How Fuzzy is Too Fuzzy? How Soft is too Soft?

[Music]

Whoah!

It's not a sound that you want to hear

when you're out climbing.

Is it bad if I scream behind the camera?

How fuzzy is too fuzzy?

This is the rope that I used for about

two years of intense climbing...

or at least this is the end of this rope.

If I compare to the middle, this is how

the middle of the same rope looks.

And as you can see it's a huge

difference.

So the question is, should I worry about

this fuzziness? Or another question that

I see climbers disagree a lot on is: If i

can squeeze my rope like this, does it

mean that inside, core strands are

damaged or no?

So, to avoid breaking my back on homemade

experiments....

yeah as some of you noticed

it can be quite stressful

so not this time. This time I decided to

reach out to Mammut and ask if by any

chance I could come over and nerd with

their engineers.

How dangerous is this?

(laughs) We will find out!

so this is a product developer from

Mammut

and you said you're an expert in textiles.

Would you whip on this?

(uncomfortable noises)

Can we destroy this rope? I would say the

core strands won't fail if it's a normal

sport climbing fall.

Within the first fall?

No no no not the first fall.

Would you whip on this?

Oh yes definitely.

How many times?

So this rope is not the same rope that

we used in an experiment. That one was a

little bit worse than this

and it kind of died.

Can ropes die?

Anyway the goal was to find out what

happens if you take a huge fall

and this soft spot hits on your

quickdraw

exactly on the peak force. And by the way

this video is not sponsored, but in case

you don't know, Mammut is one of the

oldest companies making climbing ropes

so they have some serious knowledge

about that so I wanted to know everything.

Let's get nerdy! I have a

bunch of questions from me and my

followers.

Sounds great!

Ah. You're probably gonna add

10 000 more questions.

I'm sorry.

And by the way the questions that you

guys sent

had some

serious sense of practicality.

A cat pees on my rope how bad is that?

Or a dog peed on my rope how bad is that?

If you have a dry rope

we test it with human pee

because I mean if you're on a multipitch
and you have to go... you know...

So you actually did the testing on this?

Yes and

the answer is no it's not dangerous.

I wonder if cats pee or dog's pee is more

aggressive than a human pee?

Hey let's go do some science!

So this is where the rope testing magic

happens and this is where you get those

six seven eight or whatever falls on the rope.

Exactly yeah.

Statistics.

The scenario is like really really hard

like we have a fall factor of around 1.7

we test the ropes with the 80 kilogram

steel mass which is like super static.

What are the forces on standard tests?

For a single rope it's

around like 8 to 9 kN.

For the first fall?

For the first fall.

And... we had the first problem.

so called standard rope test that every

manufacturer does is super extreme. In

order to make it more like a real

climbing fall, we needed to reduce it

below 4 kilonewtons. And if you ask why four,

it means that you haven't seen these two

videos where we tried to create their

hardest real climbing falls and measure

the forces of them.

That's why I said like maybe we try like

with a new rope to get like a feeling

like what falling height we need to have

like around this less than 4kN and then

we switch to your rope.

-Don't look, guess.
-2 kN.

2 K? I think it's less.

Wow two and a half.

As I said these guys

are really good. It took only one fall,

and we got the force of two and a half

kilonewtons on a brand new rope. And that

was perfect because we were estimating

that once we swapped the ropes to the

old one the force will go slightly

higher because older ropes don't

absorb the impact as well and it's going

to be a perfect representation of

a realistic hard climbing fall.

So here's the tricky part:

when you fall on a rock,

sometimes it happens but almost the same

spot hits the

-top carabiner.
-Yeah

And now the tricky part is how to place

that spot that it would be on a peak

force on the carabiner

Yeah.

Not easy. Or hard is easy.

As you can imagine, once the fall happens

the rope stretches and that soft spot that

we are trying to hit will move.

(indistinct)

You thought it's gonna be easy?

No no,

I knew it will be exactly like this.

The force to the rope will start increasing

increasing increasing increasing

increasing and at some point reaches the

maximum, and then the force will start

dropping dropping dropping dropping

dropping.

So the challenge is, how to position the

soft spot

that it would move over the quickdraw

as close to the peak of the force.

With this

small fall scenario a new rope

it's about like what? 400?

-300 400 500 .
-Right. A lot

-So new rope would hold about 400 falls on...

-Small falls
-Like, realistic falls.

Let's see what happens if we put that

damaged rope and see

if it's hundreds or it's just a few.

Do you think we will hit that spot or we

will be very far off?

I think we hit it yeah

where is it now? Like 30 centimeters

below.

Yeah it's around here now

and the rope is tense so probably this

will move up,

how much we will see.

So we overshot the soft spot just by a

little bit, so we will try to readjust

now and

see if we can hit it more perfectly.

So we managed to hit the spot at

2.47 kilonewtons of force, and now we will

try to increase the fall a little bit to

get to really hard falls.

-20, 30 centimeters?
-Yeah let's do that.

Let's see if we will still stay in

the damaged spot where it will just

stretch over.

