gear/review.php?id=6738n ) I cut it down to about 24 metres. That was still far more than I really needed; we moved together mainly with two of the pigs tail bolts between us normally and 4 or 5 metres seemed plenty for that on the French VFs we did. The extra rope was handy at times like doing the monkey bridges one at a time and I direct belayed him up some of the steepest ladders, but in those case 15 mtrs would probably be fine and mean you having less coils round you.
We actually left the rope behind at one of the VF sites - all the wife's fault obviously, nothing to do with my stupidity! - so for the last one we used the 4 metres or so cut off (the kids had been using this round the campsites for things like skipping, hitting each other with, falling out of trees etc.). This actually worked fine and meant that there was at least one bolt between us on the that last route.