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Using climbing rope as tow rope

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removed user 09 Apr 2019

I had to use climbing rope to pull my van out of the mud yesterday. I managed to undo the knots and the sheath actually looks normal but I would've thought pulling roughly three tons of van would take its toll in some way. What do you all think? Would you climb on that rope again? 

 NaCl 09 Apr 2019
In reply to removed user:

Lol. Good one.

 DerwentDiluted 09 Apr 2019
In reply to removed user:

You might just have discovered the knack of turning dynamic rope into prestretched rope. I'm sure the rope will hold your weight in a fall, so that's OK. But if you appreciate a fully functioning set of kidneys and spleen I'd probably ditch it.

 Dave Cundy 09 Apr 2019
In reply to removed user:

I've used my first ever climbing rope, an 11mm jobbie, as a tow rope half a dozen times.  I run it backwards and forwards four or five times to reduce the load.  Works a treat.

But would i use a newish rope and trust my life to its stretchiness afterwards?  You're 'aving a larf, surely )

Deadeye 09 Apr 2019
In reply to removed user:

It's fine. It's just the same as how they make 9mm ropes from 11mm starting stock

In reply to removed user:

Just to be clear given some of the jokes above:

No. Don't climb on this rope. Same reason you wouldn't lead on a static.

removed user 09 Apr 2019
In reply to A Longleat Boulderer:

> Just to be clear given some of the jokes above:

> No. Don't climb on this rope. Same reason you wouldn't lead on a static.

Cheers! Time to make a new doormat for the van then. 

 Toerag 09 Apr 2019
In reply to removed user:

Why not give it to DMM to test to see exactly what has happened to it?

 Kemics 09 Apr 2019
In reply to removed user:

A friend used a rope to tow a car out of ditch and I've climbed on it after wards with falls with no problems (he only told me this afterward!) Although he said he had doubled it back to create 6 strands so the load was shared over all of them.... that said. For the sake of ~£100 I would just bin it. I'm pretty quick to retire gear. Personally when I'm climbing I dont like any creeping doubt to enter my mind. 

If you thinking about bigwalling, some people use a lead line as a haul line and with 3 to 1 pulleys you can create a hell of a lot of force when the bag gets stuck under a roof. If their lead line gets damage they then swap them over. Probably comparable 

 Neil Williams 09 Apr 2019
In reply to removed user:

> I had to use climbing rope to pull my van out of the mud yesterday. I managed to undo the knots and the sheath actually looks normal but I would've thought pulling roughly three tons of van would take its toll in some way. What do you all think? Would you climb on that rope again? 


Definitely not. 

 wilkie14c 09 Apr 2019
In reply to removed user:

I once lifted an engine out of a car with a hydraulic crane attached to the lump with 2 crabs and a sling with a sliding X. Didn’t use the gear for climbing again but the engine swap went well  

 jkarran 09 Apr 2019
In reply to removed user:

> Would you climb on that rope again? 

Just in case you're not joking: No. It's a tow rope now.

They make excellent tow ropes and will soak up more towing abuse than you could possibly imagine.

jk

In reply to removed user:

I don't know, and I wouldn't do it myself. But I'm willing to speculate.

1) Has the rope regained its original length? If so, I would presume it will have regained its original stretchiness.

2) Recently, I saw a post over at mountain project claiming that the main factor determining the impact force is the belay device. So, in theory you could climb on semi static rope provided you don't use a grigri or other hard locking devices.

https://www.mountainproject.com/forum/topic/116697965/lead-climbing-with-a-...

As they say: Yer gonna die!

 jwi 09 Apr 2019
In reply to Stefan Jacobsen:

> I don't know, and I wouldn't do it myself. But I'm willing to speculate.

Don't

> 2) Recently, I saw a post over at mountain project claiming that the main factor determining the impact force is the belay device. So, in theory you could climb on semi static rope provided you don't use a grigri or other hard locking devices.

No. Don't write stupid shit like this.

3
In reply to jwi:

> No. Don't write stupid shit like this.

Not my words. Follow the link and read for yourself.

In reply to Toerag:

> Why not give it to DMM to test to see exactly what has happened to it?

