LOL - what was I thinking!!!

I fully agree, you are selecting if for the right reasons - the very ones that appeal to me and I don't even have to carry the rope very far, but I do have to pull it up in trees and that light weight does make a difference. You can even tie a throw bag to the end of it and use the rope as your 'throwline' for the shorter pitches.

That is so interesting that you mention the Frog due to the balanced body effort - I looked at all the climbing systems I knew of, evaluating each for overall body effort and especially symetricality. The Frog sit-stand was my pick.

I believe you've got this 9mm thing well thought out. I use an ATC below my Grigri because it orients the tail of the rope so I can pull down on it for extra friction instead of upwards like you'd have to on a Freino. But if you don't want to use the ATC, mine is the single rope ATC, the Freino is the right biner for the extra braking.

My ATC has a high friction side and a lower friction side. Since it is designed for rappeling SRT, the single rope ATC can double as a stand alone descending device for SRT. Of course you'd want to test it low and slow. I'd have to use a autoblock below it to feel comfortable though - that'd also let you stop and auto lock off if you wanted to.

LOL - I'm pretty flexible on color of gear - I'd be happy with most any shade of dark, matt black.

My 9mm EzBend was delivered last night. I couldn't wait to try it out today.
I went up on a frog to 55-60' in a multi leader Red Oak, then switched to DRt to get into a different leader. and cruise to the top. I have so much more room in my bag, and pulling this stuff up, and down for a cinch, is just that. I later tried this rope with my no bridge blakes setup, and a 4/2 hitch. It worked "pretty well", but I think I will stick to the 5/3 with this rope, since I had to tend the hitch quite a bit on the 4/2.
5/3 is rock solid.

Thanks for turning me on to this Ron.

Sounds good! That is a totally cooool, nice lookin' rope!!!! The 5/3 worked great for me as well. Love the bridgeless setup - gonna have to give it a try!

I take it you have the PMI girth hitched to the biner???

Yup that is a girth, here is a better view of the system (in case you missed it)

http://www.treeclimbercoalition.org/php ... bf15043b28

Thanks!

BTW, did you notice an unusual amount of bounce on SRT? I don't; it seems about the same to me as my much bigger Lava (Tachyon) rope.

Funny you mention that Ron, I climbed last weekend on a friend's Eidelweiss 9mm static, and experienced a crazy amount of bounce. I admit to thinking - "Did Ron steer me wrong on this 9mm madness?

The motion of a Frog sit stand can generate a lot of bounce, and that was the first thing I was testing when I clipped into the system, and started to climb on the PMI EzBend

This rope is not cable like by any means, but it is far from bouncy. I would say I have less bounce on this 9mm than I did climbing on bandit/blaze, and WAY less than the Eidelweiss 9mm static.

LOL!!! Never doubt 'the Ron'.


A frog sit-stand can certainly test the bounce in a rope! Nicely summarized, I would add!

.

Tachyon is very bouncy for SRT, I would never recommend it as a primary SRT rope. It's an excellent DRT rope and like Fly and other 11mm tree ropes is fine for SRT when you want the option.
-Andrew

When you're SRTing on a 9mm bounce is a good thing. It can be psychologically challenging for some climbers. I did an 80 ft. or so SRT ascent on a 9mm ground anchored static (don't know what the manufacturer was). It worked, bouncy as hell, climber after me went up about 30 ft. and said "no thanks", went back down. Subjective experience on rope is important, if you don't feel comfortable on it the specs don't matter.
-Andrew

When I did an 80' ground anchor on PMI 9mm, I had some bounce, but I wouldn't call it bouncey. No where near excessive or even distracting to me. In fact, here's the video of the climb:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFOApeKzGAw

I'm not sure what the statute of limitations might be for old posts, but I wanted to bring back this old discussion since I recently purchased 100 feet of 9 mm PMI EZ Bend. I justified it's purchase as a quick emergency rappel line when doing construction / maintenance work on our school's ropes course. I have it doubled over a carabiner, threaded through a two hole ATC with an auto block at the ready, then daisy-chained in a stuff bag at my side. I've been able to bail-out of a tree at 50' (the highest point on our course) and reach ground in about 15 seconds from start to finish. It leaves the carabiner up the tree, but I've been known to leave carabiners at height so I have a ready excuse on a beautiful day to "rescue some gear." (If my principal ever reads this I'm toast!)

Anyway, I decided to follow Ron's lead and put the EZ Bend through some tree-climbing paces. I wasn't sure how well it'd work since I weigh in at 215 when fully geared up. Every configuration I tried, though, worked beautifully. I started DdRT with a B53 and a pantin, then with a 8mm beeline splittail tied in a Knut, finally with a RADS setup on SRT with an ATC for a belay coming off the Grigri 1. The B53 took some adjusting to dial in the correct tightness of the wraps, but after about 3 low and slow efforts, the knot functioned as well as if I was climbing on my Safety Blue. I never got above 20' because I wanted to try as many different configurations as possible, but I came away feeling very confident in the rope's ability to handle the different set-ups.

The only down side I came across was when I was done trying out the splittail configurations. I had tied the down rope directly to the delta on my New Tribe harness with a scaffold knot and almost needed my fid to get the knot untied. In the future I'll use a carabiner to connect.

One question lingers in my mind, though. The rope came directly to me from PMI with their stat sheet. The 9 mm EZ Bend has a label on it that identifies it as an "escape" rope, which the instructions caution the user that it is meant for a single use only. I'll probably call the folks at PMI to ask about this, but I'd be curious to get other folks' reactions (especially you, Ron.)

'Single use' generally means one person. IOW, not recommended for a two person loading as in rescue.

Cavers use this rope and I find it hard to believe that PMI developed 9mm rope for escape rope only. After all, some rock climbers use 8mm rope.

Bruce Smith has done long rappels on PMI 7mm Tuff Cord. I did some climbing on it, DdRT as I recall, and it was like climbing on bungie cord.

Ron, thanks for putting that nagging doubt to rest. I have a goal this summer of exploring the Zoar Valley http://www.zoarvalley.org/home.htmlwhich is about an hour south of Buffalo. Feeling competent and confident on a light rope will make hiking into some of the old growth stands more doable.

I climb on PMI 9mm EzBend a LOT! Primarily SRT, but as you and I both saw it's good for DdRT too, although it may take a little tweaking to get it where you want it.

And yeah, relax, if you're doing something that would break a 4700 lb rope, you got more worries than the rope. The big thing to keep in mind is it is faster on rappel than larger more supple ropes, but is quite controllable. It doesn't stop quite as fast when you release the handle, so either give yourself a little extra stopping space, or even better, don't build up a lot of speed to start with. Grigris heat up pretty good if you go too fast any way.

The 9mm is great for exactly what your planning. I think it only weighs 3.5 lbs/100ft. That does make a difference.

Ron,

what method of SRT ascent are you using with 9mm ezbend?

I do use PMI 9mm EZbend for my lanyards and I'm loving it. Seems to be a lot tougher then it looks

Have you tried your double hitch (soft uni) system on this rope?