Beal Edlinger Review

Likes
This rope is inexpensive and light for its diameter. The Maxim Equinox, which is also a 10.2, weighs 66 g/m, while the Beal Edlinger II weighs 65 g/m, so it is nice to have this thicker rope that is a little more lightweight.

This rope comes with a 60 or 70m option and also has a dry option, so you can pick the features that best suit your needs. My rope for this review was bright purple, which I liked. It was more unique than most of the other rope colors and was fun. Beal in general has fun color options for their ropes.

Dislikes
When I first opened this rope, the most gigantic rope knot I've ever seen exploded out of the package. Granted, this could have been user error, but it took me and my partner a good while to get the rope flaked into submission. Every new rope is pretty kinky for the first day or two until it stretches and smoothes out, but this rope stayed kinked up for the entire time I owned it. I even purposely dangled it and rappelled off of it multiple times hoping to straighten it out a bit, with no luck. My general thoughts of using this rope were frustration dealing with it.

This rope also seemed to begin to ovalize right away. This is usually a feature I look for when I am about to retire a rope, but this rope began to do it immediately, which I don't take to be a good sign. For all the use I have put on this rope, it still functions well, but I feel like this rope will need to be retired sooner than other ropes in this review.

Best Application
This rope is a good all-around climbing rope. At 10.2 it could be used for anything from jugging to multi-pitch climbs to cragging. If you only want to own one climbing rope, but like different aspects of climbing, this would be a good choice.

Personal Stories

I already mentioned that this rope was kinky beyond the normal new rope kink- and I have a perfect example of this rope behaving weirdly. I was sport climbing with my friend Nate in Pine Creek, CA. He led a climb first, and I was going to lead it as well, so I lowered him, he untied and pulled the rope through. The rope pulled through the anchors and a few of the draws at the top, and then got stuck in a quickdraw part-way down. We pulled and pulled and puzzled over how on earth it could be stuck, and eventually decided I would lead up on the other end of the rope until I reached the stuck end. Lo and behold, when I reached the stuck part I discovered there was a perfect overhand knot that had tied itself in the very tip of the rope that had snagged in the draw. Neither of us had ever seen this happen before, and I have decided to blame the kinkiness of the rope for causing the knot to tie itself.

Value
This rope is one of the least expensive ropes, which for the budget shopper is an enticing feature. However, I feel that this rope would not last as long as some of the other ropes which are only slightly more expensive. For an all-around rope I would be more likely to pick the Sterling Marathon-Pro or the Bluewater Eliminator.