Posted: Thu Dec 18, 2008 9:54 pm
I have replaced a pretty good amount of mank in the red over the years, and to me, what you are saying is wrong. It is wrong to assume that grooves = equal unsafe. They might not be perfect, but they are more then enough to lower. But, if you promote fear mongering about grooves, then people might come upon a grooved anchor, flip out, and do something that is less safe (down climbing, traversing to another set of anchors) or just un-need (adding a locker to the shuts, etc).
What you are promoting is misplaced fear. I think alot of climbers have a heard time determining what is actually unsafe v. what is fine. Like lowering off a single 1/2" quicklink is totally safe, yet I find extra biners on those kind of anchors all the time. Or, I see people at the 3rd/4th/ even 5th bolts worried about which direction the gate is facing, when they are risking ground fall without even realizing it.
Even those tiny little #2 wires would hold as top anchors for lowering. And you could damn near floss with one, so give worn anchors the amount of concern they require, but not more.
What you are promoting is misplaced fear. I think alot of climbers have a heard time determining what is actually unsafe v. what is fine. Like lowering off a single 1/2" quicklink is totally safe, yet I find extra biners on those kind of anchors all the time. Or, I see people at the 3rd/4th/ even 5th bolts worried about which direction the gate is facing, when they are risking ground fall without even realizing it.
Even those tiny little #2 wires would hold as top anchors for lowering. And you could damn near floss with one, so give worn anchors the amount of concern they require, but not more.
absolutsugarsmurf wrote:I'm saying his testing was incomplete and because of that, his conclusion is innacurate. The shut he tested with grooves deformed under a larger load than the ungrooved shut, yes. But he failed to discuss the effects of the most important variable , the percentage of material removed from the groove. At some point, when you remove enough material, the grooved shut will deform before the ungrooved shut, despite the loading direction effect. At what point is this? 50% grooved, 75% grooved, 10% grooved? Since you obviously can't measure this while climbing and is also material and design specific, the only safe procaution is to replace grooved anchors. BD stating on their website that grooved anchors are necessarily stronger than non-grooved anchors could easily cause people to not critically evaulate the condition of worn anchors, and instead just remember "well bd said that grooved anchors are stronger than non-grooved". That to me is dangerous. Made more so by the fact that his conclusions are notated by a bullet and seperated from the body of the text so as to make them easy to pick out, while his testing qualifications are not.
PS Thanks for the reminder that climbing is dangerous. Very insightful. I guess we should never seek to improve the safety of our equipment, information, or techniques, because shit, climbing is dangerous.