44 year old cave anchor break tested - Topless Dome Part 3 of 3

Last year, I climbed Topless Dome in the Tumbling Rock Caving System, which is a 400-foot dome under the earth with a waterfall going down the middle of it. And Rachel Saker has been working on this project for a while. I got to join her. We climbed to the top, and I got to go up there where no one's been in over 40 years. And we found the original anchor. And in this episode, we are break-testing that anchor, the quick link, the pulley, and everything we found up there, plus other quick links that were found in the other tag, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, area in other caves. They look super rusty, super gross, and we're gonna find out how strong they are in this episode. Now, I imagine the stuff was stronger when they used it, but even though there's no UV light in a cave, you still have age and also a lot of mud, and that dirt can grind up into the fibers and weaken it. Age alone on nylon products like the webbing is enough to make it break lower. And so we are gonna find out in this episode how strong this stuff really is. Let's break the first item. It's so uncomfortable. Here it goes, ah! This webbing is the webbing at the top of topless. This was the knot we pulled out so I could get this in the web blocks. And this is flowstone. This is real rock. All the flowstone fell off and it broke in the back of the web block. So it'd be back here, melts to this. So this is the webbing from topless, and this is clean without flowstone. 14.41, this is a loop, and this has been here for a very long time. We're gonna see if this, how much damage this creates. Usually breaks here anyways. So we're gonna move this piece off to the side and let the actual carabiner hold it. Interesting, it did not break here. It broke in the knot. It always breaks at the knot. That sharp bend radius is worse than whatever the crap is on here. That is super low for a loop. That broke there. Very interesting. I wondered where it would break. This does not turn anymore, obviously. Did not turn before this break test either. These are the other components. It's actually stronger than the webbing. That's ironic. There's no opening that quick, Link. This thing was strong. I could tell the slack set machine was struggling. You know, that looks really bad, but there's still quite a bit of metal in there. That's a bummer. Interesting how it kind of went up and slowed down, and that was the hydraulic. Now when you're repelling, you're probably not putting more than two kilonewtons on it, even if you're repelling in a jerky fashion, but I still wouldn't trust this stuff because it does look pretty gnarly. Sometimes you end up having to. Sometimes you can add more anchor material, but it's nice to know that even some janky looking material is not necessarily going to kill you, even though not all janky material may break the same. Rachel sent me some other quick links from other areas in the Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia caving systems, and they do look pretty rusty. They're seized shut, so I can't open the quick links, obviously, and one even has a groove in it. And something cool is that Cave Exploration Society owns and operates extremegear.org. They support me with 10% of what you buy, and the rest of the proceeds goes and supports Cave Exploration, not the project we run specifically, but stuff like that around the world. So if you want to support that and this channel, please buy stuff from extremegear.org. You can also get some swag from hownottoswag.com. Dang, that's strong. This thing had a groove in it. This one survived? What? That had a huge groove in it. This quick link could not be opened to take the hanger off after the hanger was unscrewed from the wall. There is some serious corrosion happening. Nothing is easy. This is bigger than this in diameter, and it's a million, if I'm not mistaken, and that's pretty good quality. This is insane. It doesn't even look that deformed. This is the strongest shackle for the size that I could get, and I didn't have another one. I suppose I do have another one, but I thought this would be plenty, and it's not. This is literally twice as strong as this hanger if it was brand new. Why, what are you hitting? How are you not bent? Why are you over here? How did you get over here? What broke? Where's the stuff that was connected to that? Why are you still connected together? How are you guys not bent? Well, at least it's a different shape. I still don't know what happened here. Where is this soft shackle? Ah, shit. These things are over 60 kilonewtons, and I already know it's stronger than that. Damn, I can't believe they all were holding. Oh, screw this. This is, I'm done with this. That's plenty strong for anything you're gonna use.