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Advice on buying rope

widewetandslippery

30-Jan-2010
8:06:10 AM

On 29/01/2010 simey wrote:
>I usually buy the thickest ropes 10.5mm -11mm at the cheapest prices.

This is good advice for a first rope.

You will hammer your first rope. Bad rope drag, bad abseil descisions, bad tope rope set ups, taking out less experienced mates. This is not personal critisism its the way it goes. $500 ropes last little longer than $200 ropes when treated poorly.

As mentioned above you will get to climb on other peoples ropes and if you find one you like buy it further down the track.

rockranga

1-Feb-2010
10:24:10 AM

>As mentioned above you will get to climb on other peoples ropes and if
>you find one you like buy it further down the track.

this is good advice, and so is the advice from someone else saying you will likely trash your first rope due to inexperience with placements and rope care.

A very experienced climber told me, when i was still new to climbing, "when it comes to ropes, the cheaper the better"... while this is generally good advise it seems from this thread you may want to avoid the Mammut ropes (I also have a friend with similar experiences to others in this thread)... i have a Roca which is nice enough, nothing special, a little slick and can kink up a bit (though the latter is probably more to do with rope care) but overall it's a good rope, solid and with good stats around falls and impact force ( http://www.rocaropes.com/eng/arxius/11.htm ).

Also, i believe most places are selling 60m Beal Edlinger 2's for around $240, i hear they're a nice rope so it may be worth a look.... http://www.rockhardware.com.au/Order.asp?Action=Group&MainGroup=Ropes&Category=Dynamic%2060M%20Standard

The last thing to consider is colour, it may seem trivial but i'd recommend getting something light with a fairly consistant colour, if there's ever any damage to the rope it'll be easier to spot.

good luck

darryn

1-Feb-2010
10:52:35 AM

I have a Mammut Supersafe 10.2 that is about 3 years old now. It handled beautifully when new but it's
definitely getting stiffer and harder to handle now. I wouldn't say it's a bad rope though, far from it, it's
super hard wearing and will take all sorts of abuse without showing much sign of sheath wear.

climbingjac

1-Feb-2010
4:05:58 PM

You'll find it really handy if the rope has a middle marker. Most do these days. When you're out tradding, it's really useful for the belayer to be able to notify the lead climber when the half way point has been paid out. Gives the leader an idea of how much further he/she can proceed before having to stop and set up a belay point.

mikllaw

1-Feb-2010
5:20:17 PM

On 1/02/2010 darryn wrote:
>I have a Mammut Supersafe 10.2 that is about 3 years old now. It handled
>beautifully when new but it's
>definitely getting stiffer and harder to handle now.

I've found that stiff and hard to handle generally equals long life and cut resistance

There are 25 messages in this topic.