This is the best course of action. That way a decision can be based on evidence rather than opinion. 

Personally I would avoid using the rope BUT that decision is based purely on gut feel, nothing else and I would prefer to have data to inform my choice. 

 Snyggapa 09 Apr 2019
In reply to Stefan Jacobsen:

>As they say: Yer gonna die!

You might get lucky and get off with a good maiming

removed user 30 Apr 2019
In reply to jkarran:

> Just in case you're not joking: No. It's a tow rope now.

> They make excellent tow ropes and will soak up more towing abuse than you could possibly imagine.

> jk

Thanks for the reply. Really not joking. Looks like there is such a thing as a stupid question after all!

Here's another one: If the problem is that its lost its stretch, can I use it as a static line now? 

 Rich Ellis 01 May 2019
In reply to removed user:

Time for a new rope . Given the forces exerted on moving a very heavy load you now have an expensive tow rope  now. Not a good idea to use it for any climbing related activity. Even abseiling . 

I do have a question , do you value your  old rope  more than your health and personal safety?

Post edited at 07:58
 neilwiltshire 01 May 2019
In reply to removed user:

> Here's another one: If the problem is that its lost its stretch, can I use it as a static line now? 

Yes. The rope has proven its ability to move heavy things so the issue is that shouldn't lead on it because there may not be any stretch in the rope now so in a leader fall you would just get snapped in half (if its a big fall).

But you'd be ok to haul stuff or abseil on it.

 Jon Greengrass 01 May 2019
In reply to removed user:

What knot did you use?

removed user 01 May 2019
In reply to Rich Ellis:

> Time for a new rope . Given the forces exerted on moving a very heavy load you now have an expensive tow rope  now. Not a good idea to use it for any climbing related activity. Even abseiling . 

Thanks, that's definitive.

> I do have a question , do you value your  old rope  more than your health and personal safety?

Your question comes from the perspective of someone who knows that using this rope is an unacceptable risk. I didn't know that, so came here to find out. I think that implies caution on my part, not recklessness.

removed user 01 May 2019
In reply to Jon Greengrass:

Bowline, which I actually managed to undo using a marlinspike.

In reply to removed user:

I'm going to chuck this in strictly for the benefit of discussion!

I have been inspecting PPE for W&R and also outdoor instructors and venues for years. I keep my ticket updated every three years by redoing the PPE inspection course. On the last day of the course you are given 18 pieces of gear to inspect. You have to correctly assess  the status of each piece of kit in order to get your ticket. Now some of these bits of kit have no documented history with them, and you are expected to use your knowledge in order to inspect them. This means that if you were handed a rope that had the end markings with length, date, manufactures code etc and you were unable to find any issues after a close examination of the rope, there would be no valid reason to fail it, as long as it passed all of the given criteria for a pass.

> Time for a new rope . Given the forces exerted on moving a very heavy load you now have an expensive tow rope  now. Not a good idea to use it for any climbing related activity. Even abseiling . 

I think this is overly cautious having quite happily used ropes to haul 100+ kilos up 20 pitches of abuse.

My point here (before anyone starts loading their keyboard guns) does not mean that you should ever climb on this rope again or in fact use it to abseil on. That is your call, and it is always a good idea to get enough education at inspecting kit to make a definitive decision yourself.

 dh73 02 May 2019
In reply to Old Mountain Git:

that is an interesting perspective.

I am coming at this from a  position of ignorance -so please forgive me if it is a stupid question. the theme of the answers on this thread is that there is no doubt that the towing activity will have somehow pulled"" all the dynamism out of the rope. is this a foregone conclusion and what are the physics of this? I assume that the load applied to the rope whilst towing, whilst great, was applied gradually. why is this more detrimental to the rope than a long fall by a 16 stone person for  example? All else being equal, I would have thought that forces applied suddenly would be worse for the rope than those applied gradually?

 AlanLittle 02 May 2019
In reply to dh73:

I would rather ask the question why anybody would contemplate risking their expensive life saving equipment instead of buying nice bit of designed-for-the-purpose kit for a tenner from the garage?

 dh73 02 May 2019
In reply to AlanLittle:

> I would rather ask the question why anybody would contemplate risking their expensive life saving equipment instead of buying nice bit of designed-for-the-purpose kit for a tenner from the garage?