So we broke the sheath

we broke the sheath after two falls

and you said it's gonna last!

No but that's what I said like the

sheath will break...

What's was the force?

The force was

only 2.1.

Only 2.1 kilonewtons and the sheath

broke!

So...

if your rope is

soft, good luck.

If the sheath is already damaged like we

saw it like now this will lead like to

cut sheath like immediately. But the

the good thing is that the rope will not

snap

because the core strands like are

-still intact.
-So how many falls it would

take now to completely snap the rope?

That's a good question, I never tested

this.

But we could do this I guess we can do

at least like two or three falls now

only on the core strands.

Yes yes.

Guess how many falls it's going to take.

20.

-20?
-Yeah.

Wow so it took only two falls to completely
shred this sheath.

But the good thing is like a rope is

constructed in a way that the sheath only

takes around like 10 to 20 percent

of the load,

and the rest like the

load bearing structure is basically only

the core.

Okay so

The question is if you take a rope and

you squeeze it so you feel that it's

soft completely inside, does it mean

that the core is damaged or no?

No because a lot of people think that

it's damaged inside.

The core is still intact.

Like if I were to cut the rope at

that spot would i find some damage

inside of the core strands?

It's difficult to say because over time,

the core strands, also when we do fall

tests, you can see that it gets a

little bit more hairy

if you would cut it open, but it's just

a couple of filaments that might have

broken, but it's not that an entire core

strand is broken, but it's weakened for

sure.

-Let's see if we can snap this rope now.
-Yeah

So how many falls you said?

I don't know.

10 to 20?

10 to 20. let's see.

So this is one multifilament.

-Multifilament made out of multiple filaments.
-Yes.

How much?

-280.
-This is 280 inside of this so if I

would take one,

what force that one thing would hold?

Well you would not test it like this

because a multifilament you look at it

as the entire thing but what i can tell

you, that this core strand would hold 180 kilos

And we are not even reaching

-very hard falls yet.
-No, this is nothing.

-So you see?
-One strand snapped.

So you said 20 how many strands are

inside?

Two of eight!

So you said 20 falls?

10 to 20!

Apart from standard drop tests, what

are other tests that are performed on

-climbing ropes?
- What we usually do is

also test the abrasion resistance of the

rope so there we have an in-house

developed testing method. So it's a

machine which pulls a rope over a sharp

metal edge and we are counting how many

cycles it takes for actually damaging

the sheath.

We have like two parts now broken.

So we have one part and two parts broken!

Yeah if we talk about abrasion resistant I

have some interesting stuff to show you.

200 cycles so 200 times

back and forth. Here you see a classic

rope so it does not have any treatment

impregnation, it's a 9.5. It's pretty

-worn out.
-It is worn out! It's at the point

where i would consider maybe even

-cutting this.
-Yes, and you should.

Then next to it, we have

also 9.5 but it has the dry treatment.

-What? That's a huge difference!
-Yes.

That's exactly the same rope but just

-dry treated?
-Yes. that's a huge huge difference.

It feels a little bit burnt like

when you touch it,

it definitely got hot,

like on the edge.

So your six lives got a bit damaged.

But that's good to know that you can climb.

You can climb? You would climb on this?!

I mean the Fitz Traverse

was done by Sean Villanueva like with a

sheath-cut rope, like from the

beginning. On I think the second pitch or

the third pitch he had a stone fall, and

his rope already got cut. Like the sheath

was completely damaged, and he did the

whole Fitz Traverse with this rope then.

He like rappelled a lot over it.

Does the percentage of sheath versus core strands...

-It's not always the same.
-In sport climbing ropes?

Yeah or like climbing

-ropes in general.
-It's not always the

-same now?
-No.

-And what does it depend on?
-Well for us

it depends on what kind of rope we want

-to make.
-Sport Climbing.

Wait let me show you something.

-Show me something.
-Okay so you have the interplay

of both the percentage of material that

is the sheath but also

how the sheath was constructed. For example

here on this rope we have more sheath

twines so

if you would count these

singular ones, they are much more than on

-this sheath.
-Oh yeah that's almost double, no?

No that it isn't but it's just a slight

difference. But if you check out the

surface

you can see that here the little cubes

that they form are smaller

than on this one. So here we have a super

fine surface of the of the sheath so if

you for example would touch this one it

-feels much rougher.
-Yeah.

so this is also what makes it more

durable.

Now one more and it snaps.

-Oh shit!
-No kidding!

So we are still very far from twenty but

-what's the force?
-Maybe I get some coffee huh? No?

(Camerawoman) Yes!

-It was already 3.4.

It's increasing and increasing so the dynamic

performance of the rope gets lower and

lower and lower.

This one here is our workhorse construction. It does not have

any treatment but we're using the best

and the finest yarns that we have to

make this construction. And it also.. I

would say you know it's as good as the

-dry rope.
-So why

not all ropes are made this way where we

have finer construction?

Because price matters.

