Ever since Mark Sims' report on Marble Sink, where there was some discussion on the subject of ladders, I've been thinking. If I am using an electron ladder, which is a few years old, what are the most likely failure points assuming that on visual inspection there is no obvious corrosion or rust?

I will openly admit that if I am using ladders, I tend to adopt the attitude of Simon Wilson and dispense with lifelines, because in my view the best reason for using ladders (aside from it being a non technical beginner technique) is that they allow you not to carry rope or srt gear. However, if a ladder were to fail on a trip where this kind of approach is going to be taken (marble sink and hammer pot are those that spring to my mind) then the consequence of such a failure without a lifeline could be irresponsibly serious...

So, how to reconcile light weight and no faff with safety using ladders? Any ideas/advice?

I think  the c-links and the rung stops are the most susceptible. Although i suspect failure is much less common, now that people have stopped making ladders in their sheds.

Canary said:

I think  the c-links and the rung stops are the most susceptible. Although i suspect failure is much less common, now that people have stopped making ladders in their sheds.

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Agreed. This had been left in the same rarely visited cave for something like 8 years by the time it ended up like this. Lesson learned, happily without lasting consequences.

Perhaps non-metalic ladders are more suitable ?

http://inglesport.com/products/lyon-fibrelight-ladder-red-black

I was waiting at Swildens 20 once and the group coming up the pitch had their ladder break. In that case the wire broke where it went though the rung, when they stepped on the rung. The ladder in question looked fine and wasn't rusty at all. Lucky it happened as a caver was climbing up and they just skipped that step and continued up, before temporary repairing that step with spare Karbs to allow the rest of the groups up. I believe that ladder was retired after that trip.

Hence I would always take the extra gear to rig a lifeline (where it is practical/possable).

With rope ladders I can think of many pitches in mendips where you would need to take rope protectors as the ladder isn't free hanging and you would get rope rub. I can't see an issue with them for free hanging pitches though.

I have only seen a ladder fail twice. Once a ladder left in the dig in Honeymead Hole on Mendip failed on Ken Passant when he was posing for a photo. I think the wire broke if I remember rightly but he was only a metre off the floor. The ladder had been in there a long time (years probably). That was 20 years ago. Then, we were on a field trip in Australia pre International Congress this year and after a lot of persuasion the group leader brought a ladder along as I wasn't planning to faff with SRT for a single 20 foot pitch that was almost free climbable. Three or four rungs slipped on said ladder which probably again, hadn't been used for years. We free climbed out. I tend to use a lifeline on any pitch over 10 metres and check the ladders pre trip!

If I recall correctly, there were incidents of ladder and wire belays breaking within Talurit swages, where these had been crushed onto the wire using hammer blows, rather than the correct means of applying constant pressure to force the soft alloy of the swage around the wire. "C" links were by far the weakest part of an electron ladder, but at least they were easy to inspect.

We used to make our own ladders (as most folk did) using pins to spread the wire inside the rings, then filling the ends with epoxy resin. A shortfall in our quality control meant that, as I ascended the big pitch in Lamb Leer, I began to appreciate that someone had neglected to insert these pins down one side of a 33' length. It was rather disconcerting to climb, although surprisingly not all rungs slipped, just being held by the grip of the small dollop of epoxy.

I find avoiding the bloody things negates falling off of them or having them fail on you. You also have less gear to lug to the pitch.

nobrotson said:

... what are the most likely failure points assuming that on visual inspection there is no obvious corrosion or rust?

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The two causes of retiring ladders I've seen are the wire rope starting to break on the thimbles at the end-eyes apparently due to stress of the tight radius, and the wire rope starting to break between the end-eyes and the first rung, apparently due to the stress of distorting and tightly-curving the wire due to linking the C links together after coiling it. Never seen a ladder break anywhere else. These were all commercially manufactured ladders.

NewStuff said:

I find avoiding the bloody things negates falling off of them or having them fail on you. You also have less gear to lug to the pitch.

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It's only less gear if you have a lot of pitches, for short drops in long systems ladders are easier.

Mike

Electron ladders aren't really designed to be left in caves long term; this is likely to result in deterioration.

A properly constructed ladder (whether commercially or home made), which is carefully inspected for physical damage following each trip - and looked after correctly (i.e. cleaned & dried as soon as possible after use and occasionally dipped in a preserving substance such as lanolin) is very unlikely to fail.

Many examples of ladders breaking seem not to have had one or more of the above points properly adhered to.

When inspecting club ladders a few years ago we had several ladders that superficially looked fine. When sections of the wire were slightly untwisted it was clear that they were actually very rusty on the inner surfaces, but the surfaces exposed to the outside that dried quickly had barely rusted at all. It really made me wonder how well I could judge the condition of ladders by just looking at them.

Personally, I'm very reluctant to use ladders without a lifeline. However, for the sake of argument, in the case of Marble Sink I think the kit required would be 6 ladders. Doing the cave using SRT uses 69 m of rope which, these days, is about half a normal tackle-sack worth. Between a team of 3 it's a choice between 2 ladders each, or 1/6 of a bag worth of rope + a minimal SRT kit each. I'd certainly go for the latter. As for the faff-levels, while I was lying flat out in the entrance crawl packing the tackle sack largely by feel I wasn't wishing I was coiling a ladder instead! Having said that, I suspect the level of faff is pretty subjective.

