Bluewater Icon 9.1mm Dynamic Climbing Rope – Double Dry Review

The all new Icon single rope is designed to be a great wearing skinny rope. The problem with most skinny ropes is overall performance is diluted when chasing a minimum diameter and weight. They really are not designed with the user’s best interest – safety and longevity in mind. The Icon has a 35% sheath mass with a tight braid so the rope does not become floppy and has less drag which means less abrasion from running across rock. Try an Icon as your next skinny rope. BlueWater believes you’ll be amazed at this new design when compared to other “skinny” ropes. Double-Dry Finish. BlueWater’s Double-Dry finish is a process that binds all the rope fibers in the core as well as the sheath with a finish that not only repels water but increases the rope’s resistance to abrasion. The key issue about BlueWater’s Double Dry treatment process is that it WORKS!. The finish effectively increases the amount of time it takes for the rope to absorb water. In a one-hour laboratory submersion test Double-Dry allowed only 10% moisture absorption, compared to other “dry” finishes that allowed over 40%.Ropes become considerably heavier and weaker when they get wet; and, in cold weather, freezing can make them completely unmanageable. In actual use a rope gets tied and untied, flexed, stretched, rappelled on and piled up on the ground. All of this handling can work moisture into the open spaces between the fibers of a rope. This is why “dry” ropes sometimes still get wet in the field. The more effective a rope’s waterproof treatment is, the longer it will resist absorption of water. As a result, the Double-Dry rope will be less likely to get wet initially and will dry out faster than ropes with inferior water repellent treatments..