Edelweiss Sheath Defect - Curve Unicore 9.8

From my understanding the son of the guy who owns Beal owns Edelweiss, but I may be mistaken. A quick look at both their product lines shows that they are making virtually the same gear and stamping it with different logos, at least for the harnesses and the like. Ropes seem to be a little different.

bearbreeder: I've been climbing for 10 years and projecting at my limit for 5, this isn't my first rodeo and I understand and agree with your suggestions. I also work in a gym and our lead ropes in there last longer than this beal did with occasional outdoor use. I know ropes, their limitations and how they are designed and supposed to be used. I'm saying that with all of those things in mind this rope still wore out extremely quickly.

Jay Samuelson wrote:bearbreeder: I've been climbing for 10 years and projecting at my limit for 5, this isn't my first rodeo and I understand and agree with your suggestions. I also work in a gym and our lead ropes in there last longer than this beal did with occasional outdoor use. I know ropes, their limitations and how they are designed and supposed to be used. I'm saying that with all of those things in mind this rope still wore out extremely quickly.

I own the booster and have used em quite a bit in the past for sport and trad

They arent as durable as mammuts or maxims but i havent heard of many issues

Try contacting beal

;)

Maybe I'll give that a shot : )

Jay, I don't want to sound like I'm blaming you. The Edelweiss is definitely a scary flaw that they are being irresponsible to ignore. The Beal though, I could see a rope doing that in 4 or 5 outings if you really hammered it.

You said you work at a gym? How about get a Sterling Big Gym? It comes in a 200M spool I believe, it's got a relatively soft catch and it's as nice and soft as it is durable. I never noticed the large diameter on short routes with it. It's too bad it doesn't come in a 210M spool though.

Hey no worries, I assume most people who have read this post do just blame me and haven't given it a second thought - fair enough. I shared my experiences and that's all I can do, just giving people a heads up is all. Thanks for the rope suggestion, I'll look into that.

Just re-read the thread to make sure that no one had pointed this out. There has been talk of the biners not being "grooved" or "sharp" which would be bad. Unfortunately the problem is that they probably have small nicks and burs that are blowing up the ropes in question.

For those that haven't seen this DMM has a video that clearly replicates the damage pictured in this thread by dropping a weight onto a rope only 5 times through an employees draw.

Check it out.
dmmclimbing.com/knowledge/c…

I have personally damaged a brand new rope similarly while lowering off a route with only 1 quick link attached to each anchor bolt. Not positive why but something about the angle, friction and tension tore it up immediately. Won't do that again.

Nicelegs I think your theory is spot on

nicelegs wrote:Petzl, Edelweiss, and at one other whose name escapes me have had this disintegrating sheath issue. Makes me want to boycott a whole company but I'm not sure that is the issue. I have a theory. Most ropes are made on the same machines. Certain companies dial the settings somewhat different for their needs but at the end of the day, there are only a handful of places in the entire world where ropes are made. It only seems logical that these companies are also mostly drawing from the same source material. After all, how many places can you order millions of feet of colored nylon fiber? See where I'm going with this, when mega company X has an issue with even a single batch of source material, the effects can be felt across the industry. Whats worse, is that good and bad spools are probably mixed up. If it takes 200 spools to make a rope and 1 is bad, there is probably no measurable way tell. If 50 are bad, you start seeing coreshots. When one spool runs out, it gets replaced in line. Given this, do you see how completely impossible it would be to track the source material? Also given this, I could imagine ropes from one production run could have different properties. When you think about it, it's amazing we don't see this more. I wish manufacturers would admit this and replace the few this does happen to. Seems like a reasonable gesture of good will. Of course this is all just a theory.

nicelegs wrote:Petzl, Edelweiss, and at one other whose name escapes me have had this disintegrating sheath issue. Makes me want to boycott a whole company but I'm not sure that is the issue. I have a theory. Most ropes are made on the same machines. Certain companies dial the settings somewhat different for their needs but at the end of the day, there are only a handful of places in the entire world where ropes are made. It only seems logical that these companies are also mostly drawing from the same source material. After all, how many places can you order millions of feet of colored nylon fiber? See where I'm going with this, when mega company X has an issue with even a single batch of source material, the effects can be felt across the industry. Whats worse, is that good and bad spools are probably mixed up. If it takes 200 spools to make a rope and 1 is bad, there is probably no measurable way tell. If 50 are bad, you start seeing coreshots. When one spool runs out, it gets replaced in line. Given this, do you see how completely impossible it would be to track the source material? Also given this, I could imagine ropes from one production run could have different properties. When you think about it, it's amazing we don't see this more. I wish manufacturers would admit this and replace the few this does happen to. Seems like a reasonable gesture of good will. Of course this is all just a theory.

Not sure Petzl should be included but Beal, Edelweiss and PMI are all part of the UNICORE project.

