Light Cordelette Options?

doligo wrote:I just carry a homemade "rabbit ears" made from a 6mm cord. Just get a 12-15 ft of cord and tie rabbit ears with an overhand knot. Shorter, lighter and way more versatile than a cordelette. If you measure it right, it can be used as a friction knot and a leg loop in one piece (glacier style).

Just curious: What is the single strand strength of the 6mm cord you're using in this fashion? It seems to me that most 6mm isn't going to be strong enough for my liking when used single strand with knots in it.

Probably about 7kn minus knot efficiency, so 5kn or so.

Auto-X Fil wrote:I love the spectra sling, like the Mammut one: moosejaw.com/moosejaw/shop/… They are much lighter than cord, even 5/5.5mm Titan, and easier to handle.

What's your opinion on the weighted knots being hard to untie? I've been thinking about switching over to the 240cm instead of the cordellette.

Any comparison thoughts between the sling and the titan cord?

Brad W wrote:Probably about 7kn minus knot efficiency, so 5kn or so.

I'm hoping it's actually Sterling Power Cord or something similar being used, because standard 6mm perlon used knoted and single strand is not adaquate IMO.

+1 for webolette

For multi-pitch climbs your best bet is to learn how to set up anchors without a cordalette. In the rare case where you can't find bomber placements you should know how to set up a distributed load anchor with the slings and gear you have.

Climb safe,
Mal

Derek Doucet wrote: I'm hoping it's actually Sterling Power Cord or something similar being used, because standard 6mm perlon used knoted and single strand is not adaquate IMO.

I don't see why not - the purpose of cordelette/equalettes is to equalize and redundatize at least 3 marginal pieces. So in my system, there will be 2 outside pieces clipped with a single strand and the middle one will have 2 strands as a normal cordelette. I would not have a cordelette on a single anchor anyway and would use a sling instead. I always tie in with a rope to reduce forces on my anchor, plus always clip my leader or when I lead off the belay to a piece above the anchor, so the anchor doesn't get stressed. The above mentioned light system is of course for long high-commitment routes when I need to save weight and have something cheap and easy for bailing...

doligo wrote: I don't see why not - the purpose of cordelette/equalettes is to equalize and redundatize at least 3 marginal pieces.

I think you just meant that individual pieces shouldn't be trusted as an anchor, but that's not how it sounds. "redundatize" is awesome, and I'm going to borrow that. :-)

To be clear, if pieces are truly marginal, they don't belong in an anchor. Belay somewhere else.

Scott McMahon wrote: What's your opinion on the weighted knots being hard to untie? I've been thinking about switching over to the 240cm instead of the cordellette. Any comparison thoughts between the sling and the titan cord?

I have no issues untying knots in the slings. I rarely weight heavily them at the anchor, but I do tie fig-8s in slings somewhat often and weight them, sometimes even bounce-testing on one, or hauling. To get them undone I just put the sling between my palms and roll back and forth - they loosen right up.

The extra-long slings are also awesome for slinging huge features where there's just a small hole to thread, or letting a pack dangle below you in a chimney. Unlike a 2', it'll clear your feet. The extra length also helps make bail anchors easy and safe, although I only leave myself without cheaper rap material on serious missions where I'm gram-counting. $25/rap would get expensive fast.

doligo wrote: I don't see why not - the purpose of cordelette/equalettes is to equalize and redundatize at least 3 marginal pieces. So in my system, there will be 2 outside pieces clipped with a single strand and the middle one will have 2 strands as a normal cordelette. I would not have a cordelette on a single anchor anyway and would use a sling instead. I always tie in with a rope to reduce forces on my anchor, plus always clip my leader or when I lead off the belay to a piece above the anchor, so the anchor doesn't get stressed. The above mentioned light system is of course for long high-commitment routes when I need to save weight and have something cheap and easy for bailing...

Brand new, clean and dry 6mm perlon typically has a single strand breaking of ~7.5kN. I don't know what knots you use to make your rig, but let's assume a knot efficiency of 75%. This yields a single strand breaking strength of ~5.6kN. This is considerably less than the rated strength of many pieces of gear, which IMO would be reason enough to discount using it in a single strand configuration, but let's think this through in a bit more detail.

In the worst case scenario of a factor 2 fall, so called "pre-equalized" cordalettes do not distribute loads applied to them equally. The load distributions are hard to predict. A more realistic way of thinking about such anchors is that one piece is likely to be subjected to a substantial majority of the initial load, and the others are only going to be subjected to much smaller initial loads, or (worse) only subjected to loading in sequence should the first piece fail. In this sort of sequential loading scenario, I respectfully suggest that a strength of 5.6kN (an ideal number probably only close to accurrate for new, clean, dry cord) for 2 of the 3 anchor points you mention above, is inadaquate.

The argument that you always have your leader clip a piece straight off the belay doesn't hold up. We all know there are times when that's just not an option, and so the factor 2 scenario can't be discounted. If we assume a 165lb leader, and a nice new rope with 8.7kN impact force, a factor two fall is going to exceed your single arm strength of 5.6Kn very quickly indeed. For that matter, it's going to exceed the strength of your 2-strand arm rather quickly. This would be less problematic if we could actually achieve equalization, but we can't.

Admittedly, this question comes down to judgment and personal preference and risk tolerance. I do use 6mm cordalettes regularly, but never single strand. For me, the numbers just don't inspire confidence.

