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socalclimber
Jan 25, 2008, 1:54 AM
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Jay sez:
"Someone needs a margarita at Edchada's
Jay "
As long as your buying. By the way, I look good in a TuTu. Oh, and by the way, NO SEX ON THE FIRST DATE. I'm saving myself for marriage.
Christ, I'm already married. Jay, you'd better make that margarita double.
Don't worry, I don't kiss and tell.
(This post was edited by socalclimber on Jan 25, 2008, 1:57 AM)
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artm
Jan 25, 2008, 2:22 AM
Post #77 of 156
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socalclimber wrote: Jay sez: "Someone needs a margarita at Edchada's Jay " As long as your buying. By the way, I look good in a TuTu. Oh, and by the way, NO SEX ON THE FIRST DATE. I'm saving myself for marriage. Christ, I'm already married. Jay, you'd better make that margarita double. Don't worry, I don't kiss and tell.
You are soooo in trouble.
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socalclimber
Jan 25, 2008, 4:51 AM
Post #78 of 156
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I'm always in trouble.
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billcoe_
Jan 25, 2008, 5:12 AM
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sausalito wrote: mea culpa. My main point was that the local retailer was the one deserving accolades NOT Petzl. The guy that responded was giving Petzl accolades for acting. But to your point the best case scenario by Petzl is they have know about this problem for over a month at LEAST and have done nothing about it. The least Petzl should do is send out a "discontinue use until further notice" type of warning until the issue is resolved.
Petzl seems fairly ho hum about this. It's bullshit that someone pays $150 for a rope that crashes and burns so prematurely, and it makes me wonder what the strength of the damn thing really is. Those fibers are short, damn short, that ain't a good thing bubbas.
They've only been selling ropes a short time and all these folks are having issues and "They're looking into it?"
F* em.
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robdotcalm
Jan 29, 2008, 12:33 AM
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The postings by those who have had Petzl ropes disintegrate and Petzl’s response stand in sharp contrast to an incident involving an Edelweiss rope I purchased in the early 1980s, and which occurred the third time I used the rope, which had never held a fall or been used for rappel. It was a sturdy 11 mm characteristic of that era.
I was climbing “Switch Cracks”, a 5.8 on Lumpy Ridge, which consists of about 50 feet of wide to thin crack, followed by a 15 foot traverse left (exciting), followed by 10 feet of easy chimney to the top. The climb had gone along smoothly. When I got to the chimney, the rope seemed stuck so I gave it hard tug and it loosened up. In the darkness of the chimney, as I looked at the rope I noticed a white splotch on it and assumed it was bird droppings. I attempted to brush it off and in shock realized it was the core of the rope. The rope had been nearly cut in half. I started screaming to my belayer, who thought I had gone out of my mind. Anyway, calming down I tied a figure 8 on bight past the cut part and clipped that into my harness and finished the route. When my partner arrived at the belay stance, he started screaming that the rope had been cut. We were perplexed.
I took the rope back to retailer (Neptune’s in Boulder) who contacted Edelweiss. They wanted the rope shipped back to them in Austria and contacted me by telephone to go over in detail the how I had used the rope. In a couple of weeks they informed me that they had thoroughly tested the rope, including cutting it up into small pieces for detailed examination. They could find nothing wrong. They also gave me credit to purchase a new rope at no cost.
The next year I re-climbed the route to see if I could find anything that would cut a rope. I failed to see any features that could do that. In the summer of 2005, I was climbing the route again not looking for anything that could cut a rope. However, as I started the traverse, I notice a vertically positioned razor-sharp quartzite projection in a place where it could have been the cause.
The point of this posting is the rapid and thorough response of Edelweiss compared to the tardy and lackadaisical response of Petzl to a serious safety issue. Petzl is a company that has manufactured and pioneered a lot of good gear, but this doesn’t give them a free ride when a serious safety issue is raised. It’s perplexing to me how they would allow their fine reputation to be sullied by their sluggish response.
