Measuring Route Lengths

Like myself, many first ascentionsts take a lot of pride in the skills of our craft. One such skill is estimating the length of a route. I like to think that I'm a pretty accurate judge of pitch length on the fly, especially when going ground up. (However, I think it's best practice to be a bit liberal with pitch length estimates to prevent accidentally putting someone in a situation where they won't have enough rope to get up/down).

Recently I climbed a multi-pitch sport route that was reported to be 620ft (~189m) long. In the MP description each pitch was nicely broken down and included their length. Awesome. When I got to the base though I was immediately confused as the size of the feature looked to be a fraction of the above height. After climbing the route I discovered it had a big traverse and a few trending pitches which helped things add up. But the route still felt shorter than advertised. Was I actually a terrible judge of pitch lengths all this time? Should I maybe not be so proud of myself? I had to find out.

To do so, I took an oldish rope and chopped it down to 106ft. This left 3 feet on each end of for figure eights and exactly 100ft between each knot.

The tape just above the knot marks where the figure eight is tied and the beginning of the measurable length. Each subsequent mark of tape denotes 10ft of rope. Additionally, I wrote on the half mark to help keep track.

I took this new measuring rope back to the same climb to test it out. I did my best to control variables and keep things consistent throughout the day:
-My parter led every pitch
-I kept track of how many pieces of tape passed through my grigri as I belayed
-Every time he reached a belay he built an anchor WITHOUT using the rope
-I recorded the pitch length immediately in my phone
-If a piece of tape was in the grigri then the pitch was exactly divisible by 10 (7th piece of tape, 70ft pitch)
-When the pitch was in between tape marks (as it usually was) I estimated by using my arm length to center of chest (34in, or just under 3ft)
-Any time this estimate was difficult (not close to either tape marks, but not that close to the middle of them) I added a 1ft in favor of a longer pitch.
-We pitched out the entire route (even the 40ft one...)
-We clipped every bolt and only extended those that were necessary (<4)

After all was said and done our measurement came out to 553ft (~168m). Compared to the original estimate there was a difference of 67ft (~20m). Not nothing, but not a crazy difference either. 

My questions for y'all are:

1. Do you see any critical errors in the system I employed?

2. Do you see any ways this system could be improved upon?

3. Have you ever attempted to use an exact measurement on a route and what was it?

Thanks!

PS: INB4 "it doesn't matter, just climb"

#4. 20 meter delta on a multipitch. I would go with, Who cares.

Double J wrote:

#4. 20 meter delta on a multipitch. I would go with, Who cares.

I don’t think many folks (including myself) would care much about a ~20m over estimate. This post is not so much about the results as it is about ironing out the experiment.

Also I think your comment falls under my INB4 ;)

Dakota from North Dakota wrote:

Also I think your comment falls under my INB4 ;)

You are correct, and it made me look up urban dictionary for that one ;) 

I had a friend do something very similar to this using a standard 60/70 m lead rope for liking pitches on long routes. It allowed them to figure out, more exactly, how much rope was left to better gauge their next belay stance.

On a similar note: If just measuring the height (of a pitch, or even a wall), I wonder if something like a Biltmore Stick could be useful. Or maybe just some good ole' fashion trig. Wonder how many climbers have ever bothered do this.

Nate, a long enough Biltmore Stick would be wild! Trig is def out of my pay grade  

For ground up new routes a full size rope with factory middle AND quarter markers would be a dream.

Edit: the more I watch videos about Biltmore Sticks the more I’m starting to realize those are out of my pay grade too   

Couldn't you just measure how much wingspan you have, count how many spans of spare rope is remaining after the pitch and subtract it from the rope length.

I think they have apps that can do the math for you, even the trig.

rocknice2 wrote:

Couldn't you just measure how much wingspan you have, count how many spans of spare rope is remaining after the pitch and subtract it from the rope length.

I think they have apps that can do the math for you, even the trig.

I usually do something similar to this on the fly (thumb to thumb is almost exactly 6ft for me). It seems to work pretty well, but in this case I wanted to see how exact I could get. 

Rope manufacturers should put scale on their sheaths. Just like a tape measure. They'd sell more rope since you couldn't cut them.

I use a 300’ tape measure on a lot of our routes since many of them are exaggerated or overestimated for safety margin.

I’ve considered your method for the reason of measuring distance climbed instead of vertical distance for rappels or TR consideration.

IMO the rap and TR considerations are more of a cause for consequence than leaders heading up a wall so I have simply measured vertical distance from anchors or anchor opportunity to the ground.

I often simply take wingspan lengths of the tail(s) and calculate the height that way too. It won’t be accurate since ropes change length for various reasons (they change length in different temps) including how much it has been weighted recently.

IMO if it really matters run a tape. I update the climbs with the actual vertical footage BC I think accurate data allows for predictable decision making when people may say “oh those climbs aren’t REALLY that tall, so we’ll just take a 40m/50m”.

If people knew the exact height and that reputation existed instead of questionable height, they wouldn’t Jack around, for the most part. Some people seem like they just want to epic or get hurt.

Easiest way is to record your route with your phone using GPS data.  I bike and ski, strava works good enough for me, but many others that are better.   Also, if your project is out of the tree line, Google earth measuring tool is fairly accurate.