It’s now March 2014, about a year and a half after I bought my first length of the Gleistein Geostatic 9mm rope.
The 31m length I bought was soaked at home and measured to 32m, no doubt down to Shaun at Hitch N Hike’s generous measuring style!
I labelled it up as a 30m and went about using it.
I re-measured it today and it came in just over 29m, a shrink of 3m since initial cutting, approx. 9%. So it seems, just like any other rope, once it’s cut you still need to factor in about 10% for shrinkage over the life of the rope. I’m still happy because there was no noticeable shrinkage after cutting and soaking when first purchased in Sept 2012.

I have a 21m length bought about a year ago that has just re-measured to 19m. This length has had a hard life already, it is my traveling rope on cave leading work and has been dragged through numerous Italian hitches whist being covered in grit and the particularly abrasive mud in Peak Cavern’s trade routes. It has done a good job at sawing through my alloy krabs but the rope itself is still in excellent condition. There is some light fluffing on the sheath comparable with some of my far less used ropes and the colour, like the 29m length, has faded into a more pastel orange. It still handles extremely well, clearly not as supple as when new but a massive improvement over the 2-3 yr old Mammut 9mm I have, which is more akin to wire cable now.

My cleaning regime for all my semi-static ropes is simple and it gets done after every trip. For clean trips it is just a spray with the hose or a dunk in clean water to remove particles from the surface. More often than not it gets a low power jet wash (controversial I know!). Never force dried, only hung in a spare room or over the bath.

I’ve got 3 lengths now, each bought about 6 months apart and will continue to purchase this rope as my current ones approach retirement.
In another year and a half, when this rope is no longer in service I’ll do a final post mortem report. I’d also like to send a few samples to be tested by the BCA and Bob Mehew to see what toll the hard life has taken on it.

Gleistein is still available at Hitch N Hike as cut lengths or entire reels: http://www.hitchnhike.co.uk/acatalog/gleistein-9mm-geostatic-ne.html

The initial blog post is here: http://www.peakinstruction.com/blog/first-look-at-gleistein-geostatic-ne-9mm-semi-static-rope/