Searching for the Hardest Possible Climbing Fall - P.2

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so here is a cool fact

rope manufacturers claim that no matter

what fall you will take on a dynamic

climbing rope

the impact

is unlikely to injure you

that was sick

so how does it feel this

impact on a huge outside whipper

or this is even better how does it feel

to fall while trying to clip a second

quick draw and get a really hard catch

so can this impact injure you does it

hurt

or

even better

how does it feel when i'm trying to

explain all of this

and almost kill myself

so yeah that happened and it all started

with my wish to measure the forces of

really really hard climbing falls

and knowing these forces allow me and

probably others to answer a lot of

important questions for us climbers

like can you break a dynamic climbing

rope which is really really worn out

on realistic climbing falls

some people

would say that it is impossible to break

this rope while others would freak out

seeing this

because it doesn't look that great to be

honest

so stick with me the answer to this is

coming

and it actually surprised me a lot

but now back to hard falls

so in previous episode we went to a

small climbing gym in germany and we

tried to create the hardest climbing fall

by creating a ton of drag

and belaying in some crazy crazy ways

and then i had a quiz for you

which fall do you think was harder for
the climber

this crazy slam

or this big outdoors whipper

so if you think that the big fall

looks softer

good because i thought exactly the same

thing and pretty much any person to whom

i showed these two clips

i'm gonna show you two falls

and you can try to guess which one was

harder to the climber
- okay

yeah i can already tell you

well theoretically i would say that the

second one in the gym is the harder fall

because it's a shorter rope that can

absorb or a shorter portion of the rope

will absorb the energy

since there's so much zigzag happening

in the rope line and therefore yeah not

the entire rope that is actually used

so let's see if that's actually true

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that was sick

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that was sick

that was like a massive fall

it was

falling was nice

how big you think the fall was

how hard to say i will say like

eight meters maybe

it looked massive from the side it

looked massive

maybe 10

i don't know

do you think it's more than 10

yeah from the side it looks massive

I think more it was more to 15 i would say

you know

you don't think so 15

no i don't think so i don't think so

yeah judging the distance of

the fall is always tricky but by my best

estimation before the fall he was around

two and a half meters above the bolt and

after the fall he was about eight meters

below the bolt so let's say 10 meters

and this 10 meters fall resulted into

3.4 kilonewtons of force and if we

compare that to the jim slam

that slam was only 2.6 kilonewtons and

the hardest fall in the gym that day we

got was 2.9 kilonewtons this one

so does it mean that this huge whipper

was harder than the slam

it doesn't look like that right

and to make sense out of all of this we

need to define what does it mean harder

what we measured is the peak force to

the climber's harness and this peak

force happens around this moment

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and if you look closely this doesn't

