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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Topic Author's Original Post - Jun 5, 2007 - 11:00pm PT
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Now this was the title of a thread posted in the 'Beginners' Forum on RC.com and is a perfectly legitimate question in that context, but I couldn't stop this Gary Larsonesque image from forming in my mind of two climbers staring up at the Nose and back down at their rope and arguing...
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Jello
Social climber
No Ut
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"I guess we need a longer rope..."
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Chicken Skinner
Trad climber
Yosemite
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Happened to me once. First attempt of El Cap via the Nose. Went up with two 150' ropes in the late December without fixing. Had to retreat on the third day and intentionally dropped the haulbag to rappel without it. On the rappels we figured out one of the 150' ropes was more like 143' making it difficult to reach the bolts on the Dolt Retreat. I learned a lot.
Ken
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jstan
climber
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OK. I have to ask. You put seven feet of slings together and the second person took a fourteen foot fall as he was pulling down the rope? Pretty controllable if there was a bit of drag.
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Mom
Social climber
So Cal
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Okay, okay -- not being a climber myself, but being the mom of an active climber, I've been waiting for this topic to surface here on topo.... just last week my pride and joy came to home to help out on some projects and needed to go to REI to return a PETZL rope.... it seems that he and his wife were climbing and had to jump, ditch, bail the last 20' off the wall as they ran out of rope; it was a new rope and they liked the weight and feel of it and IT WAS A PETZEL... LA TEE DA. Being a college graduate, sonny boy competently measured this new rope not once, but twice and the a third time - THIS ROPE WAS 22 FEET SHORT of its stated 200 ft length!! After 45 minutes in the store (REI) he returns to the truck to announce that he and the sales associate had measured 7 PETZL ropes and they were ALL SHORT from 10' to 30'. My first thought was 'Gee, average of 15' short on every 200' rope times ....that's good for the profit'... Sonny boy smacked me out of the CFO line of thought and into (1) what a royal rip off and (2) how f**king dangerous to be shorted that many feet on a 200' rope manufactured by a reputable supplier to the climbing industry; (3) that someone is going to be injured, seriously injured, or worse. He and the associate kept measuring until they found one that measured 231' and that is the one he exchanged for...
Is this a common practice? How often does a climber actually measure a new rope? Has this ever happened to YOU?
REI is checking into this matter... hope sonny boy gets a finders fee for fraud.... he needs the money like all good climbers do!!
Climb safe and measure your rope.. Mom
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bhilden
Trad climber
Mountain View, CA
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Bought my first rope, a used 150', 3/8" Goldline, way back when I was young and broke. Rappeling off the Flatiron at Pinnacles on my second ever climb I learned that it was about a 135'....the hard way.
As Doug Scott would say, "ah, youth!"
Bruce
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Mom
Social climber
So Cal
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behilden -- used is different from brand spanking new.... to pay for 200' and receive less than that is fraud. I still am asking -- is this common practice in the rope supply business, that the rope be 10% - 20% short??
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dirtineye
Trad climber
the south
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Actually 60 meters is SUPPOSED To be 196 feet, but MOST rope manufacturers err on the side of a little extra.
Sounds like someone messed up at Putzl.
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| Messages 1 - 9 of total 9 in this topic |
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