UKC

Hi... looking for recommendations on 80m sport ropes. Was going to go with a decathlon one, but the comments on degradation were not so inspiring.

Looking around the £150 mark

Thanks in advance, Luke

Just bought a mammut crag classic 9.5. Not sure you'll get it for £150 though. First impressions are it's very nice. We have the decathalon green one and the mammut is nicer.

I used a fatmap discount code to get 30% off from mammut direct which made it about £165.

Just bought my second 80m single rope, though I use it for both sport and some trad. Personally I opted for the Edelrid Tommy Caldwell Eco Dry DT 9.6mm and I'm happy with it on initial use, but it cost me over £200. The Mammut Crag Dry 9.5mm is available on sale for just over £150, but I opted against it because some reviews say the middle marker is hard to see and there is no thread change midway. But you might have different preferences than I do e.g. maybe you want something thicker and/or are not looking for a dryrope.

You spent £50 more when you could have spent £5 on a container of rope marker ink ???

I think the degradation was on the pink one, which was recalled last year. Although we never had any issues with ours, which saw fairly heavy usage. Returned it and swapped for a green one. Equally as good. I'd highly recommend

Out of interest, where are you seeing the mammut crag dry 80m available for just over £150? Cheers!

I've just got the Tommy Caldwell 9.6 as well. It handles ok, but doesn't seem to be very round to me. When lowering, any twists mean that it runs faster or slower through a grigri depending on orientation. Maybe it's something that will change with time (only used it twice so far). I much prefer my older Mammut 9.8 dry at the moment though. 

Honestly I’d get the cheapest you can find. I aim for £1/ meter or less! We’ve just had a winter using a £250 or so edelrid thing that apparently has aramid or Kevlar in the sheath. Either way it wore pretty much like the rest of them and had to be chopped after not thaaaaat long. Certainly didn’t last 2-3x longer than a cheap one which you’d hope for. Each to their own though. I must say the petzl Volta, although we haven’t thrashed it to death, does seem to possibly deliver on this front… 

£1/m or less... dream on.

I have just got a Decathlon one (£105 for a 70m 9.5mm - they do 80m ones) for an up coming sports trip. It came recommended by a friend who is mountain guide. Massive disclaimer - I haven't used it yet - but it looks pretty good. 

80m sports rope, sounds like you'll be using it on trips to the continent.

I wouldn't really worry too much about the wear and tear, at least if you climb on limestone. Either you climb s much, that you need to replace it anyway (take lots of lobs and just mileage). Or the wear is so little (a trip of week or two per year), that you'll prolly get closer to the manufacturer expire data (max 10 years from production date).

For the record, I have a Bergfreunde edition Edelrid (I think) in the ~9.5mm range that has served me well, I also recall that it was 120 Eur a few years back. And I have also used the 9.1mm green Simond (from Decathlon) that was a nice rope, but thin and when climbed a bunch on coarse granite, well it was getting fussy after a season or two (of single pitch granite sport or trad, often with usable anchors at the top, so getting lowered was the norm).

I agree with this. I've had a few decathlon ones and havn't noticed them wearing significantly worse than more expensive ones.

Just as important, though, get the longest one you can within reason; the longevity of a sport rope has more to do with how many times you can chop off the fluffy two or three metres at the end before it is too short to be useful than marginal gains in how fast it actually wears. Use a new rope when you actually need 80m and use an older chopped one when it suffices. 

I've had a 80m 8.9mm decathlon rope as my main sport rope for six months as my cut down 70m wasn't long enough any more for the routes I was trying in Portland and abroad. It's brilliant. Highly recommended unless you need something very specific.

Anyone got a link to the decathlon 80m rope please. Their website is being it's usual unhelpful self.

It was a Google result - I'm afraid I don't recall where. The manufacturer had it on outlet for a while at a similar price, but those may have sold.

No, I would have bought the Mammut rope on clearance if Mammut's blasted website had worked. After trying to buy it repeatedly and getting a weird error I emailed them for assistance, and more than a week later they replied saying there was a webpage bug for that product which they had now fixed. By then I had already ordered the other rope. I find it easier to see a pattern change than just a middle mark line so I decided it wasn't worth trying to cancel the Edelrid order at that point.

Decathlon, all the way. All their ropes are amazing, I have the 8.5, the 9.5 and the 10.5, they all have lasted longer than all the other brands I've owned and handle the same. I don't bother with any other brands now.