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I think the uric acid in urine is bad for a rope... since it IS an acid

DKing wrote:How bout this one..........

How many of you would toss a rope after a cat pissed on it (maybe one time maybe many times)??

I'm still climbing on it so I'm affriad of your responses......

piss is bad for ropes. i've always heard that. throw it out it has acid in it. ropes aren't that expensive.

Urine isn't all that acidic. The range for people is a pH of 5-9 compared to hydrochloric acid and Drano at about 1 and 14 respectively. (pH is a log scale so each single change in number is equal to 10 times the strength difference.)

PMI and Mammut put out literature awhile ago stating that cat urine is the worst thing that can happen to your rope aside from cutting it to the core. Cat urine is waaaaaay worse then human urine and they say you should toss your rope if a cat took a piss on it. It's supposidy a lot worse then even walking all over your rope with crampons on. The worst part is that the integrity of the rope has been compromised, but you cannot see it.

Then it's okay for HoFo to pee on my rope but not my cat. Got it.

Years ago a climbing buddy and I took a spring break trip to Seneca, New River, and the Red. He had a loose tail-light in the trunk of his car and the rope had somehow gotten tangled up in the mess. After warming up on a few routes on the Gun Wall (aka the Perot Wall) at Summersville Lake we noticed that his rope had been severely melted in several places. In one spot we were actually able to break the rope. Fortunately the routes were short on that wall and we noticed it before attempting a longer route and we were on the good end of the rope.