ERCA Safety Commission - Safety Warning 2/2013 - Slings

Notification about a safety notice published by the Swiss Adventure Park Association.

The Swiss Adventure Park Association has published a notice reffering to the latest recalls for via ferrata sets. The notice is about further testings on other spare parts -especially slings- of via ferrata sets returned from professional users (e.g. ropes courses resp. mountain guides using the equipment each day). The most important fact is a considerably detected decrease in the tensile strength of such slings from via ferrata sets in permanent use. Furthermore it was notified that there was no resp. less documentation available about actual life time of the sets resp. the day of initial use.

The Swiss Adventure Park Association has published a summary with some helpful recommendations for the ropes course industry (only available in German language):
http://seilparks.ch/docs2//2013_01_Schlingen_Klettersteigset.pdf

In addition to that, we would like to remind our series of sling tests from 2009/ 2010 in which we came to nearly equivalent recommendations. Please follow the link below to read the summary and recommendations of our test results from 2009/ 2010:

• English Version: Laboratory Sling Test
• German Version: Labortests Bandschlingen