(1) Top anchor inclusion in standard: we are looking to revise this standard to make specific provision for top anchors, including how to test them, and what strength levels they should have.
(2) Environmental degradation revision: with respect to stress corrosion cracking and corrosion: we are working on revising the environmental degradation aspects of the standard, and top anchors are of specific interest because they usually include chains or links with welds or other joints. We would like to see how these have performed in use in order to address these issues in the revision.
(3) The UIAA is always interested in failures to climbing equipment: we don’t have many examples of failures to top anchors, and would like to learn from them. If you have any samples of failed top anchors (either with cracks, or corrosion, or even suspected cracks) that have been used either indoors or outdoors we would be very interested in more information. And ideally to examine them, but even the information that there has been a failure would be helpful.
We don’t need to publicize the actual location details to any extent if that is an issue: but we would need to say that there has been a case of a certain type of anchor failure, due to whatever reason that it failed, in the general area that it has come from (as in Southern England, North-Western England etc). We hope this makes it easier for people to help climbers to have these issues looked into, and yet not suffer any adverse publicity.
Please contact Alan Jarvis at the email address below, and we can arrange for how we go from there. We can pay the costs of sending the samples to us.
Thank you in advance for helping to make climbing safer.
Alan Jarvis
UIAA Safety Commission Delegate
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