arboralliance
ArboristSite Operative
cont'
It has been mentioned above that rope is designed to be or can be left on mountains for months or years at a time...
Arb' rope is possibly less susceptible to U.V. light as the sheath is thicker however I would avoid leaving the rope in the tree for a whole host of reasons...
Arb' rope does not have the same water repellent or water resistant treatments as some specifically designed mountaineering ropes therefore Arb’ rope isn’t designed to be left out for long periods as the strength of the rope can be affected by dirt impregnation via leaving the rope out and once again U.V. light ...(it can also acquire fungal infections from being left moist just as “un treated” mountaineering ropes can, once again, specific designed and moisture retardant treated mountaineering ropes are better able to accommodate constant moisture, Arb’ ropes are not, a fungal infection will destroy the structural integrity of rope like nothing else on the planet this is caused by the chemical nature of certain fungi being alcohol initiative (I am no chemist) and in turn changing the chemical structure of the rope…or chemically “cold” melting the rope…)
Certain Mountaineering ropes that are used to set fixed guide lines, ascent lines or traverse and Tyrolienne lines have a sheath treated to be more U.V. resistant than others (this is why some Mountaineering rope can be so much more expensive than others). These ropes when used are invariably not constantly weighted like Arb’ ropes are so their structural integrity would be harder to ascertain as they realistically are left in place as a secondary system to a primary rope. ARB' ROPE DOES NOT HAVE ANY SUCH RATING OR ADDITIONAL PROTECTION OR TREATMENT...
Please do not bundle the UIAA ratings of mountaineering rope in with that of Arb' rope!! Mountaineering ropes are by their purpose design and manufacture considerably different to Arb’ ropes...
I have a brand new 50 m UIAA rated mountaineering rope on my lap as I write and the sheath is so thin I cannot begin to guess at or measure its thickness (I have an engineering background versant in measuring extremely small distances) I would say it is paper thin and I know from experience that it heats up very quickly and does not have the heat dissipating qualities of Arb rope let alone the integrity and design engineering to accommodate our filthy work environment...
I have been instructing climbing from Arb’ to Mountaineering on and off for over twenty years now having been a mad keen climber as a kid. Climbing both trees and rock was (and still is to some degree) my only escape from a very unforgiving childhood... I have worked with a number of Professional Mountaineers, Arborists and Vertical Access technicians who have devoted there entire life’s work to researching Arb’ and Mountaineering rope and equipment… Therefore I have spent many hours discussing these and many other issues pertaining to the world of climbing with rope… (One of these Mountaineers showed me how self rescue and general abseiling can be done on 2mm kernmantle!)
In my early twenties I was dropped off a cliff because the mountaineering rope got too hot to handle...
I have climbed for years on mountaineering ropes IN TREES…WHY, because I was consistently climbing all day, up and down 250 - 300++ foot E. regnans and needed to carry all my gear through cold/temperate rain forest to do so, therefore weight was a serious fatigue and therefore safety issue, carrying 400++ foot of rope and all my gear including axe, chainsaw, climbers, harness, pruning saw, secateur’s, self rescue equip’, etc, etc the only reasonable option was using double line descent on 7mm static mountaineering rope with a huge alloy "5 hole - whale tail" to take the heat out of the system and that was even going real slow on the descent... I could come out of the same or similar trees on Arb’ rope much faster only on a friction hitch and only be concerned with burning through the friction hitch (don’t ask)…
I left a mountaineering line in a tree stump once for a few weeks as it was the bottom 100++ foot stump of a tree I was removing for friends at mates rates so wanted to make it as safe and easy as I could to resume the work in my spare time; the line was severely sun damaged after approximately 3 weeks (the bright shiny purple and red fleck sheath had faded dramatically in the three weeks and the rope had gone from beautifully supple to almost brittle and quite rigid. The rope was only a month or two old and had been used less than 5 times, it was a well recognized and expensive Mountaineering rope) and had to be discarded as it was obviously severely sun affected... (Keeping in mind there is a known hole in the ozone layer over Victoria in the southern part of eastern Australia; all my international friends notice the sun burning them as soon as it peeps out from behind the clouds down in Victoria… When they do the smog alerts on the news down there they also do a U.V. rating for the day! We have the highest rates of skin cancer in the world!)...
