Page 15 - Nate Fitch, Ron Funderburke "Climbing Knots"

Ropes

A modern climbing rope is much different than its
predecessors, and it is much different than any other
kind of rope available for purchase. A climbing rope
almost always is made of nylon and it almost always
has a kernmantle construction. We don’t have to be
industrial engineers to understand why this mate-
rial and construction are attractive to manufacturers.
Nylon is a cheaper material than many other options.
It is a versatile material and can easily be used to cre-
ate small diameter ropes, large diameter ropes, dynamic
ropes, and static ropes. The kernmantle construction
combines the historical advantages of a twisted rope
(in the core) with the braided rope (on the sheath).
As a result, nylon can be used to create a product that
suits all the applications rock climbers devise for it, in
hundreds of colors and patterns.
We don’t have to be chemists to understand all the
foibles of nylon ropes. Nylon’s manufactured strength
can be greatly decreased by heat, mildew, mold, chem-
ical contamination, and UV light. Chemists might
find more precise ways to describe how much the
manufactured strength can be decreased by what tem-
peratures, types and quantity of mold and mildew, and
frequency and duration of UV light. But that is not
always the most helpful information for rock climbers.
In typical use, we cannot create enough heat
through friction to melt our ropes, and we can avoid
all other contaminants simply by thinking of the rope
as a precious and vital member of our team. We clean
it when it’s dirty. We dry it when it’s wet. We retire
it when it’s too old and tired to continue climbing,
and we keep it away from all the things that could be
harmful to it.

2 CLIMBING: KNOTS