I always think a good gauge of whether something is a good decision is to ponder what you might think if it went wrong. If you chose to take ladders on a trip to minimise faff, then had a bad accident due to ladder failure, would you look back and think it was a sensible decision?

Electron ladders are an accident waiting to happen.

I get that before SRT, there wasn't much else, but using one today is like riding a pony everywhere when we have cars and bikes. It'll get you there, but it's got a mind of it's own. This is all coming from someone that hates SRT as well... but not as much as I hate Electrons.

It is more gear, because if you are life-lining as you should be, you're already packing a significant percentage of your SRT kit anyway.  I'll drop fixed ladders without a lifeline, but they generally don't try to swing around and up on themselves.

An accident waiting to happen? Well, for those of us oldies who spent most of their caving lives we depended on them for the many thousands of feet we climbed, up & down some pretty huge pitches, and failure was a very rare occurrence. Lifelines were always used, not because we thought the ladders would break but in case something caused us to fall off - a falling rock, or a sudden surge of water.

NewStuff said:

Electron ladders are an accident waiting to happen.

I get that before SRT, there wasn't much else, but using one today is like riding a pony everywhere when we have cars and bikes. It'll get you there, but it's got a mind of it's own. This is all coming from someone that hates SRT as well... but not as much as I hate Electrons.

It is more gear, because if you are life-lining as you should be, you're already packing a significant percentage of your SRT kit anyway.  I'll drop fixed ladders without a lifeline, but they generally don't try to swing around and up on themselves.

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Completely spot on.

Ladders are 18th century shite. Use SRT. It's 20th century technology, admittedly, but the way to go.

MarkS said:

Personally, I'm very reluctant to use ladders without a lifeline.

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Glad to hear it, because doing so would be negligence. Doing so routinely would be gross negligence. BCA insurers would probably refuse to cough up in the event of either being a contributing factor in an incident resulting in injury and the plaintiff would easily win a civil action case against the trip leader/club because of it anyway.

mrodoc said:

I tend to use a lifeline on any pitch over 10 metres..

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Is it not a well documented fact that falling un-lifelined from ladder pitches of 10m or less was the no.1 cause of death and injury in British caving for a significant period? If so, could it possibly have been related to the perception that a short (relatively speaking) ladder was perceived as something people wouldn't fall off? Whereas in fact it would appear to be a commonplace for this to occur.

I also recall a cave rescue lecture where it was pointed out that any fall of 2 metres or more onto rock should be considered potentially fatal.

FTR I've seen 2 ladders fail. One less than a year old. Both professionally manufactured/supplied.

Cap'n Chris said:

NewStuff said:

Electron ladders are an accident waiting to happen.

I get that before SRT, there wasn't much else, but using one today is like riding a pony everywhere when we have cars and bikes. It'll get you there, but it's got a mind of it's own. This is all coming from someone that hates SRT as well... but not as much as I hate Electrons.

It is more gear, because if you are life-lining as you should be, you're already packing a significant percentage of your SRT kit anyway.  I'll drop fixed ladders without a lifeline, but they generally don't try to swing around and up on themselves.

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Completely spot on.

Ladders are 18th century shite. Use SRT. It's 20th century technology, admittedly, but the way to go.

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What's 21st century technoology?

Also, do you mean to say that instead of using a ladder for one or two short non-technical pitches, such as Swildons 20ft and the entrance (and pierce's) pitch in County Pot, you would use SRT? and that it would be a more lightweight option?

I think that a lot of the 'lightweight' aspect depends upon how inventive you are with your SRT setup. For example, I can think of a number of ways to minimise kit carried to only a few slings and karabiners, plus a caving belt to clip things to and equipment for the belays, and then doing ladder and line for the pitches. These include:

- harness made using triple bowline on lifeline rope and then bottom/top belaying as appropriate using an italian hitch/belay device.
- belt and sling harness, life-line everyone but last person down then abseil down. carry 1 jammer and self-line back up with a sling as a safety link.

I mainly use ladders on short pitches where I am leading a group of novices, and on these trips I always use a lifeline and have a full srt kit. However, on a few trips where it has been myself and some other cavers of my experience level, I have used ladders with no lifeline and find I really enjoy the streamlined nature of caving this way. I accept that I mainly use SRT and don't find it to be too bad, but I think people are very dismissive of ladders and they can have their place.

Here's some 10+ year old technology, perhaps relevant:

https://ukcaving.com/board/index.php?topic=2553.msg27024#msg27024

Another alternative that doesn't seem popular is to forget ladders and super-simplify your srt kit. If a cave has only small pitches or requires long or difficult travel before/between pitches, I use the most basic vertical gear possible. Aside from the rope itself, this includes a loop of webbing, two prusiks, and a single carabiner, all of which fits easily in a pocket. This won't help a crowd of inexperienced cavers quickly up and down, but a crowd of inexperienced cavers shouldn't be on ladder with no safety.

( have also done a vertical cave with no gear excepting a single carabiner and a short prusik loop, which was surprisingly easy. My point is that srt is often horribly overcomplicated, and can be done safely in such a way as to remove most advantages ladders may have)