look that bad

and what gets our attention is actually

the contact to the wall imagine if this

wall would have been not overhanging

then the peak force on the dynamometer

to the climber's harness would read

exactly the same but the slam to the

wall would be much worse and that's by

the way how most of the people sprain

their ankles shortfall hard catch

super quick slam into the wall so how

hard the fall for the climber is will

depend on two things first is the

initial impact to the harness this

that we measured to be around three to

three and a half kilonewtons on hard

falls let's test how three kilonewtons

feels

on the harness

don't do this at home

ouch

told you not to do this at home

listen learned

falling on a single bolt on three

kilonewtons of force

can make an entire bolt come out

of

18 millimeters of shitty spanish plywood

so

the impact was

okay

but the landing on the ass was

not so okay

all right

don't do this at home number two

since i really want to experience three

or three and a half kilonewtons of force

to my harness so i can tell you

how that feels

i rigged another system

which is

hopefully not gonna end up like the

first one

this time it's very static but it

doesn't matter

i just want to feel it

wow

that was 3.8

kilonewtons

and actually that felt quite okay

3.1 kilonewtons

and i barely feel anything

three and a half

okay this was almost four kilonewtons so

under three kilonewtons

i don't feel anything between three and

four i get a little but that's far from

injuring me

and

my homemade climbing wall breaks at

3.8 kilonewtons to default which would

be around 2 kilonewtons to the climber

so

my homemade climbing

wall is not for

falling and the second thing that the

climber will experience is of course the

impact to the wall which as we saw might

be problematic in fact let's zoom in on

the big fall and watch it couple of

times

and now let's compare it to the gym fall

so as you can see it's not that easy to

tell which one was actually harder and

it also depends a lot on climbers skills

to absorb the impact with his legs as a

climber you basically need to be like a

cat when you hit the wall super soft and

people who do a lot of baldering they

tend to be much better because they fall

on the crash pads a lot

and falling on a crash but with stiff

legs would probably kill you so the same

applies to falling on ropes you want to

absorb the impact as soft as possible

and of course there are other factors

that contribute to how hard you will

slam to the wall for example jumping

away or pushing yourself away from the

wall as i talked in the previous episode

or

belaying in really hard ways in gym case

we created a hard catch on purpose

however on outdoors whipper the belayer

was standing and doing nothing

handbag

and i have a separate video coming where

i will show that standing and doing

nothing creates much harder catch than

pretty much any soft delaying method you

can try so although this belay didn't

looked hard it was definitely possible

to make it much softer but this was

actually perfect because i got the force

to the climber on big whipper on hardish

catch

totally realistic scenario and that's

actually not all

in the following months i was going

around and making a ton of experiments

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during which i recorded the forces to

the climber on over hundreds of faults

and even ryan sent me some clips of his

to compare the datum

oh

oh that was better than wheaties in the

morning

i hit 1.14 i got 2.64 and the hardest

fall i recorded was this one

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okay okay you saved me

this is the hardest recording you've got

3.60

so in this case we were filming an

episode of how to belay sketchy close to

the ground falls

the climber was clipping the second

quick draw above his head and takes a

fall

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so that's another sneak peek into the

future what's coming on my channel and

if you don't want to miss that i hope

that you do youtube things and subscribe

and click all of these bells and stuff

but for now i can say that unless the

climber is really really heavy

or we are in some unlucky multi-pitch

scenario which i haven't had time yet to

experiment with creating a fall which

would be harder than four kilonewtons

to the climber

is really really unlikely and that's

really good to know because it just

shows how great the climbing ropes are

at keeping us safe as i've just

demonstrated here four kilonewtons to

climbers harness is not really something

we should worry about unless of course

it's accompanied by a

slam to the wall and that brings me to

the original question

can i snap this very worn out rope on

the realistic climbing fall

or now i can rephrase the question can i

snap this rope on forces below 4

kilonewtons to the rope and the answer

to this surprised me a lot i had a

chance to hang out with mamamoo

engineers and test this

and also ask pretty much any question i

wanted and man that was super

interesting so i recommend to not miss

the next episode and until then i'm

gonna leave you with somebody who really

likes challenges

okay

that left hand is 29.

no i think sitting is better it's all

about technique

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it's better it's 8 68 now

okay pressing as hard as you can with

one hand

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he's going slow

he's he's weaker than i

yeah

really

what

how how much do you do i don't say it ah

and to make this competition a little

bit more fair i decided to split it into

1 000 for guys and 1 000 for girls and

to make it even more interesting girls

can win both categories of course if

there is a girl who is stronger than

the guys

not better yeah you can grab in any way

you like

any recommendation

oh no it's a competition i don't give

any hands

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everybody tries to go slow first what's

this i'm so much better

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oh

the good technique was funny

it's going to be worse

yeah

50.

where is the power screen oh my god oh

my god

oh you have seventy

you have seventy even the dog

congratulations

or no boxing techniques right

watch out my mind

oh it works the boxing technique works

it's all about technique you like the

boxing kidneys somehow

you want to try boxing

technique it's my best

by the way did you notice that this

episode had no annoying ads

this is thanks to people like this guy

[Applause]

you