None of these are great options, and I wouldn’t trust my life or even mild injury to any of them. Munter hitches are already more slippery than a belay device. No manufacturer produces a device which will work on a line that thin. Same with an ATC or tube style belay device. If you’re using a modern auto locking device like a Gri Gri? Forget it, the device won’t even touch the cord. If you’re using something like a rescue figure 8 as your rappel device, you might have enough friction to make this rappel safe. Okay, I’ll stop harping on “Paracord is weak” and look at this from some different angles. Parachute Cord Will Not Work Properly With Standard Rappel Equipment I’m almost sure you don’t want to rappel on 225 cord. While I’m not going to go into detail about how much each knot reduces the strength of your line, some knots have been measured to reduce the strength by a whopping 50%. For our parachute cord, that would leave us only around 400 pounds.
Parachute cord knotes full#
With 550 cord, however, you will quickly find yourself reducing the cords already unacceptably low strength into sure death area.Īs an example, the figure 8 follow through knot, a standard for tying into rope systems reduces the strength of its host rope to 75% of the full strength.
With a rated climbing or rappelling rope, this is not problem because the strength of the rope is much greater than the forces which will be applied to it, and losing even half of the rope’s strength to a knot is perfectly acceptable. There are many scenarios where you need to have a knot in your rappel line, and knots significantly weaken rope. The fact of the matter is that it is just far too easy to exceed the strength rating of the parachute cord. What if you have a little slack out while untangling your parachute cord rappel line on a ledge and you trip? Or the rock you’re standing on moves? This is well over the rating of the parachute cord, and is also a long way from the worst case scenario. Just slipping on a ledge and suddenly shock loading a rope can easily put 700 pounds (3 kN) of force into the line. It’s rated for 550 pounds, and I only weigh 170! That’s more than double. Parachute Cord is Simply Not Strong Enough to be Trusted With Your Life There are several compelling reasons you should not use parachute cord as your rappel line. Instead, get a proper rappelling or climbing rope.
Parachute cord, or 550 cord, is light, stretchy, and rated to hold 550 static pounds (2.4 kN).
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