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jolery
Nov 19, 2010, 2:59 PM
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A friend took a factor two fall on my New England 10.5, resulting in a permanent kink in the rope (and lots of blood stains). I cut off the section, and checked out the core:
2 of the 12 strand bundles were damaged. Anyone else cut their rope after a nasty fall and find core damage?
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marc801
Nov 19, 2010, 3:12 PM
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jolery wrote: A friend took a factor two fall on my New England 10.5, resulting in a permanent kink in the rope (and lots of blood stains). I cut off the section, and checked out the core: [image]http://www.rockclimbing.com/images/photos/assets/6/461906-largest_1018103.jpg[/image] 2 of the 12 strand bundles were damaged. Anyone else cut their rope after a nasty fall and find core damage?
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j_ung
Nov 19, 2010, 3:30 PM
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sittingduck lent me this picture to use in an article I wrote for Gear.com on rope thickness and belay devices. I used the shot to illustrate the forces involved in high-factor falls. The damage is where the belayer's clove hitch was.
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jolery
Nov 19, 2010, 3:53 PM
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My climbing partner's buddy wanted to climb some 11c in the middle of nowhere. Getting to the start involved traversing 5th class terrain to a large ledge, with the ground dropping off as you traversed to the ledge - ledge was about 25-30 feet up. So all three of us get to the ledge, I set up a quick three point anchor at the only place I can get pro in, 2 cams behind a refrigerator sized block, and a small nut in a different feature. Climber starts off on route, maybe 10-15 feet to my left. First bolt is up maybe 10-15 feet. Climber plugs a cam in a chossy feature, continues on towards first bolt. A foothold or handhold breaks, climber falls, cam blows rock out (and over-rotates), climber falls past ledge I am belaying from, system snaps taut, everything holds but I get jerked off my feet. Big rock that precipitated the event hits climber in head - lots of blood everywhere. My climbing partner raps down and assists while I pack and lower our gear, and back lead off the ledge. Three frantic hours later we get him to the nearest ER. He ended up fine, lots of stitches, but no serious head trauma.
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billl7
Nov 19, 2010, 4:16 PM
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jolery wrote: My climbing partner's buddy wanted to climb some 11c in the middle of nowhere. Getting to the start involved traversing 5th class terrain to a large ledge, with the ground dropping off as you traversed to the ledge - ledge was about 25-30 feet up. So all three of us get to the ledge, I set up a quick three point anchor at the only place I can get pro in, 2 cams behind a refrigerator sized block, and a small nut in a different feature. Climber starts off on route, maybe 10-15 feet to my left. First bolt is up maybe 10-15 feet. Climber plugs a cam in a chossy feature, continues on towards first bolt. A foothold or handhold breaks, climber falls, cam blows rock out (and over-rotates), climber falls past ledge I am belaying from, system snaps taut, everything holds but I get jerked off my feet. Big rock that precipitated the event hits climber in head - lots of blood everywhere. My climbing partner raps down and assists while I pack and lower our gear, and back lead off the ledge. Three frantic hours later we get him to the nearest ER. He ended up fine, lots of stitches, but no serious head trauma.
Was there something external to the rope that caused the permanent kink? Edge of the ledge? Belay device?
Where was the part of the rope with the kink in relation to the rest of the system.
Bill L
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jolery
Nov 19, 2010, 4:43 PM
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I believe the kinking was due to the belay device, a standard ATC. The ledge was quite rounded where the rope passed over the edge. I was tied into the anchor with the rope, and belaying directly off my harness. The kink/core damage was about 15-18 feet from the end of the rope.
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jt512
Nov 19, 2010, 4:43 PM
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jolery wrote: A friend took a factor two fall on my New England 10.5, resulting in a permanent kink in the rope (and lots of blood stains). I cut off the section, and checked out the core: 2 of the 12 strand bundles were damaged. Anyone else cut their rope after a nasty fall and find core damage?
Every rope manufacturer says to retire a rope after a single serious fall. I guess we now why.
Jay
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billl7
Nov 19, 2010, 4:46 PM
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And besides the visible kink, the sheath wasn't damaged in that area?
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jolery
Nov 19, 2010, 5:00 PM
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There was a fairly significant amount of sheath damage, but nowhere near a core-shot
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Tipton
Nov 19, 2010, 5:45 PM
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Yikes. Good job on handling the situation.
Where were you climbing?
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jolery
Nov 19, 2010, 6:26 PM
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We were at Cave Creek near Sam's Throne - the climb itself was at the far end of the routes - 30-60 minutes of bushwhacking and maneuvering over fallen trees.
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markcarlson
Nov 19, 2010, 7:53 PM
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My partner took a 10-12m fall on near-vertical cheesegrater limestone with approx 40-45m of rope out. It was a wandering pitch and the rope got loaded in multiple places. We didn't feel the fall at the belay, (nor could we see it from where we were positioned,) so we think the rope got stuck in a crack or loaded heavily on an edge. 20m from the sharp end, there was a small cut half-way through the sheath on one side (half-way, as in the sheath was cut enough that it would unravel itself.)
