Impact forces during Lead Climbing Falls – a bonus episode of Belaying Masterclass Understand what role rope length, stretch and friction plays in climbing falls and you will be an awesome belayer 😉

And I intentionally skipped talking about fall factors… they almost mean nothing in lead climbing scenarios.
Fall factor = fall distance / rope length… But it misses the factor of how the climber was stopped (hard catch vs soft)
And you can’t compare fall factors of lab experiments dropping weights vs real life, because climbers body will absorb 70% of the impact compared to rigid weight drop https://www.petzl.com/BE/en/Sport/Fal…
And please don’t tell anyone that 1kN is EQUAL to 100kg because not only it’s approximation it also depends on the context 😉

0:00 Intro
0:25 What is Force
1:59 Gear rating
5:54 Soft gear breaking at low kN
7:48 Dynamic Falls
10:54 Real life fall forces
11:22 Big whipper vs Small fall
17:07 Friction