UKC

I'm confused about which walking ropes are dynamic - I don't necessarily mean UIAA rated, just won't break someone's spine if you slip a bit. Ropes in question are Edelrid Confidence and Beal Rando. Variously I've seen these implied to be dynamic and labelled "not for glacier use" and "not to be used climbing".

Secondly, I've seen some recommend a UIAA twin rope (eg Edelweiss Touring) for confidence use. I thought twins were strictly for use doubled up (whereas you could get away with one half rope).

Anyone shine some light here? thanks

In reply to iksander: I have a Zero G Walkers rope... 8.5mm dynamic half rope from what I can tell. It will take 8 falls and can be used for glacial travel, so I'm pretty happy with it seeing as it's never been taken out of the sack on a scramble yet.
The Edelrid ropes from what I could tell when I was looking for a scrambling rope aren't dynamic, so are gonna hurt you if you take a fall on them.

Details here - http://walkhigh.co.uk/acatalog/Ropes.html

Don't know about the beal Rando

In reply to iksander:
Here you go, info on the Rando

http://www.bealplanet.com/portail-2006/index.php?page=cordes_rando&lang...

In reply to liz j: Interesting - on the Beal site it says - Walker’s rope: This is not strictly a fourth type of rope. The rope called ‘walkers’ has to be, at the minimum, one strand of twin rope. Note that in Germany it is required that users have at least one strand of half rope.

I'd make sure it was a half rope then. The Germans always win at penalties!

In reply to liz j: Very useful, thanks!

So according to Beal you shouldn't use a single twin rope for "mountaineering" - which rules out scrambling I guess

In reply to iksander:

I asked the UK distributor for Edelrid a similar question a couple of years ago regarding their 'Confidence' rope, this is what they said:

"The 8mm Confidence rope is manufactured for security when scrambling on steep ground. It is effectively only an 8mm cord and is manufactured to EN564 which is the Accessory cord standard. It's tensile strength is 14.8kN (which equate to around a loading of 1500kg) so is more than strong enough for this purpose. However ropes made to EN564 are not designed to take the impact of a fall.

For this reason when a rope is used on a Glacier there is a possibility of it having to hold a fall if a crevasse opens up, in which case a dynamic climbing rope to EN892 is required. Edelrid's product for this purpose is their Glacier rope which is a 9mm dynamic climbing rope (yes it is dry treated but that is incidental). A dynamic rope must be used if a fall is likely"