Since I started climbing, I've heard a lot about lifetimes of ropes and other climbing gear. "Retire all slings after 3-5 years." "Ropes every 5 years." "Don't use booty gear from the crags." I personally think that last one was just the bastards trying to snag my booty gear.

But of course some friends are still climbing with 15 year old ropes ("only toprope") and using booty biners from all over. It is cool to see a Black Diamond site devoted to experiments to determine the effect that age, sun, and other factors have on gear.

• Spectra vs. nylon slings and how it wears:

  "A guy here at work had two quickdraws sitting in the back of his open pickup truck for over 6 years. They have seen sun, snow, rain, heat, cold, etc, etc.. Fortunately for me, one was spectra, one was nylon. Ah ha....

  Remember, when new, the rating for a sling is 22kN. Also remember that typical falls in the field are in the 2kN (sporto soft catch) to 5kN (harsh, kidney-wrenching) range.

  The nylon sling (top) broke at 11.6kN
  The Spectra sling broke at 5.3kN"

• Climbing rope that broke at a gym in California:

  "Luckily no one was hurt. I was asked to look into the incident—I inspected the rope, went to the gym and inspected the route and all other equipment and even sent the rope out to labs for chemical analysis. The full blown 11-page .pdf report.

See the site