> I'm surprised they didn't go by the UIAA standard ... for testing dynamic ropes. That's because they weren't testing dynamic ropes. All the other UIAA stan

> I'm surprised they didn't go by the UIAA standard ... for testing dynamic ropes. That's because they weren't testing dynamic ropes. All the other UIAA standards—the ones for harnesses, nuts, camming devices, static ropes, and so on—tell you to apply a set force, usually 10kN, and see what breaks. To be pedantic, all this stuff is specified in the CE standards that the UIAA ones incorporate by reference. If you're in a lab, you apply 10kN in a precise way that uses a whopping great hydraulic ram. If you want to avoid hauling a whopping great hydraulic ram halfway up an ice cliff, then you improvise, but the aim is still to control the force acting on the gear and measure what happens. I'm using "control" and "measure" in the technical sense here. Dynamic ropes are different because they determine the forces that act on everything else. In a dynamic rope test, the conditions of a fall are controlled as well as possible, and the peak impact force it generates is one of the variables to be measured. If you did that in the ice screw tests, the results would depend on which rope you used, and that isn't what you want.