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General Climbing Discussion

Topic Date User

Trad Rack for Araps 3-May-2005 At 11:34:48 PM LittleMac

Message

On 3/05/2005 sabu wrote:
>wat? why so many against figure 8's? absolute gem to use, so smooth etc.
>plus i have a old belay plate which has different sizes so i can't use
>it for a double rope, i will get a new one (eventually) but for now i just
>use the 8.

The problem with an 8 is this, imagine your rope is a whole lot of seperate strands running down (or up) your rope ina spiral, this is what gives a rope it's stretch. Ok, now add a figure 8 to the mix, a figure forces the rope to twist as it passes through the device which is all fine except because your hand is stopping the rope from spinning freely you end up forcing some of this twist back up the rope placing undue stress on the rope. Also you often simply end up with a birds nest at the bottom of the abseil which can be a real hassel to deal with. The effect on the strands of the rope is that they potentially twist the wrong way and this damages your rope.

Another point to note is that because a figure 8 causes the rope to run over much mnre metal than a standard belay deveice you effectively wear your rope more quickly. You wear your rope out enough abseiling, pulling it through anchors, running it through a device, do your rope a favour get a device you can abseil on doubles with (it wil allso mean you can belay doubles anyway).