Chockstone Forum

      Sponsored By
      ROCK
   HARDWARE

Chockstone Photography

Australian Landscape Prints

Chockstone Forum - Gear Lust / Lost & Found

Rave About Your Rack Please do not post retail SPAM.

Topic Date User

The big trad gear destructo challenge 11-Nov-2010 At 3:34:43 PM jam

Message

On 11/11/2010 mikllaw wrote:
>On 10/11/2010 jam wrote:
>>What bothers me is that all these numbers mean effectively nothing unless
>>you have the corresponding numbers to match... They say the "average
>leader fall is about 4-7kN" - what is this based on? How much rope? How
>heavy is the faller? Are they wearing a bag? How far are they falling?
>
>Or 3 - 8 kN. The fall factor, rope, belay, and leader weight all make
>a difference, but you know if it will be hard or soft, few falls need to
>be hard.
>
>>This leads me on to ask - just how "bomber" is a really shit hot placement?
>
>Probably pretty good, unless it falls out, or unless you're wrong;- in
>either case doubling up is a good idea.
>
>>For an extreme example, say I have a number 3 wire in the wall, it's
>real
>>nice and snug and it's going no-where. But it's only rated 6kN...
>
>So it will take 99% of possible falls unless you have a weird belay (grigri,
>static rope...)
>
>>Surely the more knowledge I can arm myself with the better?
>
>yes. Or place more gear. Gear problems go away ( less flicking out, less
>drag, less than half the rope inmopact force) if you use double ropes,
>they were norm at Araps in the 80's and I'm always amazed that they are
>rarely used now.

My point is that knowing how hard or soft a fall will be doesn't tell me how hard is a hard fall, how soft is a soft fall, etc.

But it seems the general consensus is that I won't know until god forbid I end up tearing something out of the wall, or it fails.

It's all very well saying "if in doubt double up" but I want to understand at least in theory where the doubt should start creeping into my mind.... Otherwise how will I know I'm not being reckless unless I stitch every climb up with a cluster of nuts at every placement..

Obviously that's an exagerration, but it does bug me that until I start testing this out in detail I just won't know even vaguely how safe I am.

I guess maybe that's the correct approach... Go to the crag and find somewhere I can fall on a bunch of gear with a top-rope back up then test away.