UKC

Just looking for some advice: planning to buy new half ropes soon and am strongly considering 8mm ropes (lighter, slicker through gear, less impact force, smoother to climb on and lighter). Despite these positives I think there's a good chance of me freaking out a bit if on something exposed above gear and weighing fall risk etc. However, if this is genuinely the only negative then I think I'm prepared to go the 8mm and just deal with it. I realise they may wear more quickly but I don't think this is an issue with trad (summer rock climbing).

Anyone any thoughts on this?

In reply to ksjs:
they don't necessarily wear faster I'm finding my pheonix are wearing better than my 9mm beals did, it is partially down to construction and the sheath percentage but less weight of rope and area in contact with the rock does seem to mean less rope drag which means although the rope is thinner so will wear out faster in theory, is subject to less wear also.

Obviously they can get cut on a sharp edge more easily and will strech more meaning you will fall further possibly hitting ledges / the ground.

My take on it is if you will be using them regularly on routes requiring a long walk in or you very rarely fall off it's worth it otherwise get 8.5 mm.

In reply to ksjs:

I find I get through 8mms significantly faster than 8.5mms...for me they generally wear a lot faster.

I also think the positives outweigh the negatives, so I generally buy them anyway I certainly don't have an issue with falling on them. Having siad that, they are a little slick in some belay devices, but a more modern device or something designed specifically for a thinner rope is fine.

I have found Phoenixes better than other 8mm ropes for wear, although they are a little rougher to handle.

In reply to ksjs:

I love my Phoenixes - and falling on them's a dream, they just stretch and stretch and stretch. Then from recent experience my gear tends to blow and I fall yet further and then they stretch and stretch and stretch

Do it!

In reply to kathrync:

Which 8.5 mm ropes are you comparing them to? the 9mm beals I have before are known not to be that hard wearing.

It is luck of the draw to some extent as my pheonixes have seen much more use than my friends genesis yet are showing less sign of wear, I'm sure normally the genesis would last longer.

I also use smaller belay plates, the buggette is good.

In reply to ksjs: If you're a heavy climber (80kg) then anything thinner than 8.5mm needs a careful choice of belay device and probably belaying with a glove. Longevity with ropes is more or less directly proportional to diameter - thicker ones tend to last longer.'Hard' ropes with a tightly woven sheath also seem to last longer than 'soft' ones.

In reply to Toerag:
If you search back through the forum posts you'll find a few people who have not noticed the pheonixes wearing out any faster than the fatter ropes they had before hand.

In reply to CurlyStevo:

Can't remember off-hand...probably the 8.5 genesis or whatever its predecessor was. It's been several years since I had one because I almost solely use 8mms now. I'm pretty sure I would have been buying Mammut at that point though as I had a way of getting them at trade price at the time!

I reckon my partner and I have gone through three pairs of 8mm ropes in the last 5 years. We lost one rope because it got stuck and another was cramponed by a novice first time out, but the others died through wear. This compares to my last set of 8.5s lasting almost 6 years. However I should say that not all of those pairs were Phoenixes. I know we had at least one Edelrid rope at one point and possibly a Beal one as well. The Phoenixes lasted much longer than those.

Beals in generally are known to be less hard wearing than most other brands, but compromise by being nice to handle and stretchy.

Yeah of course. Wear depends on all sorts of random factors....and of course whether or not you take them anywhere near Gabbro

I use a Reversino. I'm not sure if they still make them as I believe the Reverso 3 is designed with thinner ropes in mind anyway, but I love mine.

In reply to kathrync: 3 pairs in 5 years! If that was the sort of wear I could expect then I wouldn't buy 8mm ropes (it is the Phoenixes I'm considering by the way). I would expect at least 3 years from them; this is UK trad I'm talking so maybe 30 - 40 days use a year often with no loading or abrasion (hardly any grit climbing). In short very little wear. I have 6? year old Genesis ropes and while they're a bit tougher than they were they are still largely perfect though I accept I don't know how much dirt etc there is in the core. I've been meaning to replace these for ages but they just keep doing the job.

One thing that keeps coming to mind is how much difference there seems to be between 8 and 8.5mm ropes, that's half a mm! Why does it seem so much more?

In reply to ksjs:
my Phoenixes are 3 years old and I estimate a similar amount of use to yourself. Climbed on just about every rock type in the UK and still looking to have 1-2 years left in them atleast.

In reply to ksjs:

They don't last very long in my experience.

Also I know a couple of folk who snapped them falling over sharp edges.

50m dry treated 8.5mm are your best bet for all round rock climbing. IMO.