6mm Sterling acc. cord - 8.8kn sterlingrope.com/product/15…
tied in a loop is plenty strong, though it usually stays on the ground unless not swapping leads.

Matt N wrote:6mm Sterling acc. cord - 8.8kn sterlingrope.com/product/15… tied in a loop is plenty strong, though it usually stays on the ground unless not swapping leads.

Yes, Sterling is a good choice if one is going to use 6mm, but not all 6mm cords are created equal. Mammut is 7.5Kn for example, while Beal is 8.1Kn. All of these figures are for new, clean and dry cord under test lab conditions, and for me, none of them inspires sufficient confidence to be knoted and used single strand for an anchor that could potentially have to absorb a factor 2 fall. As I said, it comes down to personal preference and risk tolerance. For me, the negligible reductions in weight and bulk gained by using them single strand don't even come close to outweighing the reduced strength. YMMV, and lets hope none of us ever needs to catch a factor 2...

Derek, I think you are discounting the rope that the belayer is tied in with into the system and the harness that absorbs some of the force. Also, your argument that there is not always a place to clip to a higher piece is not valid in a 3-point anchor (which I'm assuming you're using the cordelette for) - you can always clip the climber's rope to the highest or the strongest piece. You're right about the individuals' rate of tolerance - how many times have you belayed off an Ablakhov tied with a 6mm cord that someone else had placed and there is no way to back it up with a screw?

doligo wrote:Derek, I think you are discounting the rope that the belayer is tied in with into the system and the harness that absorbs some of the force. Also, your argument that there is not always a place to clip to a higher piece is not valid in a 3-point anchor (which I'm assuming you're using the cordelette for) - you can always clip the climber's rope to the highest or the strongest piece. You're right about the individuals' rate of tolerance - how many times have you belayed off an Ablakhov tied with a 6mm cord that someone else had placed and there is no way to back it up with a screw?

No, I'm not discounting the other energy absorbing elements of your belay system, which is what I thought we were discussing. A discussion of my own system for recreational climbing would rarely involve a cordalette at all. That said, if we treat my hypothetical example of the factor 2 taken by the 165lb leader as a totally static belay, the impact force would exceed 14kn. In my "back of the napkin" calculations, I was being extremely generous and assuming the other system components you rightly consider would absorb 50% of the force generated, yielding something like 7kN. Still enough to break a single strand of knoted 6mm.

It's highly debatable whether clipping any single piece of an anchor as the first piece of pro to avoid a factor 2 is advisable. If faced with grim climbing straight off the belay, another option to seriously consider is to extend the belayer well below the anchor and then clip the masterpoint as the first "piece". That however is another issue all together, and I'd rather not digress.

Speaking of digressions, in 25 years of ice and alpine climbing, I've never belayed off of a single thread constructed with 6mm cord. Not once. But if forced to, I'd be very wary of exposing it to a factor 2.

Web-o-lette: 13.5 kN, 2.6 oz, less bulky. A little more expensive than a cordelette. Not sure how it fares as far as being a forgiving, shock absorbing medium as it is made out of spectra.

Doligo, Jesus Christ, how much wieght do you think you are saving. I can fit more wieght in water in my mouth than you are saving with your unnecessarily risky set up. It's not a fast and light contest. It's basic common sense.

I agree with everyone else, pretty sketch Dolgio and I would be pretty pissed if I was your partner and came up to a belay and saw that. Just not worth risking your life over 3 ounces of cord. I would highly advice against a single leg cord of 6m... SKETCHY!

Scott McMahon wrote: What's your opinion on the weighted knots being hard to untie? I've been thinking about switching over to the 240cm instead of the cordellette. Any comparison thoughts between the sling and the titan cord?

tie a fig 9 instead of a fig 8 ... and you wont have problems untying

as to cordelettes i use em on climbs i dont know or if i know ill need tat if i need to bail ...i also use em as a draw sling so they do double duty ...

i also use a 240 cm dyneema sling sometimes ...

+1 for Web-o-lettes!

They are light clean and versatile. I love them for big-wall anchors. Here is my setup for three man wall teams with web-o-lette:

rockclimbing.com/Articles/B…

Cheers from Osaka,

john

Malcolm Daly wrote:For multi-pitch climbs your best bet is to learn how to set up anchors without a cordalette. In the rare case where you can't find bomber placements you should know how to set up a distributed load anchor with the slings and gear you have. Climb safe, Mal

Well said! I can remember (not that long ago) when a cordlette was used primarily for rescue work and rarely, if at all, in daily rock climbing practices.

On a similar note: I don't know how often these days I see climbers futzing around with that skinny ass dyneema to equalize 2 bomber bolts when clearly they are each individually stronger than the webbing is, even doubled (as the set-up would dictate). Not to mention it's not uncommon to see the rope clipped to this unnecessarily over engineered set-up with only one biner... Kind of dumb really - to purposefully make a bomber anchor weaker in the name of "equalization", when 2 appropriate length quick draws would do a better job. But I digress...

I will say that if you're using a cordlette style system then the webolette is very convenient and easy to use. Mine was free so it does get some occasional use, especially on routes where there are primarily gear belays and I'm leading in blocks (as opposed to swinging leads where there is usually no need for a "power point").