Mountaineering rope can and invariably is completely covered in snow and or ice for all or most of its time on the mountain further filtering or completely stopping U.V. light damage (among a multitude of other reasons ropes can be and are relatively “protected” on Mountains)...
IMHO the claims that have been made in this thread seem bold…
If one filament of the rope is cut one could make the bold claim “no, it will be fine, you can have X percent of the line damaged and it is still rated safe” which is fair enough…
Similarly with U.V. effect…
HOWEVER, consider this, a 50m rope has one filament cut at 20m another at 23m another at 27m another at 30m and yet another at 34m that’s a fair distance apart, all small “nicks” in the rope we would all concur HOWEVER if those nicks all transpired to be on the same turn of thread or made up a strand you have a rope that needs to be retired THAT ALONG WITH THE AGE OF THE ROPE WHICH HAS NOT BEEN ADRESSED HERE OR EVEN THE HISTORY OF THE ROPE…
The same applies if the rope is left out for three days in the sun or even just outside for three days who is to say it is not going to get a weak spot in it from any or all of the elements besides the rot of chemical impregnation from the tree or fungi, how old is the rope, how many times has the rope been stressed before, what’s the history of the rope what was the rope designed to do or withstand or be rated for or against?
Go stick a piece (any piece) of rope in the oven for three days (set oven on a direct sunlight mid summer heat setting) then wet it right down with water and place it in a bag for three days with some mulch and or a few moist green branches then post here what it looks and smells like and it wont have even been exposed to the damaging effects of U.V. light in that time but I can guarantee you wont want to climb on it let alone touch it…
IMHO it is never one single doing that causes failure in a system it is a multitude of insignificant not doings that work together to create a perceived accident and system failure…
PLEASE CONSIDER?
PEACE…
It has been mentioned above that rope is designed to be or can be left on mountains for months or years at a time...
Arb' rope is possibly less susceptible to U.V. light as the sheath is thicker however I would avoid leaving the rope in the tree for a whole host of reasons...
Arb' rope does not have the same water repellent or water resistant treatments as some specifically designed mountaineering ropes therefore Arb’ rope isn’t designed to be left out for long periods as the strength of the rope can be affected by dirt impregnation via leaving the rope out and once again U.V. light ...(it can also acquire fungal infections from being left moist just as “un treated” mountaineering ropes can, once again, specific designed and moisture retardant treated mountaineering ropes are better able to accommodate constant moisture, Arb’ ropes are not, a fungal infection will destroy the structural integrity of rope like nothing else on the planet this is caused by the chemical nature of certain fungi being alcohol initiative (I am no chemist) and in turn changing the chemical structure of the rope…or chemically “cold” melting the rope…)
Certain Mountaineering ropes that are used to set fixed guide lines, ascent lines or traverse and Tyrolienne lines have a sheath treated to be more U.V. resistant than others (this is why some Mountaineering rope can be so much more expensive than others). These ropes when used are invariably not constantly weighted like Arb’ ropes are so their structural integrity would be harder to ascertain as they realistically are left in place as a secondary system to a primary rope. ARB' ROPE DOES NOT HAVE ANY SUCH RATING OR ADDITIONAL PROTECTION OR TREATMENT...
Please do not bundle the UIAA ratings of mountaineering rope in with that of Arb' rope!! Mountaineering ropes are by their purpose design and manufacture considerably different to Arb’ ropes...
I have a brand new 50 m UIAA rated mountaineering rope on my lap as I write and the sheath is so thin I cannot begin to guess at or measure its thickness (I have an engineering background versant in measuring extremely small distances) I would say it is paper thin and I know from experience that it heats up very quickly and does not have the heat dissipating qualities of Arb rope let alone the integrity and design engineering to accommodate our filthy work environment...