Edelweiss Sharp
Beal Corbra
Mammut Genisess
Edelrid Merlin

Are all good ropes for trad climbing.

I know you weren't asking about length buy 60m is ott for nearly all UK rock climbing imo.

In reply to ksjs:


Cross sectional area = Pi x r². The cross section of the rope is proportional to the radius multiplied by itself, so half a millimetre extra diameter gives
8mm rope : Pi x 4mm x 4mm = 50.27 mm² cross section
8.5 mm rope : Pi x 4.25 x 4.25 = 56.75 mm² cross section
that's a 12.9% increase.

In reply to Tom Ripley:
Edelrid Merlin is an 8mm rope no?

The Phoenix are sharp edge resistent.

60 meters is usefull for winter IMO but I agree not really necessary for most UK trad climibing, although it has been usefull for me in reducing the number of pitches in some of the longer Scottish routes in the past.

In reply to Tom Ripley: Snapping rope, you sure, was this some alpine setting? Not sure it's relevant anyway as I have assumed that if something was to cut an 8mm rope then it would, in all likelihood, do exactly the same to an 8.5mm rope. And yes, am going for 50M.

Why is 8.5mm better, on what basis?

In reply to ksjs:

I've got Mammut Phoenixes (8mm) which I'm really liking currently. Nice to climb on, nice on the walk in, but you need to be good with your ropework as it's easy to get in a big tangle.

In reply to ksjs:
"Why is 8.5mm better, on what basis?"

easier to hold falls, should be longer lasting, better for taking two seconds and less stretch (although the genesis and phoenix have the same max impact force on the mammut sight). As with most things there a pros and cons.

In reply to CurlyStevo: 60m is good for winter but also good for trad if you are using only one rope most of the time. I use one rope doubled up for most of my climbing and a 30m run-out nearly always make the belay where a 25m comes up short too often.

In reply to ksjs:

No in a Grochan/Red Walls setting.

I reckon an edge tested 8.5mm would cope much better than an 8mm.

To Steveo - I don't think Phoneox's are edge tested, I think you've got your wires crossed.

Sorry I meant the Kestrel not the Merlin.

HTH

In reply to Tom Ripley:
well when I bought mine mammut used to label their ropes sharp edge resistent. However I believe they have stopped doing that since UIAA removed it as being a mandatory test.

In any case rock & run still have the detail
http://www.rockrun.com/products/Mammut-Phoenix-8mm-x-60M.html?revpage=2

as do this web site
http://www.acmeclimbing.com/browseproducts/Mammut-Phoenix-8.0-30M-Superdry....

I suggest that is because when it was mandatory they passed a single sharp edge fall.

In reply to Tom Ripley: Sorry Tom but I don't believe ropes were cut at the Grochan, 8mm or otherwise - what is this death route / scenario that nobody knows of?

In reply to CurlyStevo: The only real con appears to be reduced wear and with careful use I would hope that this wouldn't be a real issue, at least over the anticipated lifespan of the ropes.

In reply to ksjs: To give you an idea of the stretch I fell of seconding on a not slack rope on a 25 meter route at about 5 meters and nearly hit the ground! Ok some of that was the rope tightening aroung the wiggles in the route but still! They do stretch disconcertingly far!

In reply to ksjs:

In part, because it can be up to 1.1mm difference.

Manufacturers are entitled to change the diameter they quote from the actual measurement by up to 0.3mm. So the 8.5mm could really be 8.8 and the 8mm could be a 7.7. Of course, they could also be exactly the same, or the 8mm could be a fraction thicker than the 8.5mm. Bless the EU's cotton socks.

In reply to ksjs: George Ullrich, snaped a Metoluis Monster on a sharp edge falling off Quantum Jump.

In reply to Tom Ripley: Wow! Apologies Tom, I stand corrected and slightly disconcerted; do you know if this is foreseeable i.e. an obvious risk that you just have to deal with on the route?

Also, a bit crystal ball but do you reckon an 8.5mm would have performed any better?

In reply to ksjs:
the monsters are thinner though at 7.8mm this isn't just a manufacturers figures thing either they are nearly 10% lighter per meter than the phoenixes.

In reply to ksjs: Me and t
Tom arrived just after George had decked... it seemed that his rope had caught in a crack...so an 8.5 would probably not have got stuck. It was mainly bad luck i think but slightly scary i guess!

In reply to Duncan Campbell:
luck of the draw on the width of the crack?

In reply to CurlyStevo: yeah maybe, but I think that the thicker the rope, the more rope has to be cut into, causing a snap. who knows...