Yeah now I would like to see not 200 cycles

-but 1000.
-Yes they come here.
-Oh really?

Not to 2000 but to 500.

I would climb with

this one, and with this one. Or if i have

A risky day I would choose this.

Do you have risky days?

Sometimes...

Turns out size or diameter is

not all that matters when we talk about

durability, construction, and extra

treatments might have a bigger impact.

It's a crazy difference, no? Having in

mind that all of them will run through

the same process

to the point where super thin 9.0 millimeters rope looked

completely fine after 500 cycles of

dragging it across the sharp edge...

This one looks quite good.

Like a little bit fuzzy but I would
definitely use it.

However much thicker

9.5 millimeters rope, but old

construction and no treatments, were

completely done.

My guess is five more falls and we snap it.

-Maybe not
-I think we have to increase,

otherwise... yeah let's increase.

Everybody wants harder falls but it's already

getting harder, we went from a two and a

half to three and a half.

To increase?

You can just dropping keep dropping it.
Yeah keep dropping it.

So I will get coffee

-what do you want?
-Coffee.
-Espresso?

-Lungo?
-Lungo if possible.

-Are you asking the viewer?
-With milk?

-Are you sending it to the viewers?
-You want a coffee?

Now one interesting observation I got while

I was making this intro animation,

which by the way took me multiple days

and multiple attempts,

was that while the rope is new,

the file glides over the rope very

smoothly and it's pretty hard to make

any damage to it. But once the rope

starts becoming fuzzy, it becomes easier

to make some extra damage so it felt

like the

fuzziness or the damage to the rope is

kind of exponential the worse it gets

the easier it is to make it even worse.

Oh yeah let's do again. Only six

strands left.

-(Offscreen) Whoah!
-(Offcreen) So... okay

So you can come back already with your
coffee!

So the force went lower, but one

-strand snapped.
-(Offscreen) No, two!

Two snapped but the sound of the strand

snapping was (vocalizes)

Is it bad if I scream behind the camera?

It's not the sound that you want to hear

when you're out climbing.

Okay: the fun part. How fuzzy is too fuzzy

or how soft the rope is too soft? When

-should people actually cut it?
-I mean you

pull the rope through your hands to

check the ropes. This you should do on

-a regular basis.
-And what are you doing

-when you're pulling?
- Well, on the one hand

I feel the rope so I feel how the

rope behaves. If it's super soft, if it's

thicker, and at the same time you know

you you pull it over your finger and you

look at it so you do like a visual

inspection.

Beautiful rope. Would whip.

-Would you whip?
-You would whip.

Oh the force went lower again

so basically the less core strands we

have, the better the rope is.

The softer the catch

I wouldn't see it that way but...

If you want a soft catch just break the

rope.

So let's say I'm running my rope through

my hand and I find a spot which is

softer. So how do I know if it's already

bad or...

First consider the whole rope. I mean

if you have a really soft rope because

they're... I mean some ropes are

already soft when you you buy them in

the store. I would say that our ropes

are a little bit stiffer in general and

we do that to make them more

long-lasting but if your whole rope is

very soft and you have a spot which is

just a little bit softer,

I would not like say oh

that's super dangerous, but if you

have

the rope is generally really stiff and

then you have one spot with this ultra

soft then you know

something is not right there. And exactly

what's not right there

there are so many things that it
could be.

So as an example if I would be

just looking into this piece of the rope,

it would be pretty difficult to say how

soft it needs to be and if I should cut it.

But if I compare it to the middle of the

same rope, I can clearly see a big

difference. So this clearly is far from

what it used to be and it's better to

cut this end. And if you want some tips

on cutting ropes check out this video.

I don't think we can do another one.

Unfortunately the rope kept stretching

and stretching and stretching until we

almost reached the bottom of the drop

tower and we couldn't do any more

testing,

however we decided to show what happens

if you have 80 kilograms of mass hanging

on only core strands and you touch the

core strands with the knife.

Cut test

-It just barely touched it.
-What did you do?!

You went too long.

What happened?

But what happened now?

So it didn't break so I was right with

10 to 20 right?

-Actually yes.
-Yes thanks.

So basically what we got is

running very damaged rope on relatively

hard-ish...

-Maybe to normal fall?
-Yeah, real kN scenario.

-Ripped the sheath of the rope

in just two falls which is very

dangerous. But then it was good to see

that the rope did not snap

and only the core strands kept holding

for multiple more falls so that's good to know.

Pretty good safety margin

But when he touched barely with the

sharp knife the core strands he just

barely touched it it snapped

so if your

sheath gets away,

and then your rope runs across something

-sharp on the rock...
-Super dangerous.

Yeah

I think now we're coming to the second

scenario you wanna you wanna show when

-it comes to sharp edge scenarios...
-Yeah.

like the ropes don't have this high

safety margin.

Well! I hope that you are subscribed because

the next experiment that I'm gonna show

in the next video is gonna blow your

mind, and probably change a little bit

the way you care about your climbing

equipment.

Okay, now I need you to pee.

Come on.