How to organise a mountaineering club's gear store

The gear store is treated as a space problem. It is really a conservation problem: where and how you store equipment determines part of its service life, and almost nobody takes that into account when putting up the shelving.

The four conditions that matter

Light. Ultraviolet radiation degrades nylon and polyester. A store room with a south-facing window and ropes hanging in view is ageing gear for free. Keep textile in a closed cupboard, in opaque bags or on shelving with no direct exposure.

Moisture. Textile must be stored dry. Putting a damp rope in a closed bag is the recipe for finding it mouldy. And a permanently damp basement affects metal too.

Temperature. Avoid extremes and, above all, direct heat sources: radiators, boilers, pipes. You do not need climate control; it is enough that the place is not an oven in August.

Chemicals. This is the critical one. Textile gear cannot share space with cleaning products, fuels, batteries or solvents. Acids degrade nylon without leaving a visible sign, and a badly sealed container on the same shelf can ruin a rope without anyone ever finding out.

If the club store is also the cupboard where the bleach and the generator petrol live, that is the first problem to solve, before any shelving.

Zones, not piles

Four physically separate, signposted zones:

Available. Gear in service, sorted by type. You should see at a glance what is there and what is missing.

Under inspection. Anything pending inspection or under observation. Kept separate so nobody picks it up by mistake.

On loan. It takes up no space, but it should take up a visible slot: a board or panel showing what is out. It helps spot returns that never arrive.

Retired. The most important zone and the one that almost never exists.

About retired gear

The club classic: a rope is retired, left "set aside in a corner" until somebody decides what to do with it, and six months later someone takes it on a trip because it was there, it looked fine and nobody said anything.

Two rules:

Disable before storing. A retired rope gets cut into sections. A retired harness has its webbing cut. This is not drama: it is the only reliable way to stop it circulating again. Disabled gear can still serve for knot practice or training, so the gesture does not feel like waste.

Signposted, separate zone. Even when disabled, it should not share shelving with gear in service.

Details that extend service life

• No permanent knots in stored ropes. A knot left tied compresses the fibres always at the same point.
• No weight on top of stored textile.
• Breathable bags, not sealed plastic, unless it is completely dry.
• Separate by section if the club has several: keeping canyoning gear apart from climbing gear avoids confusion about intended use.
• Wash what comes back dirty with water and, if needed, neutral soap. Sand and dust inside the sheath is internal abrasion every time the rope runs.

Make the store and the record agree

A tidy store with an out-of-date inventory is still a useless store: you know where everything is except whether you can use it.

The location field in the record must match the real zones, and change when gear changes zone. That is what turns "it's somewhere" into "shelf 3, available, inspected in March".

If you do not have that record yet, here is where to start.