Ropes are the most critical piece of climbing equipment that we use on the rocks. Our rope is our lifeline. It secures us to each other in partnership and it attaches us to the cliffs. There’s nothing like a brand new rope. It feels tight and secure. Its colors glow bright in the morning sun. But after a few pitches it starts fading and loosens up. It becomes a good friend that we uncoil at the base of the day’s first route and coil up at the end of the day.
Ropes Wear Out
But despite our best care and attention, ropes wear out. And when you climb a lot of pitches, they wear out faster. So we need to keep our eyes on our rope and regularly check it for wear and tear, and then finally one day we have to decide to retire it. Ropes are critical to climbing safety because if our rope fails, we might die. And that’s not a good thing. Ropes are also one of the few non-redundant parts of the climbing safety system, unless you use double ropes as the British do.
Loss of Elasticity
As ropes wear out, they begin to lose a lot of their stretch, the elasticity that allows it to absorb a lot of the energy created by falls, and they start to stiffen up. This stiffness and lack of stretchiness puts more impact on other parts of our chain of climbing safety, because the energy formerly absorbed by the rope’s stretch as to be absorbed elsewhere. This can lead to the failure of other equipment like gear pulling out, shearing, or breaking under load.
