The Skinny Rope Data Crunch

Ski ropes, skinny ropes, Rad lines, tag lines, whatever you want to call them, we are here to dive deep on ropes for technical ski touring. Ropes were among the first gear topics we dove deep on in episode 1 of the Gear Shed podcast, and we have continued to learn and evolve over the last few years, building experience with a variety of ropes, discovering new options, and diving even deeper/nerdier in last month’s Gear Shed podcast with Shawn Breaux from Glacier Black. 

Somewhat ironically, I’ve made it this far down the rope rabbit hole without ever owning the Kleenex of ski ropes, the Petzl Rad line. More and more, ski ropes are like climbing ropes—there are lots of options with different strengths and weaknesses. The “gold line” era of ski ropes is over; it’s time to assess our options. 

Last fall, we previewed the options in our quiver with some qualitative assessment of their pros and cons. Notably, we tracked down some new-to-market options from the likes of CE4Y, and later in the season, Glacier Black. Continuing this explosion of options, we now have a whole slew of options from HowNot2’s Arete brand, offering a variety of diameters and materials with their own strength testing to back them up. We haven’t gotten our hands on any of the HowNot2 cord yet, but I imagine the 5mm Armadillo cord would make for a great ski rope. 

We verified the weights per meter and diameter for all the ropes in question, and made an honest attempt to quantify rappelling friction to provide a somewhat well-rounded quantitative analysis of these ropes. The purpose here isn’t to declare a winner, but hopefully to paint a more data-driven picture of the market landscape. Some options certainly fare better than others.