I bought a new Mammut 60m rope early this summer. I've used it for sport routes, trad climbs and toproping. It keeps kinking up and snarling. I've had many ropes over the years and never had this problem before. Any suggestions?
I recently went through the same ordeal, only it was a new rope that had not been used much. The problem occurs when we don't uncoil it correctly when it is new and the sheath is still twisted. So here are the steps that I took to get the kinks out:
1. Inspect the rope inch by inch looking for twist in the sheath, when you spot one twist it back. It may take several attempts to get this done.
2. Tie the rope to something, tie the other end to a swivel. Stretch it out full length and pull and pull and pull. I just used my body weight, not anything mechanical.
Another alternative to this is to tie about 5 pounds of weight on one end and then free hang the rope. I was hard pressed to find anything 60m high that would allow the rope to free hang.
3. Hang a biner someplace. Have someone put some gloves on and provide light drag. Then pull the rope through biner while someone grasps the rope on the other side of the biner and lets it slide through their hands. Does not have to be a lot of resistance. Back and forth until you are really tired. I started at 9am and quit at 1pm.
This helped a lot, my rope was a regular coiling snake. Even after all this it would still coil occasionally. It took about a dozen more climbs on it before it finally started to behave.
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