E
epik
Guest
NZcaver said:Technically speaking, you're right about the Fall Factor 1 of course. However, all dynamic ropes have a limit of maximum stretch. If you take a fall while doing a regular climb, you might reach a velocity of 20 or 30 metres per second before the rope (and belayer) catches you. Now if you jump off El Cap, it would be quite feasible (not to mention crazy) to reach terminal velocity of 100m/s. Climbing ropes are designed to stretch "normally" up to about 8 or 10%, so despite having a massive long rope with what appears to be a lot of stretch distance - I'd imagine the resulting impact force on the anchor, rope, and body must be hideous.
This could be the reason that rope manufacturers generally don't produce climbing ropes longer than about 50 metres.
You are right you would reach terminal velocity (pretty sure you reach this in 80ft so anything above this doesnt make any difference) but your still only taking a fall factor 1 so it doesnt really matter how long it is! You'd apply pretty much the same impact on yourself dropping 6m on a FF1 as you would falling 60m on a FF1 (being that you only have 0.6m stretch to take the load as apposed to 6m in the long fall). As you can check from the below website from petzl. Just put in anchor 3 at half your fall distance and you will see it doesn't really make any difference if you times those numbers by ten!
http://en.petzl.com/petzl/ProConseils?Langue=en&Conseil=56
Also rope manufacturers make 60m and 75m ropes in europe and you can happilly buy 250m on a drum if you wanted to! Imagine that a 250m fall