Old static rope

So this weekend I went climbing with some friends that are somewhat on the newer side of outdoor rock climbing, and they had a Blue Water 11.6mm 150 foot long static rope that they found in a garage sale for $5. Never been used, stored in its rope bag out of sun light the whole time, the manufacturer tag still on it with the two plastic wraps still around it.

Upon hearing about this, I was very skeptical, as we all know soft climbing goods can degrade over time. Looking at the tag, I found the manufacturing year to be 2000. I took it out and flaked the rope feeling the whole length of the sheath for any obvious irregularities. There were some kink like bends in the rope where it was wrapped around itself that I wasn't crazy about. And the consistency of it's flexibility seemed to vary in different parts of the rope.

I thought we'd try it to setup a top rope anchor with safely weight testing it first with a backup safety line to see if it held before actually putting people on it with no backup. It seemed ok and held just fine. I setup the dynamic rope on it with dual eights on a bight with the static and proceeded to have three people rappel down the long static extension to the dynamic rope and then rappel down that to the base of the cliff.

One of the climbers going before me mentioned that the static rope near the dual eights on a bight felt really loose and different than the rest of the rope. So I hauled it up to take a look at it, and what I found is what I believe to be a separation of the core from the sheath. I've seen this before at the local gym I climb at with a defective rope they had. I choose to officially claim this static rope no longer safe to use, and replaced it with my new 10mm static rope I hand on hand. I know I made the right decision. Our lives are worth more than an new old $5 static rope.

Would you have done any differently?

Climb for joy wrote:I choose to officially claim this static rope no longer safe to use, and replaced it with my new 10mm static rope I hand on hand. I know I made the right decision. Our lives are worth more than a new old $5 static rope. Would you have done any differently?

If you'd consider shipping it, I'd cover the cost and a few extra dollars and donate it to the guy who puts up the tyroleans over our local creeks.

Fair enough, hope they have fun. Might make a pretty good rope swing...

So what part of the storage or age caused what you describe as a mechanical failure in the rope? Seriously, can you describe how or why that would happen? Even 15y old that rope was unlikely to be vastly different than new if it was unused.

I would have def done some things differently. For one, I wouldn't have bothered inspecting every meter of the rope if I took it out of new packaging, that time could have been spent climbing.

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