Also, though not the reason for posting this, my experience indicates how easy it is for a rope to be cut when subjected to pressure on a sharp edge. For some time after this experience, I almost exclusively climbed on half-ropes.
Cheers,
Rob.calm
This 2nd posting. First appears to have vanished.
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alexnees
Jan 29, 2008, 2:09 AM
Post #81 of 156
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In reply to: Because the sheath didn't "fray" but "powdered" it seems there's a severe problem with the structural integrity of the actual sheath fibers. Upon analyzing the rope, it appeared to be only in the area of the 6-meter marked sections, which were noticeably softer than the rest of the rope. Rubbing the sheath in these areas with a fingernail caused additional "powdering."
In reply to: Has anyone seen such behavior of disintegration in their really well-used old ropes--i.p., the "powdering" spotting on rock(!) ?
Yes, I've seen this kind of wear before on one of my ropes, a 10mm Maxim. Almost identical wear, actually: powdery tufts of sheath material left on the rock, and significant core exposure in a specific area near one end. However, this rope was probably 1.5 years old and had seen a lot of use at a local crag that is composed of very abrasive sandstone. Additionally, the anchors at this crag are typically set up so that it's very difficult to avoid at least some rubbing of the rope when rapping, lowering or toproping. In the case of this rope, I'd noticed the sheath fuzz increasing over a period of months. It seemed as though the sheath wear finally got to a critical point and started disintegrating. The day that I retired it, the core was showing in several places, and the sheath was so threadbare that, even where it was intact, white core strands could be seen between the threads of the sheath. Additionally, simply twisting the rope, as though wringing out a dishrag, caused the sheath to rip open and the core to bulge out.
Don't know if this has much bearing on the Petzl situation, but I did want to point out that I've experienced similar wear on another rope brand.
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texasclimber
Feb 1, 2008, 8:17 PM
Post #82 of 156
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Agreed. What I don't understand is how such a great company would not be testing these ropes themselves. They are located here in Utah and have access to all kinds of rock types! I think this is completely irresponsible of a company that people trust their lives to. YIKES!
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keruha1
Feb 1, 2008, 9:37 PM
Post #83 of 156
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I have the same problem on my Zephyr that had 10-15 uses. The sheath completely disintegrated few feet off the end after one of the TR climbs. Looked for a possible cause and couldn't find any. It seemed to be a straightforward setup off the provided clips with no sharp rock on the route.
Now I'm shocked to see this as a widespred problem. Will ask EMS if they will take it back (got it last summer), and if not will send the present to Petzl. Definitely not climbing on it ever again.
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supersonick
Feb 1, 2008, 11:32 PM
Post #84 of 156
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Petzl is located in Utah, huh?  I think you might be thinking of BD.
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texasclimber
Feb 1, 2008, 11:38 PM
Post #85 of 156
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supersonick wrote: Petzl is located in Utah, huh? I think you might be thinking of BD.
BD is in SLC and Petzl has a location North of Ogden, UT. I looked into working there once.
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moose_droppings
Feb 2, 2008, 12:55 AM
Post #86 of 156
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keruha1 wrote: Will ask EMS if they will take it back (got it last summer), and if not will send the present to Petzl. Definitely not climbing on it ever again.
Skip the middle man and go straight to Petzl with it. Give them a call, and the benefit of a doubt.
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alpine_guru
Feb 2, 2008, 2:04 AM
Post #87 of 156
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I just wanted to throw this in from the perspective of a science major.
After reading this whole thread i have only seen the evidence for this occurring in 2 cases and then maybe a few others. Some people have said oh yeah my petzl whatever is a major piece of shit blah blah blah but only 2 people that I have seen have actually provided evidence aka a picture of the damage.
Now i have no idea how many ropes petzl has actually received, but from my point of view the response they provided on this forum was very reasonable considering the information they have.
Also considering the number of these ropes that are probably being used by consumers and the number of people complaining i would say this problem seems to be fairly rare.