I couldn't really feel any core damage by rolling the rope in my fingers. I chopped the rope anyway, and noticed that under the small cut, there were a few threads (filaments?) from the sheath melted to one of the core strands. No visible damage to the core strands.
It was a new rope with only a few pitches and no falls on it before this fall.
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wwalt822
Nov 19, 2010, 8:31 PM
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Were the cut strands in the middle of the rope were they near the damaged sheath? If they were in the middle of the rope then they could have been damaged just by tensile force.
Also, how did you cut the sheath away from the core?
(This post was edited by wwalt822 on Nov 19, 2010, 8:32 PM)
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sbaclimber
Nov 23, 2010, 9:41 AM
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jolery wrote: My climbing partner's buddy wanted to climb some 11c in the middle of nowhere. Getting to the start involved traversing 5th class terrain to a large ledge, with the ground dropping off as you traversed to the ledge - ledge was about 25-30 feet up. So all three of us get to the ledge, I set up a quick three point anchor at the only place I can get pro in, 2 cams behind a refrigerator sized block, and a small nut in a different feature. Climber starts off on route, maybe 10-15 feet to my left. First bolt is up maybe 10-15 feet. Climber plugs a cam in a chossy feature, continues on towards first bolt. A foothold or handhold breaks, climber falls, cam blows rock out (and over-rotates), climber falls past ledge I am belaying from, system snaps taut, everything holds but I get jerked off my feet. Big rock that precipitated the event hits climber in head - lots of blood everywhere. My climbing partner raps down and assists while I pack and lower our gear, and back lead off the ledge. Three frantic hours later we get him to the nearest ER. He ended up fine, lots of stitches, but no serious head trauma.
Sounds like a good example of when a helmet might have been a good idea...!?
(This post was edited by sbaclimber on Nov 23, 2010, 9:42 AM)
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patto
Nov 23, 2010, 12:05 PM
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Great work on catching the fall.
Did any rope slip through your hand or the device? It is conventional theory that it is 'impossible' to hold a factor 2 without rope slippage.
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jolery
Nov 23, 2010, 2:06 PM
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patto wrote: Great work on catching the fall. Did any rope slip through your hand or the device? It is conventional theory that it is 'impossible' to hold a factor 2 without rope slippage.
I'm not aware of any rope slippage through the device or my hand - I didn't get any rope burns. Seems like if the rope slipped the energy would be dissipated over the slipped section of rope instead of at a single point. The fact that the core got damaged leads me to believe that there was no slippage as well.
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patto
Nov 23, 2010, 2:43 PM
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jolery wrote: patto wrote: Great work on catching the fall. Did any rope slip through your hand or the device? It is conventional theory that it is 'impossible' to hold a factor 2 without rope slippage. I'm not aware of any rope slippage through the device or my hand - I didn't get any rope burns. Seems like if the rope slipped the energy would be dissipated over the slipped section of rope instead of at a single point. The fact that the core got damaged leads me to believe that there was no slippage as well.
I would agree with you. The evidences points to limited or no slippage.
I have always suspected that the slippage theory isn't 100% accurate. If you hard lock off a device with a 180 angle the friction feels a hell of alot greater than the 8x that is often quoted.
But the going theory is that it is impossible to hold a factor 2 fall without slippage on a normal belay device.
(This post was edited by patto on Nov 23, 2010, 3:17 PM)
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dolphja
Nov 23, 2010, 3:04 PM
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jolery wrote: patto wrote: Great work on catching the fall. Did any rope slip through your hand or the device? It is conventional theory that it is 'impossible' to hold a factor 2 without rope slippage. I'm not aware of any rope slippage through the device or my hand - I didn't get any rope burns. Seems like if the rope slipped the energy would be dissipated over the slipped section of rope instead of at a single point. The fact that the core got damaged leads me to believe that there was no slippage as well.
yea, good catch man. i talked to him a couple times about what happened and it just was a big loose rock on the route. pretty unusual for cave creek. i didn't catch the name of the route that he was on when it happened though. as far as a helmet preventing the injury, it would have reduced some of the injury but where the rock hit him in the face, the helmet at least would have slowed the impact a bit. i hope you don't have to waste too much of your rope though and here's only about 20' - 30' you gotta cut off
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jolery
Nov 23, 2010, 4:42 PM
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wwalt822 wrote: Were the cut strands in the middle of the rope were they near the damaged sheath? If they were in the middle of the rope then they could have been damaged just by tensile force. Also, how did you cut the sheath away from the core?
The cut strands were in the perimeter bundles. I cut the rope off about six inches from the damaged area, thin slid the sheath back for inspection.
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