I presume there was a tow-rope selling garage in the vicinity and he rather needed to get his van out of the mud...

 dh73 02 May 2019
In reply to dh73:

EDIT

"...*no* tow rope selling garage"

 Jon Greengrass 02 May 2019
In reply to dh73:

The rope will be damaged if the load applied exceeds the yield stress, i.e. the rope is permamently stretched by the load that has applied to it.

A common 10mm single rope like a Mammut galaxy, is rated to hold 9-10 UIAA falls with a max load of 8.5kn transmitted to the falling climber, stretching 30% on the first fall. 

If the OP had measured the how much the rope stretched during the towing, this could have been used to estimate whether the rope had endure enough strain to lose one if its "9-lives". I doubt whether it took 8.5kn of force to pull the van out of the mud, which is approximately the same force required to pull the van up a 17degree slope.

 Snyggapa 02 May 2019
In reply to Jon Greengrass:

I would suspect that the force on the rope could be greater than for a tow uphill - depending upon how "stuck in the mud" the vehicle was.

If the van was just unable to get traction, spinning it's wheels and really only needed a gentle coax to get itself onto harder ground, probably not much. 

If it was well and truly stuck and needed a proper pull, where the towing vehicle pulled harder and harder until the van came suddenly "unstuck" then that's a different ballgame.

In reply to dh73:

> that is an interesting perspective.

> I am coming at this from a  position of ignorance -so please forgive me if it is a stupid question. the theme of the answers on this thread is that there is no doubt that the towing activity will have somehow pulled"" all the dynamism out of the rope. is this a foregone conclusion and what are the physics of this? I assume that the load applied to the rope whilst towing, whilst great, was applied gradually. why is this more detrimental to the rope than a long fall by a 16 stone person for  example? All else being equal, I would have thought that forces applied suddenly would be worse for the rope than those applied gradually?

Surely a lot of this is to do with not knowing what forces you have exposed the rope to because you are not using for what it was intended. A three ton truck is 40 odd times heavier than a climber but the truck isn't falling etc.

 dh73 02 May 2019
In reply to Jon Greengrass:

Thanks Jon.

the OP will be able to correct me, but I presume that he doubled, trebled, quadrupled or whatever the rope before using it - am I right in thinking that this would also reduce the load on the rope?

Even if he did not, on the basis of what you say, he likely did not in fact knacker his lead rope?

 Jon Greengrass 02 May 2019
In reply to dh73:

Too many unknowns to be sure and as the majority say better safe than sorry. That the OP needed to use a marlinspike to untie the bowline, a knot that is usually very easy to untie after loading is of concern. I've never taken a high factor fall, but have taken some big whippers and never had any difficulty untieing my bowline. 

 john arran 02 May 2019
In reply to dh73:

I've completely snapped a climbing rope before when trying to recover a vehicle with it. The load can be massively greater than will ever be experienced in climbing.

Obviously, if you've used 4 strands and simply towed a mini a few hundred metres along a level road, the load levels will be very different. But unless you have some idea about quite how close to breaking point you've pushed the rope when towing, I very much doubt there's any way at all you can deduce its later state by visual or tactile inspection.

Northern Star 02 May 2019
In reply to removed user:

I've had to do the same as you, dragging 2.5 tons of van out of a muddy ditch on 7mm accessory cord.  The cord did not snap and I was pleasantly surprised.

Surely the question though should be more, would any future climbing partners want to use that rope again?  Personally I doubt it but look on the bright side, £100 of climbing rope probably saved at least twice that amount if you'd had to get the vehicle professionally recovered.  You also now have a nice tow rope if the same should happen again.

 elsewhere 02 May 2019
In reply to removed user:

Cut the 5m or whatever off the end for future us as a tow rope and continue to use the rest for climbing

Post edited at 17:00
3
 elsewhere 02 May 2019
In reply to Northern Star:

> I've had to do the same as you, dragging 2.5 tons of van out of a muddy ditch on 7mm accessory cord.  The cord did not snap and I was pleasantly surprised.

Maybe the towing eye would rip off the towed or towing vehicle before the cord snapped?


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