strengthof ropes???

[a1leyez0nm3]

i found some 244lb " work load " rope (9.5mm??) thats pretty new.. i was wondering if the stuff is strong enough to trust crossing glaciers? (i know im so cheap)

[DPS]

No

[yakimuchacho]

No way! If a decent climbing rope is too expensive, you could always take up calf roping. I hear pink-pointing a calf is en vogue these days at the local state fair.

 

[Bill_Simpkins]

No, don't use it! How much experience do you have?

[Toast]

225 Lbs static load is about equivalent to 1 kN force. If your body weight 180 lbs and have another 30 lbs of boots, clothing, gear and water, your weight alone is about that limit. Take a fall... snap. Rig a 2 or 3 to one mechanical for rescue... snap. I think you get the picture.

[DPS]

Pro Mountain Sports is selling a 30 meter, 8.0 mm glacier rope for $66.95.

[troubleski]

Just to Clarify a little... Depending on how a particular mfg rates its rope... a static rope with a rope with a 244lb working load can have a breaking strength of between 244lbs and 1220lbs. A breaking strength of 1220 lbs is starting to get you in the ball park, but to really make an evaluation you would need to look at the rope's constrution (double braid vs. Kern-Mantle) and handling characteristics.

 

But why not just get a rope designed for the task. Pro Mountain Sports has them, and I think Feathered Friends sells the stuff by the foot.

 

its pretty cheap.

[Don_Gonthier]

The truth is that it would probably be O.K. But no one on this board or any where else could tell you without knowing more about the rope. Working load is not a really useful number for judging whether a rope is acceptable for climbing.

The first problem is that "working load" may be deffined differently between manufacturers and specific industries. I've seen ropes with working loads between one quarter and one tenth of the breaking strength. So the range for the above rope would be roughly between 1000 and 2500 lbs breaking strength. You might notice that the larger number isn't that far from the breaking strength of climbing rope and webbing. Then you get into how do you measure the breaking strength of a rope. Is it just the load at which the average rope in a sample breaks or is it 1 or 2 standard deviations below the average. In other words, is it O.K. if half of them break at lower loads or one in a hundred or one in a thousand. I imagine it depends on the industry and how much insurance the manufacturer wants to pay for. For most ropes you buy at the hardware store none of this information is available. This means that there is no way to tell the strength of the rope from the information you've given. One reason climbers use a particular type of rope is that this information is available for each piece of rope and equipment.

Second, it is likely that the rope you have is a static rope, one constructed to limit stretch. Climbing ropes tend to the other extreme. They are dynamic, constructed to enhance stretch. This quality of the rope is far more important for climbing than the strength. Again, with a climbing rope these properties are all spelled out by the manufacturer so there is no guess work. Most of the people on this board will be agast that I would suggest that a static rope was exceptable but remember that falls while crossing glaciers are going to be anything but static. There is nothing like dragging your partner across the ice to limit impact forces. Hundreds of falls were caught on hardware store hemp and twisted nylon back in the day. Many climbers would contemplate using 8 and 9 mm static rope on simple glacier routes but not a rope with unkown properties.

Finally the question of experience does come up. Most climbers have already made decisions about what techniques and equipment they would accept on particular climbs and don't ask questions about the strength of rope. If that is not the case I apologize, but I assume your experience is limited. I would suggest that the experience of the climber has more effect on the safety of the party than the type of rope. In other words, the best equipment in the hands of someone who doesn't understand how to use it can have far worse consiquences than crappy gear in the hands of experienced climbers. In my opion, roping up on a glacier is the best example of this in all of climbing. Look back on accidents on Hood and Rainer involving more than one climber and I believe you will find that the particular type of rope used has little to do with the cause of the accidents. Far more important are questions like when to rope up, when do you take it off and how do you travel when you have it on? If you don't have an answer to these questions, it makes little difference what rope you take.

That said, the 8mm for 66.95$ sounds like a great deal.

[Rafael_H]

Heck, I have a 9mil 50m rope I got in 1998. It's yours if you want it.