Ropes and Research

As part of my mountaineering 'Continuing Professional Development' (CPD), I had an eye-opening evening at Plas y Brenin, the National Mountain Centre with the Head of Development at Edelrid Ropes; taking a scientific and practical look at the use of climbing ropes. The meeting was scheduled from 17:00 to 19:30, but it was nearer 21:00 by the time I got home as there was much (and still more) to discuss and reflect on.

Before all that though, I'd been 'learning outdoors' in the forest, looking at and trying to notice some of the 'small stuff' with a group of students, who are doing a John Muir conservation project.

After racing away in the afternoon, I made it to the lecture with a minute to spare and took the last remaining seat - in the front row.

Daniel Gebel is Head of Development at Edelrid and an investigator of climbing accidents on Germany. He has conducted many experiments on rope stretch, strength and usage. His keynote presentation gave some alarming statistics about good and bad practices in mountaineering and rock climbing. What was most interesting to the packed lecture hall of North Wales’ most experienced guides and instructors, was that some of the techniques we commonly use (and teach), could be flawed (i.e, catastrophically dangerous) in certain situations.

There were a lot of wide eyes in the room, when certain findings were revealed. It was also very interesting to hear how rock climbing is taught (and rather importantly, how climbers are insured) in Germany, compared to the UK. There was much debate,  discussion and interest in what was being said and I think we all needed a bit of time to absorb and reflect on what we had learnt, when the lecture wound up at around 8:30pm. It was interesting to see how other countires have different acceptable practices and techinques. As ever, there's always more to learn....