Rope failure

Have you ever seen a rope break?

I’ve only seen it when lowering a huge limb and while pulling a stuck car !

I have not in real life. Only in the movies. 

I’ve retired a rope that got smashed by rockfall (but we rapped on it after taping the sheath back into place around the core).

but yeah, not fully snapped or anything. Never heard of it 

I think most if not all instances of rope failure in climbing are from abrasion. These come to mind:

https://vimeo.com/210809039?embedded=true&source=vimeo_logo&owner=884671

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFfTHoJ9khs&t=693s

I'd be curious to hear of a rope severing from tensile strength failure in a climbing application

I’ve never seen a rope break but have seen a core shot. The climbers were top roping very large granular granite and the rope was running tightly over the rock. I don’t know what caused the core shot exactly. Perhaps the climber had fallen repeatedly at the same spot? Or the rope dug deeply into a crack while lowering?

That video with the guy falling over the arete really grabs my attention!           The ropes that I saw break really only stretched A LOT after the sheath failed

They didn’t completely sever

Sharp edges are the enemy to weighted ropes.

I’ve seen this scenario more than once. Though you could make an argument that this is not a rope failure. Rope did what it was supposed to do— caught a fall. It was just damaged in the process.

I’ve had my rope core-shot once, though not anywhere as extreme as the picture above. 

We had a 3/4" rope break at work once (long story), it sounded like small canon fire when that thing broke....

FrankPS wrote:

Sharp edges are enemies to weighted ropes.

I was at the Gunks and very close to High Exposure that time when the leader's (brand new) rope cut on the lip of the crux overhang. He went 180' to the ground, through two trees on the way. We were expecting a gruesome mess when we ran over. Instead we found a bruised up guy sitting up and complaining about his sprained ankle. He landed on the only patch of dirt between rocks; the guess was that the two trees absorbed enough force to save him.

This is the chopped rope that is mentioned in that Youtube video up thread.  Happened to me mid pitch a ways up a new chossy climb in Oman.  I didn't realize my rope had cut till I built a belay and started pulling the rope up to put my partner on belay.  After pulling up about 50ft I just came to the cut end of the rope.  I kinda slumped over in my harness felt immediately nauseous and sorta started to cry.  One of the scarier moments I've had while climbing.

Marc801 C wrote:

I was at the Gunks and very close to High Exposure that time when the leader's (brand new) rope cut on the lip of the crux overhang. He went 180' to the ground, through two trees on the way. We were expecting a gruesome mess when we ran over. Instead we found a bruised up guy sitting up and complaining about his sprained ankle. He landed on the only patch of dirt between rocks; the guess was that the two trees absorbed enough force to save him.

I’ve heard this story many times climbing there, but never knew of anyone who was there the day of! Remarkable. 

https://www.bergundsteigen.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/42-45-Seilrisse-ein-Resuemee.pdf

 in fifty two years of alpinism, I have experienced two rope failures, one of which involved a rope completely severed.

1990 - rockfall on Mt Hood's Elliot Headwall coreshot both ropes in twin-rope belay system.  partner and I cut ropes at damaged points, twinned longest remaining sections, and completed route on shortened twin system.

2009 - lightning struck ridge at top of couloir my sixteen year old son  and I were climbing, triggering an avalanche that destroyed my anchored belay stance.  my son whom I was belaying "heard the freight train" and scooted into a lateral moat so he could crawl under the  snow/ice surface and be protected from the slide.  rocky debris in the slide severed the belay rope, which saved his life,  because had the rope not failed, I would most likely have pulled him off with me.  I was carried & deposited on a glacier 1000' lower, and woke up in trauma center four days later.  ironic - complete rope failure prevented injury to my son - sometimes its good for the rope to fail...

-Haireball

I’ve never seen it, but a climber did perish when his rope severed when he fell on the first (or possibly second) pitch of Yellow Spur and it loaded over a sharp edge. 

I used a very old retired climbing rope to pull a car out of a mud pit with a truck, and we managed to get the sheath to break but never the twisted core strands; they just stretched beyond usefulness.  And the sheath only broke in the places where it had already been abraded.

it all fits with the other anecdotes and experiments described above:  climbing ropes break (sometimes alarmingly fast) when they contact sharp edges under load (or sharp edges come hurtling fast down upon them), but straight sections of ropes don’t break when simply getting pulled on hard.

No complete failure, but had coreshots:

- Had a 'experienced' climber seconding. After a dozen fall on the crux, the rope abraided about halfway on the sharp granite. Was the second pitch of that rope. :(

- Kicked right in the middle of a rope while iceclimbing. Took some effort to remove the rope on the end of the front point. First climb and second kick of the season. Not a great start, atleast i was only 2 feet up.

but straight sections of ropes don’t break when simply getting pulled on hard.

This is it.

Seneca accident in 2010 where a rope apparently got cut by a fall across a flake.

https://publications.americanalpineclub.org/articles/13201009600/Fall-on-Rock-Severed-Rope-Placed-No-or-Inadequate-Protection-No-Hard-Hat-West-Virginia-Seneca-Rocks-La-Bella-Vista

one other likely scenario causing rope failure is chemical exposure like this case in a gym

https://www.reddit.com/r/climbing/comments/3l01t9/psa_retire_your_rope_before_it_makes_you_retire/