Dry Treatments: All You Need to Know

Double Cap

Read Time - 5 minutes

April 2020

What even is a dry treatment and who needs it?

‘Dry treatment’ refers to the step in a rope’s manufacturing process where core and sheath strands are treated with a hydrophobic coating. The strands are then subject to heat and woven into a climbing rope. This creates a long lasting, water repellent rope.

A dry treated rope, should bead up when it comes into contact with water, preventing the rope from saturating or freezing. Wet or frozen ropes cause handling hassles, and can be out right dangerous.

The conventional answer is, that only those climbers venturing into wintery or alpine terrain need a dry treated rope. But, in fact, any climber can benefit from a dry treated rope, and here’s why.

Since 2014, the term ‘Dry treated’ has be controlled by the UIAA, in the same way that ratings on hard goods like carabiners and cams are.

In order to meet the UIAA’s standards for water repellency, a rope must be, lightly abraded (to simulate moderate use), submerged in water for 15 minutes, and absorb less than 5% of the water sample in this time. For comparison, standard non-dry-treated ropes absorb anywhere between 40%-60% of this sample water.

Many manafacturers had in-house standards prior to this test, however often these ropes didn’t pass the UIAA standard. In most cases this was due to the hydropohic dry treating chemical only being applied to the sheath strands, rather than both sheath and core. As such, the manufacturers continued to sell these ropes without the UIAA certification, but under their own label. Beal for example, sell this treatment under the confusing ‘Dry Cover’ label, and Mammut term it ‘Protect’.

These lesser pretender ‘dry treatments’ do some work, usually absorbing 30%-40% of the sample water in the same test. But, can still saturate with water and will freeze eventually. However, as a by-product, the hydrophobic coating also reduces the surface friction of the sheath fibers. This adds a degree of abrasion resistance to your rope. Mammut testing revealed significantly reduced abrasion compared to an untreated rope. As well as keeping out water, the dry treatment works to keep dirt and dust out. All of these benefits combine to increase the life span of your rope. As such, even for rock climbing, buying a dry sheath coated rope seems a wise investment.

For anyone undertaking ice/winter climbing, alpinism or adventure climbing, a full dry treated rope is no-brainer. And, since an abraded or dirty dry treated rope works less effectively to repel water, the greater abrasion resistance, and dirt/dust repellency should not be passed up.

Even then, not all UIAA certified dry treatments are created equal. At the time of writing, Beal’s ‘Golden Dry’ is the best on the market, in tests and in practice, passing the UIAA benchmark by 40%. Twinned with a stellar line up of ropes, and its a hard combination to beat. This is a real win, as UIAA certified dry ropes only meeting the 5% threshold, will still wet out in a matter of hours in particularly damp conditions.

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