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Chockstone Forum - Gear Lust / Lost & Found

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Topic Date User

Dropping Gear 28-Oct-2003 At 3:05:03 PM shmalec

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Hypothetical scenario-you're 30m up a climb and drop a bunch of gear (lets say 3 or 4 cams or biners) and watch them free fall onto a flat rock at the bottom of the cliff. When you retrieve the gear, do you
A)-destroy them and chuck them out; B)-tell your mate that you will chuck them out and slip them back into your rack before the next trip; or C)-clip them back on your harness considering them to be undamaged?
There is a theory out there that dropping aluminium gear from some height (I've heard lots of heights from as little as shoulder height) can cause invisible cracks that can reduce their failure strength to dangerously low levels. I had 2 mountain guides in NZ a few years back that said this was a myth. I haven't had to decide one way or the other yet but I'm less than convinced that this can actually happen.
Aluminium can have large invisible cracks. But I have only seen evidance of these resulting from low loads repeated thousands of times. This is called metalic fatigue failure. The dropped gear scenario is completely different and I suspect that this type of impact damage would always be clearly visible.
Any metalurgists out there? Anyone have some added background to this?
Alec.