Tyler Harvey

Bronco: It's a Beal Top Gun II 10.5 mm rope with some weatherproofing treatment ("Dry Cover"). Bought it in 2014, used it for a couple days of sport climbing and maybe ten days of mountaineering. Never taken a lead fall on it. So, relatively fresh before this exposure. JasonG: Good point! I'll look for that.

Hey, My climbing partner and I had to quickly bail off of North Sister in a hailstorm two weeks ago. In our haste, we didn't check to make sure that we could pull our rope on our last rappel into the freezing wind. Unsurprisingly, we were not able to pull it and didn't think twice about leaving it behind to save ourselves. Fortunately, we made it back up yesterday and retrieved the rope. It was resting right where we left it with no visible signs of the weather it saw. However, I have no experience assessing the impact of two weeks of sun, snow, and rapidly changing temperatures on a rope. Anybody have any tips on what to look for to determine whether it's safe to use again? Would you opt for caution and retire it for backyard use just in case? Or is two weeks just too short a time to have any impact on a rope? Guides seem comfortable leaving fixed lines up for whole seasons, so maybe the two weeks my rope was out did very little. Rope saving us from the storm as we descended the Thayer headwall: Rope happily dangling on a sunny day on the south side of the terrible traverse: Thanks for any advice and/or admonishments of our decision-making ability, Tyler