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In climbing, most of our gear is redundant. Anchors are built from at least two pieces (but ideally more), our harnesses have two tie-in points, and modern bela
by necubi 2y ago
In climbing, most of our gear is redundant. Anchors are built from at least two pieces (but ideally more), our harnesses have two tie-in points, and modern belay devices rely on both a camming mechanism and a brake hand.
But there are still single points of failure. In particular, the rope. It’s not practical to bring up two full strength (single) ropes on climbs. Failures are very rare but do happen—generally because a rope is cut by a sharp rock.
Climbing is inherently dangerous, but accidents related to gear failure are extremely rare. The most common cause of death is human error (particularly on repels), followed by environmental factors like rock fall.
- WalterBright 2y agoThanks for the info. I do realize that weight would make some redundancies impractical. There's a saying, though, among engineers - they can fix anything but the nut behind the wheel!
- AdamN 2y agoDo they make 'double' rope? I know there is the internal structure and the external protection but I'm thinking something more like two independent internal structures such that if one fails the other can still handle load, and just as importantly it's obvious when the rope is in this state so nobody starts with it that way - it's only as the last line of defense.
- necubi 2y agoI don't know of anything quite like what you're describing, but there are "half" or "twin" ropes, which are meant to be used as a pair. They're each thinner and lighter than ropes rated as "single" ropes, but together are considered as strong.