I have been instructing climbing from Arb’ to Mountaineering on and off for over twenty years now having been a mad keen climber as a kid. Climbing both trees and rock was (and still is to some degree) my only escape from a very unforgiving childhood... I have worked with a number of Professional Mountaineers, Arborists and Vertical Access technicians who have devoted there entire life’s work to researching Arb’ and Mountaineering rope and equipment… Therefore I have spent many hours discussing these and many other issues pertaining to the world of climbing with rope… (One of these Mountaineers showed me how self rescue and general abseiling can be done on 2mm kernmantle!)
In my early twenties I was dropped off a cliff because the mountaineering rope got too hot to handle...
I have climbed for years on mountaineering ropes IN TREES…WHY, because I was consistently climbing all day, up and down 250 - 300++ foot E. regnans and needed to carry all my gear through cold/temperate rain forest to do so, therefore weight was a serious fatigue and therefore safety issue, carrying 400++ foot of rope and all my gear including axe, chainsaw, climbers, harness, pruning saw, secateur’s, self rescue equip’, etc, etc the only reasonable option was using double line descent on 7mm static mountaineering rope with a huge alloy "5 hole - whale tail" to take the heat out of the system and that was even going real slow on the descent... I could come out of the same or similar trees on Arb’ rope much faster only on a friction hitch and only be concerned with burning through the friction hitch (don’t ask)…
I left a mountaineering line in a tree stump once for a few weeks as it was the bottom 100++ foot stump of a tree I was removing for friends at mates rates so wanted to make it as safe and easy as I could to resume the work in my spare time; the line was severely sun damaged after approximately 3 weeks (the bright shiny purple and red fleck sheath had faded dramatically in the three weeks and the rope had gone from beautifully supple to almost brittle and quite rigid. The rope was only a month or two old and had been used less than 5 times, it was a well recognized and expensive Mountaineering rope) and had to be discarded as it was obviously severely sun affected... (Keeping in mind there is a known hole in the ozone layer over Victoria in the southern part of eastern Australia; all my international friends notice the sun burning them as soon as it peeps out from behind the clouds down in Victoria… When they do the smog alerts on the news down there they also do a U.V. rating for the day! We have the highest rates of skin cancer in the world!)...
Mountaineering rope can and invariably is completely covered in snow and or ice for all or most of its time on the mountain further filtering or completely stopping U.V. light damage (among a multitude of other reasons ropes can be and are relatively “protected” on Mountains)...
IMHO the claims that have been made in this thread seem bold…
If one filament of the rope is cut one could make the bold claim “no, it will be fine, you can have X percent of the line damaged and it is still rated safe” which is fair enough…
Similarly with U.V. effect…
HOWEVER, consider this, a 50m rope has one filament cut at 20m another at 23m another at 27m another at 30m and yet another at 34m that’s a fair distance apart, all small “nicks” in the rope we would all concur HOWEVER if those nicks all transpired to be on the same turn of thread or made up a strand you have a rope that needs to be retired THAT ALONG WITH THE AGE OF THE ROPE WHICH HAS NOT BEEN ADRESSED HERE OR EVEN THE HISTORY OF THE ROPE…
The same applies if the rope is left out for three days in the sun or even just outside for three days who is to say it is not going to get a weak spot in it from any or all of the elements besides the rot of chemical impregnation from the tree or fungi, how old is the rope, how many times has the rope been stressed before, what’s the history of the rope what was the rope designed to do or withstand or be rated for or against?
Go stick a piece (any piece) of rope in the oven for three days (set oven on a direct sunlight mid summer heat setting) then wet it right down with water and place it in a bag for three days with some mulch and or a few moist green branches then post here what it looks and smells like and it wont have even been exposed to the damaging effects of U.V. light in that time but I can guarantee you wont want to climb on it let alone touch it…
IMHO it is never one single doing that causes failure in a system it is a multitude of insignificant not doings that work together to create a perceived accident and system failure…
PLEASE CONSIDER?
PEACE…