Be careful with your daisy chains! (video inside)

I just saw this video posted by Black Diamond: bdel.com/videos/daisy.html

I've never clipped a daisy in the manner that they show failing, but it's good to see how a seemingly simple and secure setup can be so dangerous.

Now that is great info!

Thanks for sharing!

My Jonny is a rigger and he had warned me about that sort of thing quite some time ago.

The video with the music is mesmerizing.

Thanks, that is a good bit of information to know.

An alternative to a daisy chain is a Metolius Personal Anchor System. It has full-strength sewn loops. A minor disadvantage is that you don't have the fine granularity of adjusting the tie-in length that you have with the daisy chain. A second disadvantage: cost ($30). All-in-all, it works quite well.

Old-school types will just take a long sewn sling and tie knots in it.

Well, that's something I haven't seen before, thanks Peter. I've gone the route that Ron has offered with using the PAS to the anchor when free climbing; but then also used a clove to the anchor for redundancy & is more convenient to shorten.

Man, that blows my mind that the end comes out, I've done the short tie-in when jumaring, but always used the PAS or cord/sling as my lower jug tie in.

When belaying a leader, you should always use the rope your primary attachment to the anchor and use a daisy/PAS only as a backup. The static attachment of the daisy/PAS would place extreme loads on the anchor in the event of a factor-two leader fall if you're belaying off your harness.

I don't see this all the way through your thought, Ron.

If I have a tie in with a clove & a tie in with my PAS, wherein both are fairly equalized (though not really ever perfectly), and the belayer has no slack from themselves to the anchor, I don't see force of an extreme load (I assume this means a factor 2 irregardless) being any different to the anchor if the PAS was the short or the long.

If I tie in shorter with a clove, say about a foot, as to the PAS, if the force was sufficient, it would slip the clove to the PAS length anyway and transfer to the anchor, sure some would be absorbed in the clove as well the climbing rope, but wouldn't the force going to the anchor be similar in either configuration (and even if the clove didn't slip - we are only talking about a few feet of rope anyway)?

The only aspect that might be different would be if the belayer had slack in their tie-in and would receive some sort of whiplash effect and transfer an impact load of their weight also to the anchor.

So is this more of an issue of having slack from the belayer to the anchor?

The issue is a static vs. dynamic attachment to the anchor. If the rope is your primary tie-in, the knots at the anchor and at your harness will absorb some of the force of the fall, as will the rope by stretching.

A static tie-in with a daisy/PAS will transmit all of the fall force to the anchor.

Yes, there would be some stretch, but with such a short distance from the belayer to the anchor, I don't see enough force being absorbed during a factor 2 to make a significant difference when force is ultimately transferred to the anchor whether this is through the rope or the PAS.

Isn't the main purpose of building an adequate anchor to be able to take the load?

I see an adequate anchor, keeping no slack between the belayer & anchor, and keeping the belayer redundant as being the gear preventative measures used to try and reduce the probablility of a climbing incident should a factor 2 fall occur.

I view the daisy chain as a personal tether not an anchor point. Daisy chains are invaluable for securing yourself particularly at transitions. BUT, I always tie the rope directly to the anchors for belaying.

A good reason I don't agree with using a daisy as an anchor tie-in for free climbs is that the most common one I saw available was from BD and they had not previously given approval for its use as an anchor tie-in for redundancy (it did not have the 3 sigma certification testing tag for fall force) - so I went with the PAS.

The BD chain had not been rated for quite some time and had put out a notice stating to not use it as an anchor tie-in for the purposes of free-climbing - I gather this was because their daisy was meant for big wall & aid work (why they offered their chain without a fall-rating to the free climbing market in the Colorado front range in such a great quantity really didn't make sense to me, so I felt better by switching my safety gear to Metolius).

Except I see that notice is not on the bdel.com website any longer, so maybe they are finally certifying these chains. In fact, I see they are offering the 3 sigma certification now -- this is new.

Otherwise, the way Phil describes use, I don't see a problem with it as long as when the lead climber starts the pitch, the daisy is not relied upon to keep the belayer attached to the anchor when a lead-fall is caught (if the chain is not rated).

