This would BREAK your back

Oh my god! It's quite fitting to do cow tails while it smells this bad of cow manure out here. What is a cow's tail, John? Cow's tails are used for clipping into hangers, redirects, and for attaching your hand ascenders while caving. Why do cavers use cow tails more often than I've seen in other sports? Just the nature of passing rebellies and how we don't actually climb the rock, we climb the rope. Petzl makes this belial like a cow's tail specifically for caving and this is a completely static line, which to me makes no sense whatsoever. We traditionally use a dynamic rope but I thought it would be really interesting to see what happens if you have a static rope as well. We have two different lengths as well. One's a short cow's tail length and one's a long cow's tail length. They're set to the same lengths as this. Why do you have a short and a long? Short is for clipping into rebellies and your long cow's tail is for your hand ascender. Oh because your crawl's down here and then your hand ascender's here. Exactly. Cool. I have for the drop tower, just for comparison, is an adjustable personal anchor. You guys don't need that in caving. Your systems are always the same. For the most part, your cow's tail should be tailored to your own length. Another reason why that speleoglyca is such a bad idea is there's no adjustability for it because my stride is much different than somebody else's. So it's official. I'll never get sponsored by Petzl. It is. It's pretty funny. We still got some break tests coming out from the other lab but this is pretty interesting and we dropped the stuff on the drop tower and we had the 10,000 hertz load cell on there, which is going to pick up the peak for especially for the static stuff, and we dropped 300 pounds, which is more than we normally do. And these are some pretty aggressive falls because they're fall factor twos, roughly, where we're falling twice as far as the rope we have in the system. It's kind of the equivalent of standing near a cliff edge, clipping into a bolt near your feet, and then falling off of it. Now typically you have some sort of a swing and you whack into the rock or something but we're trying to make this worst case scenario. Now the first test we did was the short cow tail, then had a fresh knot. For reference, my back, 20 years ago, would break around seven kilonewtons. Now it breaks about 10 minutes in any position I lay in in bed at night. Moral of the story is that would hurt if not break you, assuming you're a 300 pound steel weight, which doesn't absorb much at all. Now for the second test, the knots are rock hard and the nylon rope is not ever going to absorb immediately after the first test. Quite the same. And we ended up getting a lot higher, 10.43 kilonewtons. That would be really bad. Look at the diameter difference between a non-loaded dynamic rope and this one here that's loaded. Almost looks twice as fat. Now for cow shits and giggles, we did it a third time with fresh knots, short cow tail, and we got 6.59. This loaded cow tail is more than twice as long now, and that's mostly from the knots. As you can see, this is what it looked like before, and this is what it looks like now. Now let's find out what the long cow tail does. Oh! So the next test was the longer dynamic cow tail, and we got a higher force at 9.44. Now the question I've always wondered is, is it the same if I do a fall 2, which is straight up, and I fall? So if I have a couple metric inches here of rope and I fall twice that, that's falling twice as far as the rope I have in the system. But if I extend it up and I do the same fall factor 2 with more rope in the system, even though I fell further, more acceleration, but more material to absorb it, should they, could they be about the same? That is an entire episode I have not fully got a conclusion on, but so far the data I have on that video says yes. However, this was 9-ish, and we were getting 6-ish on the short one. The reason I don't think I'm getting the same results here is on the short samples, it kind of looks like this, and it's swinging into the beam. It's kind of annoying, but I don't think the beam is affecting it as much as the fact it's swinging, versus the longer sample has more of a belly, and it can drop straight down. Can't put the weight directly above the load cell, or it would hit it. So I think that's the difference we're getting between the long and the short dynamic tails. Now when we dropped the long one again with rock hard knots, we got 12.49. That would send your balls into your throat. I mean, this did send my balls into my throat, and I wasn't even attached to it. That's really bad, and this is crazy, because it's with a dynamic rope. A lot of people are trying to use dynamic ropes as personal anchors, because they're supposed to absorb stuff. I think the moral of the story so far is try not to factor too far. So you can see this unweighted cow tail. That used to be the same length, and it's about twice as long now. We dropped that sample a third time, and we actually broke the rope. Yes! We broke it! Dynamic ropes such as this typically break around 13 or 14 kilonewtons, so when we put it in the slow pull machine, we got 13.18, and so that kind of lines up with getting 12.87 when it broke. Some more bonus material that we're learning. Ropes kind of break the same whether or not you drop test them versus slow pull them, and for more cow shits and giggles, we dropped a fresh long one and got 9.54, and you can see the bounce in the graph. In our email newsletter, Angie Redrick is letting us give away a line scale 3. All you have to do is sign up. You click the I want one, because not everybody needs a line scale 3, and I want to make sure you're stoked if you get it, and less than a thousand people have actually entered to win at this point, so you have a good chance of winning. We just put out a video where we broke tested it at 146 kilonewtons, which is crazy. We picked the winner of that at the end of July, and then the next prize will be two Rocky Talkies. Half the stuff I'm working on is written content, and emails are the best way to let you know when I've got new stuff out. Now before we get to the static, we dropped this with 200 pounds on the long dynamic cow tail, which is a lot lower than the 9 we were getting