Never used older rope

Howdy!

Quick question for y'all out there. I just found a post on CL for a 30m 8mm Beal Rando at a decent price, so I emailed the guy with some general questions because he said the rope had never been used. I found out he purchased the rope about 8 years ago and it has just been sitting at his house ever since.

What would y'all say about the remaining life of the rope? I don't know how I feel about using a rope that I don't know its history but he says it has been in a plastic been for the 8 years. I would use it for sketchy hiking situations/scrambling and not actually for climbing. Do y'all see anything wrong with this rope?

Thanks in advance!

Jason

Degradation of nylon over that time period is pretty minimal. I know New England Ropes recommends that after 7 years of proper storage its no longer considered "safe". With that being said, the effects are pretty minimal. I wouldn't have much of an issue climbing on it, and you won't even be climbing.

Heres an old topic discussing the same issue with more info on it: mountainproject.com/v/10-ye…

I've only seen one rope fail (145 kid rapping on it), but feel free to buy some total strangers 8 year old rope. That's my thought. My other thought is that free isn't a decent price, so unsure what "decent price" means as free is too high in my book unless you are using it to make dog leashes. What's your life worth?

Be careful. This rope may be dangerous and fail on the first fall in case it was stored in a shed or hot garage in summer in South-West. It can look good but have no value for climbing at the same time.
Nylon is extremely sensitive to heat and UV light.

The chances of this rope failing on the first fall are almost zero. If the seller is honest, they ARE zero.

But given that we can never know if a human being is lying, we can't say with certainty that the rope won't fail.*

But we can say it is highly unlikely that the rope will fail if it passes a visual inspection. Let me repeat that: if a rope passes a visual and digital inspection, it essentially NEVER fails on the first fall. (The only exceptions being rare edge cases like sulfuric or muriatic acid exposure.)

So the answers to this question really tell us how the answerer deals with small, unknown risks, and NOTHING about the safety of the given rope.

• *If the seller is honest, and this rope has sat unused in a bag for 8 year, it is fine. The chances of it failing in a first fall are so miniscule that only a fool would give them credence. But then we are back to that honesty thing...