In essence, I think I have agreed (or do agree) that the rope needs to be incorporated as a belayer's tie-in to the anchor. But this is a different issue previously discussed with Ron about whether it's the primary or the redundant. I just wanted to be clear that I see the rope & PAS as being adequately redundant to the anchor.

My concern is that a larger safety issue can get overlooked during a belay station transfer when the climbers are in a hurry to get through a route and not rework the belayer's tie-in points -- leaving the belayer tied in with just a daisy, and the most common I had seen was the thin chain from BD, which had not been fall rated. This situation does happen and I feel this could become a worsened situation should a factor 2 fall occur.

So, if fast free climbing is the usual manner of ascent, why not go ahead and get the PAS? This would function the same as the daisy and you could use it as a redundant tie-in. Plus, you could prevent the issue described from BD as Peter has offered in this post.

Sorry, this is a move of a prior post to here, with Mark Nelson's question, & my response.

1st post:
Minor point: When considering 3 sigma designation, recall 3 sigma is just an arbitrary point on the curve of probabilities. It is more conservative than 2 or 1 sigma. In the end, either the event happens to an individual or not i.e. you don't get a percentage of an event. So, choose your limits of acceptable risk and accept the consequences in case you guess incorrectly.

post by Mark Nelson:
Agreed - wrt 3-sigma. I believe this to mean acceptable performance to be up to 3 standard deviations of 100 each less than the rating provided (when discussing a piece of gear's strength rating) would be - is that a fair statement?

Some manufacturers don't accept this deviation as a minumum performance level and require in-house tests to exceed the 3 sigma standard with the strength rating that is placed on the gear before the gear is placed out in the market. Would you also say that is a fair statement?

Also - are we talking about my post on the daisy chains?

2nd post:
Sigma is an abbreviation for standard deviation. So, with an ordinary curve of distribution, 3 sigma means about 0.5% of the curve is left & 2 sigma means about 2.5% of the curve is left. So, in plain language, that means 1 in 200 vs 1 in 40 odds.

As far as what is fair, 3 sigma means simply that they want the margin error to be less than 3 standard deviations. So, in what they are testing(given an ordinary curve) they like it to fail in less than 1 in 200 tries. It's arbitrary but it has more margin of error than 2 or 1 standard deviations (sigma).

Yeah, I'm not sure why this post wound up under that other topic. Operator error? BTW, what does the daisy chain video show? It's hard to download.

It looks to be a daisy which the climber is simulated as being tied end to end. Then, takes an inner loop of the daisy and clips it to the anchor biner so as to shorten the daisy length. Upon pull of the daisy, the entire chain comes free of the biner. What was generally perceived as being safe (if the inner loop fails, the perception was that the end loop would catch anyway) by having started in an end to end position, is now being called into question.

This is something I have done with frequency on my lead jumar, now I'll just use one daisy loop; I had always tied in short on the fixed line and used a PAS/cord with the lower jumar - so I did have redundancy; but having the top daisy blow out sure would scare the shit out of me. I could just go with cord for the upper jumar.

Mark, thanks for the description of the video. From what I recalled over the years was that it was taboo to use only daisy chains for anchoring. One of the bigger taboos was to have a biner clipped to multiple loops of the daisy whereby the daisy's intermediate stitching could fail and you wind up clipped to air. So, this video suggests the entire daisy's stitching failed? Under what level of force?

Partially, no -- the main stitching did not appear to fail (the inner stitching did), the daisy simply came off the biner as it would if 2 inner loops had been clipped by the same biner. So the level of force would be minor, maybe 2kN (I think some are 4kN) for the inner stitching.

& Yes, using the daisy for the anchor position was taboo, because they were not certified as to a fall rating on the main stitching. But now, it seems manufacturers are catching on that people are using these for free climbs which means that, more than likely, they will also be using them at the anchor tie-in, thus certifications. (Why so many non-certified chains were marketed in the CO front range knowing that aid climbing was not the main activity, really gets me).

Man, I really really can't express how much the PAS idea prevents a series of decisions that leads to a team coming off a perfectly good anchor.

