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General Climbing Discussion

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undersized carrots at the county 12-Jan-2011 At 4:49:34 PM voodoo

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On 12/01/2011 rowan wrote:
>Do we ever exude 8kn of force in a fall?

It's interesting how easily large forces can be generated. Often in some scenarios that you might take for granted as a low-impact - for example toproping. I put a post up a few months ago in another thread about an article I read in Rock and Ice. I'll cut and paste it below:

"Reading a back issue of Rock and Ice the other day (#133, June 2004) they were highlighting the, often overlooked, forces at play in bog-standard top-rope setup. In their experiment, with a 90kg climber falling on a lazy belay (120cm of slack with 11m of rope out) they were generating loads in excess of 7kN. So it's not just big lead whippers that push out some high forces on fixed gear, but even a climb style that many take as harmless (or the soft option)."