with just the 100 pound difference in the dummy. Then with the same 200 pounds, we tested an extra long one, and it got 8.3, which is higher than I thought it was going to get. I'd love to start the conversation in the comments section on whether or not fall factors are the determining factor on how much force you get, because I can fall 200 meters and generate the same amount of force as a 10 meter fall, depending on how much rope I have in the system. That's what's going to be so interesting, is does a truly static rope make any difference at such a short length? Now let's talk about a semi-static rope, which is going to be more force, but it's still made out of nylon, and it stretches 10% as opposed to 30% when you're putting these kinds of loads on it. The short cow tail with the rush knot was 10.21, which is not quite double as a dynamic rope, but holy cow, get it? That's a cow tail. Those are cows. That knot is just never coming undone. Look at this short cow tail. Just the knots absorbing is probably twice as long. That's crazy. Yeah, at least twice as long. Then with the knots rock hard, it was 17.04 kilonewtons. That would kill you. Again, for cow shits and giggles, we tested the short semi-static with fresh knots and we got 8.92, which is slightly lower because we didn't pull it up nearly as high, and you can see how much that can change things. Then the long semi-static cow tail got 12.61 with fresh knots in it. That felt way more static. But then when we dropped it again with rock hard knots, I thought the rope broke, but it didn't. Oh, that's not good. No, I should not be here. Gate broke. This did not break. It's crazy to me how many steel carabiners I have broken in the drop tower from cross-loading. I'm actually going to be filming an episode tomorrow, tomorrow from the day I film this, about cross-loading, and we're going to cross-load a whole bunch of stuff, so make sure you subscribe so you can see that. But you can see a real-life example here of what happens when a carabiner, even a steel one, doesn't pull along the spine, which is where the strength is. So I slow-pulled this 10.0 semi-static rope and got 18.98, and I've done it a whole bunch on this channel. I'll get anywhere from 17.5 all the way up to 19, which is interesting because that's pretty much where the carabiner broke and cross-loaded. So if it didn't do that to the carabiner, I wonder if it would have just broke the rope. You have to hold it and go, wow, that's hot. Actually, it is. Feel it. Wow, it actually is hot. Speaking of breaking rope, we thought we would try a berry static rope. This is one of the most static ropes I currently have, and it's made out of 100% polyester, and it's got less than 1% stretch, which has a lot of benefits, but not necessarily for a cow's tail. Now, we dropped this thing three times, and all three times it broke the rope, even with fresh knots, which is okay because if you're getting 13 kilonewtons on your body, you may not even feel you hitting the ground. Three for three. Now, when we slow pulled the super static rope, it broke at 13.31, which is very typical for that rope I've broken a bunch, which is just interesting that these ropes are breaking pretty much the same. Knots have kind of a big range, but they're breaking pretty much the same in the drop tower as the slope. Now, we're finally breaking John's Petzl so and sling, and it kind of didn't hit as much of force because it ripped the thing apart. Oh my god. Is that a shock absorber feature? A shock absorber is a sling that is sewn in such a way that it rips the stitching at, let's say, four kilonewtons before you get really damaged, and this kind of acted like that, except 12.38 before it unzips is still screw you up, and when we dropped it again to test the long one, which it's all one unit now, it did break at 17.38 kilonewtons. Is that survivable? No. That is what broke. It can give you a false sense of security if you're clipped into something that you're attached and that you're not going to risk falling off of whatever you're on, but if what you're clipping to is near your feet, take it serious. These forces are pretty high and I don't think you're going to want those on your body. I actually, this is my, used to be, my fifi hook. When I was big walling back in the day, I would leave my personal anchor attached to everything until I could no longer reach it. Believe me, falling on a rope is softer, and I basically more or less took a fall factor 2 onto my fifi hook and straightened this thing out. If it didn't straighten out, my back would probably hurt more than it already does, so make sure you're not taking fall factor anythings on personal anchors, but you're more or less using them as positioning tools, and if you are going to fall, ideally you're doing it on a rope, and ideally a lot of it, so that way it's soft. So you said I keep putting the S in the wrong spot. One cow has one tail, so it's a cow's tail, C-O-W apostrophe S tail, or if you have two cow's tails, it's C-O-W-S apostrophe T-A-I-L-S, because one cow can only have one tail, so you need two cows for two cow's tails, before everybody comments. You can still comment if you want. You wouldn't happen to know where people could buy gear, could you? I've heard you can get it from ExtremeGear.org. He runs it, and if you buy some gear from there, 10% supports snapping, and the rest supports Cave Exploration Society and his cave projects. Don't climb above your anchor, and you'll probably be good enough. I think it's super good enough. Oh, you might be. Can people buy cow's tails? How do they buy dynamic rope cow tails? I sell rope by the foot specifically for cow's tails. 10 feet is more than enough. To do short and long. To do a short and long. I have a special rope from Edelrid that has a Technora fiber woven into it, so it's extra abrasion resistant. Is it still dynamic? It is. Yeah, it's still dynamic. It's rated for single, double, and half rope usage, so it's perfect for your cow's tail. Well, it's probably perfect for your cow's tails. Don't come sue me if you do it wrong. What should they do? Always inspect your cow's tails. Make sure... I was gonna say subscribe. Oh, subscribe, and then inspect your cow's tails. See you later, guys. Oh, man. This is just the perfect descent. Well, I should probably clip this off.