Obviously I've not seen the video, but it makes you wonder if that was a gate flutter problem? Still, I've put using only a daisy for an anchor in the category with running your rope over a sharp edge on lead.

No - they simulated the pull twice with the biner in two different directions making sure the biner gate was not in question. They did use a locker - but upon seeing it again, they did not lock it (this wasn't an issue though). The chain simply pulls free of the biner when the inner stitching fails.

I really am curious. Tell me the advantages of the PAS system over the following:

For my free climbing attachment to anchors, etc. I have always used a double-length runner which I then tie into about 4 off-setting loops with overhand knots. I too have always made it a point to make sure that when I shorten the attachment that my end loop is always still attached at the anchor point, so I agree, the video at first made me say holy shit. However, what kind of forces would it take to pull through an overhand knot???

Seriously, I am sometimes not very smart about things like this, so someone tell me the benefits of paying 30 dollars for the PAS vs. the 6 dollars for the double-length sling.

Also, after reading that article in Rock and Ice? last year about the benefits of nylon vs. spectra, I was pleased to know that my cheapness has been giving me an extra bit of safety all of these years! So my double-length runner is nylon.

I have a friend who works for Metolius and he convinced me a long time ago not to use daisy chains as illustrated and I brought two PAS slings, (one for me and one for my climbing partner) at 60 bucks plus tax, etc. Its a lot of money but now I'm seeing a lot of them in the hills, probably more so now.

Anyhow, on the supertaco site there was this reply from Metolius regarding the PAS:

"We were happy to see the BD daisy chain video clip which so succinctly illustrates the daisy chain misuse issue. Metolius developed the PAS (Personal Anchor System) about three years ago for exactly this reason. For years we had seen this and other misuse problems associated with daisy chains and decided to develop a product which would alleviate potential disasters. Although the PAS is a simple looking product, we spent about two years designing and testing various webbing combinations, lengths, and strengths.

With regard to the pricing response about the PAS, one must ask the obvious question. “Is my life worth $29.95?” We feel at least some of you out there think so! Sure there are cheaper alternatives that work, however knowing the exact strength of all items in your climbing gear chain is of paramount importance. In other words, there should be no unknowns in the safety chain as the consequences are far too serious.

Why does the PAS cost what it does? Yes, we too feel it is quite a lot and we were initially concerned about the price. However at the end of the day we decided to do it anyway and provide the service to people who want to eliminate unknowns in their equipment chain. We are very pleased with the results and have received a ton of positive feedback from climbers who have switched over to the PAS.

Standard webbing isn't strong enough to achieve the strengths needed. Therefore we had to design a custom webbing and order 5000 yds (per color) of it just to start the project (that’s a fair amount of PASs). It requires an extra heavy duty nylon/dyneema blend (16mm) as the loops are in contact with one another throughout the chain. This system creates a lot of friction (when under load) and needs a very robust webbing to achieve the strength number. 4050 lbf. is the PAS's rated strength, stronger than the stringent UIAA harness standard of 3600 lbf. There are 6 hot cut parts that are combined with a total of 62 bar tacks and a box of straight stitching. Plus one small label. Then it gets inspected and every tack and stitch is recounted. Once it passes inspection it goes onto a well thought out piece of packaging which is die-cut and specifically shows how the PAS is used. Without the packaging we felt like people wouldn't understand the reasons why daisy chains were being misused. The packaging also shows how the PAS is to be used correctly. At the end of the day our margin is quite low, but we feel like it is an important enough item that we needed to do it regardless of how much we actually made. We hope this answers a few of the questions you all have had".

Cheers,

Metolius Climbing

Hope this helps.

Yes, they are expensive, but buy one, hell buy two!

Link to site:
supertopo.com/climbing/thre…

Cheers

John

That sounds like Bush...

"BE AFRAID, BE VERY AFRAID!"

Isn't your life worth thirty dollars? That is a stupid-ass argument too.

Also, as you know, I am assuming that you PAS users don't use that tie in all by itself, so it is meant as a backup to tying in your rope to the anchor. I still don't understand the benefit of using a PAS.