I would just add that regardless of your gear brand, pay attention to your equipment. I trust petzl products as i use their gear almost exclusively and i will be buying one of their ropes shortly.
As a final comment I still have not ruled out that some of these sheath failures could have been user error especially where no pictures of the rope where provided.
Climb Safe
Reed
(This post was edited by alpine_guru on Feb 2, 2008, 2:04 AM)
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knudenoggin
Feb 2, 2008, 7:45 AM
Post #88 of 156
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jeff_m wrote: If your rope shreds on an afternoon and then you find out that this has happened to others who have sent them back to Petzl and are sent replacements that also have problems---what decision would you make?
against this being operator failure. And the replacement being as bad?!
(I think that these "operators" have other ropes w/o such behavior.)
jeff_m wrote: majid_sabet wrote: it looks like those red marks are near the same area which tells me that you had a rope drag with some load on it. How many times you lowered people on that section ? As a follow up, over the weekend we returned to the crag (with some beginners in tow) and set up the same route and anchor (2 bolts with a quad and two oval lockers for the MP). ... This is a shot of the "powder" from the rope: small, short, brittle fibers. Heat? Chemical? That's what I'm hoping we find out....And, no, there were no knots tied anywhere near the 6-meter (20-foot) marked sections.
Thanks much for the great photo of the damaged fibres (& dime)!
But as Cracklover? remarked, you ignored some focused questions early
in the thread re the nature & position of the wear.
By "six-meter marks" I'm guessing you're just pointing to where the
wear is colloquially, and that there isn't some special built-in mark
here (as another poster wondered)? J_ung reported "about 3 meters out"
IIRC.
Another question is about length of disintegrated region--for how
long did the damage run?
And, how high was that TR climb? --i.p., where would this damaged
section (S--was there more than one?) BE?
You said that there seemed to be much fuzz around the anchor 'biners,
but if the climb was say 50', one would see about 50' of rope hauled
through them--and how much rope was damaged?
If the damage is, oh, about a meter or two long, and was deemed to
result from bending through the anchor, then the implication is that
that part of the rope has some defect; but othewise one would want
to figure out where that section lay when no more rope would be
pulled over the same spot--i.e., when the climber was about down.
(Absent tension, there'd be no damage while climbing; then on the
lowering (yes?), the taut rope comes into contact ... --but, geeesh,
20' away? Well, if you're leaning back on the lowering, walking down,
if the climb's not overhanging, and maybe with the angle of rope from
climber to rock it's only when the climber nears bottom that the rope
is brought to bear over something nasty, and for only the last XX feet
of lowering?!
(Once damaged, the rope's section would *shed* when passing through
the anchors, yes; but not because they caused the damage--just loosened
it some, as you did on inspectinging it later.))
The core strands almost seem collectively twisted in the core shot
--maybe I'm looking too hard, now, but there shouldn't be twist of
the set. Also, it seems that the REDdish fibres are the most damaged
(on the rock, of course, they show up better than gold would).
-----
But even with an explanation that suggests something nasty on the
rock (which happened to be avoided on your return!), there are still
the other cases to consider. Still, your details might shed some light
on the problem, vis-a-vis length of section and any possible matching
OR NOT to some abrasive agent (if not, again, it suggests then that
something untoward happened to that section in manufacture).
*kN*
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j_ung
Feb 2, 2008, 4:37 PM
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knudenoggin wrote: Thanks much for the great photo of the damaged fibres (& dime)! But as Cracklover? remarked, you ignored some focused questions early in the thread re the nature & position of the wear. By "six-meter marks" I'm guessing you're just pointing to where the wear is colloquially, and that there isn't some special built-in mark here (as another poster wondered)? J_ung reported "about 3 meters out" IIRC.
