Mammut Transformer 9.8 Rope
- August 2014
- Climb
When I went to visit the Mammut headquarters in Switzerland in July, the rope making machines were making these beautiful white and multi-flecked ropes. I’d never seen a sheath pattern like that before, and was really delighted to be offered one to use for the trip, a Transformer 60 meter. The color reminded me of yarn that you’d make a nice hat out of. I climbed on this 9.8 rope for the next 5 weeks around Europe, and really liked the hand (a mix of soft yet firm) and the weight and the superdry coating. I hadn’t used this rope before, and was curious as to how I’d missed it: it turns out it’s even cooler than I thought…
Apparently when they dye the nylon to make climbing ropes, there is a long section that switches between two colors when it’s time to stop dying one color and start dying another one to change to a new color. Normally this section is wasted because it’s not a single color and would mess up the typical rope design. Nobody likes wasting things, and often there’s a great solution to that. Mammut decided to start making one-of-a-kind ropes by using these split-color sections, and the result is this very cool-looking multi-colored rope, with no 2 batches the same. So there are many ropes out there that look just like mine, but there are also batches of ropes that are very different colors, which I think is pretty fun. One of my new favorite ropes for sure 🙂