I've had the same issue with a Beal once and this Edelweiss issue appears to be VERY similar. I've heard of similar "one source" issues with ropes in the past - could be hearsay but IIRC, a friend spoke with a BW rep YEARS ago and there was the old "bad nylon batch" story thrown about then too.

I don't buy the "can't trace it" idea though. These rope companies sell a LOT of rope that's used in PPE industries that must have STRICT tracking and traceability. NFPA, OSHA etc. Being able to trace your manufacturing process is essential to making a safe product. Look at the marking on any rope today and you'll see tracking info. I'm sure they can trace that back to a machine, time, bobbin, batch of nylon etc.

Where I see the challenge is there's very little available in the way of OPEN COMMUNICATION channels between climber and most rope manufacturers because of all the import shenanigans. LibertyMtn is the gateway for many products (not all) and they don't appear to, in my past experiences, to have a mechanism to deal with this sort of thing.

Jay Samuelson wrote:Hey no worries, I assume most people who have read this post do just blame me and haven't given it a second thought - fair enough. I shared my experiences and that's all I can do, just giving people a heads up is all. Thanks for the rope suggestion, I'll look into that.

Just to be clear Jay, some of us certainly appreciate your posts. In contrast to some others on this thread, I think your concerns are totally legit. I have dogged the crap out of countless ropes over the years and I have never had an issue like you are showing. From my perspective, there is definitely something wrong with the ropes you have posted about and I for one appreciate the heads up.
Cheers.

cdec: maybe re-read the original posting, the third rope failed with a brand new quickdraw. I know it's really tempting to blame the carabiners, but it just wasn't the culprit. My personal opinion is it's not 'bad nylon' either, but probably a performance issue with Unicore bonding. Someone else mentioned the core and sheath ripping apart because the core can't slide inside the sheath and absorb impact, thats pretty much what I think is going on as well. As far as the beal rope is concerned it just wore out quickly and is a poor product in my opinion, but it wasnt destroyed in 20 minutes at least.

Mattm: I agree with you, there's no way in hell that rope companies can't trace the source material, spool and lot numbers of everything they produce. And the communication issue is a real problem; I tried for months to inform Edelweiss, both directly and through their distributor, and got nowhere. I didn't want to publicly claim there was something wrong with Unicore ropes, I wanted them to investigate and find out for sure or not. Apparently they didn't want to do that.

J. Albers: Thanks, it's good to know some people appreciate the effort.

If this is a problem with Uni-Core ropes why aren't there more reports of similar failures?

Folks the beal booster is NOT unicore ... Beal hasnt switched it over to unicore yet

bealplanet.com/sport/anglai…

The booster is a very common rope in squamish, i have one, at least 4 of my partners own em ... And this last week i saw at least 2 of em at the crag

They arent mammuts or maxims in terms of sheath durability, but i havent heard of many issues with the core

Not to say the OP doesnt have an issue, but only beal can answer that questiob

;)

Ray: My guess would be that most people who experience problems with these ropes are contacting Liberty Mountain and being told that there is nothing wrong with the rope, but that it must have been user error. They'll replace the rope begrudgingly, and I think this makes most people feel lucky to have their rope replaced and they don't say another word about it. My experience with them almost felt like a brow-beating trying to convince me that it was somehow my fault, although they always agreed that a rope shouldn't do what all 3 of mine did. I almost felt pressured to drop the whole thing and just be happy they replaced my ropes for me. As you can see I'm not the only one with issues, already a handful of people have shared their bad experiences on this thread alone. It reminds me of the alien recall a decade ago, no one believed there could be anything wrong with the coveted alien and it took a long time and lots of yelling and screaming before the problem was realized and steps took to rectify it.

I have a Beal Diablo 10.2 - Unicore and have similar problems after little use. I contacted BEAL but with no response. I also have Elderweisse Non-Unicore half ropes which have withstood wonderfully to significantly more abuse.

My Diablo unicore has not had any falls yet but the sheath is getting very bumpy, which happened after 1 pitch, then the bumps tear and fray. I have had less than 15 pitches on it now. Not very impressed. A friend of mine had an edelweiss of unknown model that got trashed like Jay's rope too, free hanging draw (mammut keylock), it was only 2 pitches old! I only buy New England ropes now.

I know this is an old thread, but I thought that another account should be documented someplace. I also bought the Edelweiss Curve 9.8 back in late 2014 and the core became exposed after a single pitch and rappel. Unfortunately I had bought it brand new before an extended trip abroad and never was able to try and return it. The rope would have been dragged over a lip while pulling the rope down, however I climbed the same pitch twice more with a BlueWater rope that was 4 years older without problems, and I'm still using that same rope today. I'm in the market for a new rope now, but I won't be buying an Edelweiss.

Glad to see this resurface. Personally, I love my 70m 9.5mm Edelweiss Energy Arc, it's been damn near the best rope I've owned in terms of handling and durability. But It's very interesting to hear of so many cases where others haven't been so lucky. Here I was about to buy another Edelweiss for the novia and am now rightly second-guessing myself.