You do remember correctly. But please don't take my measurements to be precise. I didn't hold a ruler to the rope, and I no longer have it in my possession to get an exact reading. My ropes were used more for leading than toproping and the wear spots were consistent with such use. It was the degree to which the ropes wore and the rapidity with which the damage occurred that was alarming, not the place on the rope where it happened.
alpine_guru wrote: I trust petzl products as i use their gear almost exclusively and i will be buying one of their ropes shortly.
The more information the merrier. Whether positive, negative or neutral, please do post up your experiences with your new rope.
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tolman_paul
Feb 14, 2008, 1:03 AM
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I've worn out two ropes from tr, a 10.5mm which I forgot the brand, I think a cousin, and an 11mm mammut. It literally took 1000's of feet of climbing to fuzz up the sheaths. I did wear through the sheath on the 10.5mm rope, but it was a small exposed area of core, nothing like what was shown with this rope, I never made it through the sheath on the 11mm. I've also cut the sheath on a 10.5mm that hadn't seen nearly the amount of climbing the other ropes have seen.
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knudenoggin
Feb 14, 2008, 8:31 PM
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BUMP, for any updates on further reaction from Petzl (or Cousin,
the actual rope maker)?!
Jeff_M, there are stil some outstanding/unanswered questions:
In reply to: But as Cracklover? remarked, you ignored some focused questions early in the thread re the nature & position of the wear. By "six-meter marks" I'm guessing you're just pointing to where the wear is colloquially, and that there isn't some special built-in mark here (as another poster wondered)? J_ung reported "about 3 meters out" IIRC. Another question is about length of disintegrated region--for how long did the damage run? And, how high was that TR climb? --i.p., where would this damaged section (S--was there more than one?) BE?
*kN*
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elwood54
Mar 25, 2008, 5:15 PM
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*bump* for any more updates? Thanks.
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no_email_entered
Mar 25, 2008, 5:46 PM
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dude give petzl more time for analyses----
---they got a huge stock of zephrs in the warehouse
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subantz
Mar 25, 2008, 6:07 PM
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I took mine back to REI. Why you ask? becase running it through a top rope anchor. I noticed a little bit of orange dust on the quik draw. Traded it for the 9.8 Nomad it seems to work good no complaints here.
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suilenroc
Mar 31, 2008, 9:43 PM
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petzl website...
ZEPHYR 10.3
The ZEPHYR is our toughest all-around rope. The 10.3 mm diameter offers additional friction in belay/rappel devices for more control, and is extra durable. This workhorse rope is great for people just getting into the sport or for those who want the increased longevity of a thicker diameter rope.
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suilenroc
Mar 31, 2008, 9:49 PM
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Pretzel website…
ZEPHFURRR 10.3
The ZEPHFURRR is our weakest all-around rope. The 10.3 mm diameter sheds the sheath in belay/rappel devices for less life, and more sketchiness. This dangerous rope is great for idiots just getting into the sport or for those who want the decreased longevity of a thicker diameter rope.
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subantz
Apr 1, 2008, 1:21 AM
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Funny but true. I couldent believe it.
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chossmonkey
Apr 1, 2008, 11:37 AM
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suilenroc wrote: Pretzel website… ZEPHFURRR 10.3 The ZEPHFURRR is our weakest all-around rope. The 10.3 mm diameter sheds the sheath in belay/rappel devices for less life, and more sketchiness. This dangerous rope is great for idiots just getting into the sport or for those who want the decreased longevity of a thicker diameter rope.
ZEPHFURRR
That's some funny stuff.
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knudenoggin
May 9, 2008, 3:17 AM
Post #99 of 156
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Bump, after a month's duration from prior bump.
Are we still left guessing ... ?
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cracklover
May 9, 2008, 1:28 PM
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It's still listed on their website, with exactly the same ad copy.
So far as I can tell, they're just hunkering down and hoping it blows over.
Lame, if you ask me.
I wonder if this is because their ropes are not a core product for them? I bet if they had a batch of grigris with a defect, they'd pay attention pretty damn fast.
GO
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