Single vs Half vs Twin Ropes | Which One to Choose?

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Climbing ropes are pretty darn expensive, at least the better ones are. So, a lot of climbers just get themselves a workhorse rope that they use for almost all of their climbs. That’s a completely reasonable approach given the constraints we all face with our money.

But at some point we have to make that purchase. We have to decide what that rope choice is going to be. Well, last week we did a video on how the published metrics we have for climbing ropes relate to the risks we face on a climb (not just what the metrics mean, but how those metrics translate into mitigating some types of risks while exacerbating other types). This video, then gets into a decision making process that piggybacks on interpreting those metrics. It’s a primer on how I make a choice of rope based on the climbing dynamics of a climb I am facing.

“Isn’t that missing your own point, though, Jason?” Not everyone can have multiple ropes to choose from.

Well, what type of climbing and what types of risks do we face most frequently? That’s the rope, then, for us: the one that fits our most typcial climbs.

We can’t really engage in that type of assessment if we don’t confront the tradeoffs we face when selecting a rope, whether that selection be from our gear closet to our pack or from the local store to our gear closet. Either way we are making a selection, and either way we ought (I think, anyway) make that choice based on a risk assessment, not a feature assessment. Yes, features are important, but they are important because they change risk profiles. No one feature is “superior” to another, inherently. Rather a feature set might work better at reducing the kinds of risks we regularly face (or not, as the case may be).

If we climb a lot of sharp limestone, we probably should think more about abrasion resistance. If we climb ice, we need to care a lot about water absorption. If we like exploratory climbing, maybe a half rope can help us reduce rope drag.

Maybe other features, like super light weight, don’t matter to use because we crag more than anything and so the weight to carry is less important and the (often) additional stretch from a skinny rope may actually be a detriment.

Yes, not every feature is beneficial on it’s face. A feature only has value in the context of how we will use it.