This would have been sooner had Disney not robbed us of our own culture by purchasing whatever legislation they feel benefits them, regardless of the cost to the rest of us.
Sorry, I'm bitter, but it really is a fantastic book I wish more people could've read and expanded on sooner... Say, 50 years after Ashley died instead of 70.
Random comment: Securing the trace eight with a second knot is really not necessary, as it is a self tightening knot. Most climbers don't do it, my climbing safety book doesn't show it and all gyms I've been too, sans one in Vancouver WA for some reason, don't require it. Rough rule is two fists length for the tail and you're good.
Another comment mentioned this too, it's much easier to untie if tied in a specific way and if you do lead climbing they usually show you the technique. You can also do it with a Yosemite finish for a similar improvement.
If you clean a figure 8 really well, it's just as easy to untie after a whip as a bowline (okay, maybe not just as easy, but very close), and much much more universal for your partner to inspect.
The process I follow to ensure a clean knot every time:
1. Tie your figure 8, with the tail the same size every time (use your body as a ruler, testing a few lengths to get the perfect size)
2. Pass the tail up through your hard points so the knot is only a few inches from the bottom hard point.
3. Orient your knot so the tail is coming out of the bottom right side
4. This is the most important step! Instead of passing the tail through the inside of the knot when starting the followthrough, pass it in between the tail strand and the bottom right of the knot.
5. Follow through as normal. It should come out almost clean (eg no need to flip strands over each other)
6. For all 4 combos of top and bottom strand, yank them to make the knot very tight. The tighter and cleaner it is, the easier to untie after a whip.
7. If you do this all, the load strand will be on top, so no difficult flipped strands after a whip!
This is just my process, what's most important is doing something that works for you and that you can get right every time.
This is really regional. In some countries most people use the second knot, in others most don't. E.g. I've rarely seen it used in the US, but it's standard practice in much of europe.
Whichever you do, if you do it different to the majority view for the region you can often end up with some heavily-opinionated person coming up and telling you that you're doing it wrong so I mostly switch depending on where I am. It's easier than trying to explain that [whichever way] is fine and common practice elsewhere.
in the american northeast, backup knots on a figure 8 are relatively common in gyms and rare at the crag. (and when you do see them at the crag, they're a good gumby detector)
About 5-6 years ago the gyms became much more honest in their instruction for new climbers, and will now actually say the quiet part out loud, which is that a backup knot is really there to 1. ensure that new climbers leave enough of a tail on the figure 8 and 2. are a way to prevent that probably extremely conservative tail from whacking you in the balls when you take a whipper.
sport gyms absolutely do not like people who insist on tying in with a bowline.
Indeen! I've been taught that securing the trace eight could be dangerous when, in case of emergency, another rope is (supposedly) attached to the trace eight, but accidentally attached between the trace eight and the securing knot.
Don't tie a prussick that way. Do exactly what they say, but pull a loop so that the knot is not out on the load bearing part, but instead tucked by the main line.
Otherwise it'll snag and cut itself or catch your carabiner and cause all kinds of shock loads. (source is search and rescue training)
Ashley's is a great ref, but there's tricks to the trades so check a variety of sources.
There are alternatives to the Prussik such as the Klemheist which don't jam as badly.
I wouldn't use a ring bend - the double fisherman's is superior for tying rope or cord ends together to create a sling. And I definitely wouldn't use either a ring bend or a double fisherman's to link ropes for abseil. An overhand tied in both ropes (with a 50cm tail) -aka the EDK or European Death Knot is way superior, as the body of the knot sits to one side of the line of the tightened rope, so it tends not to catch in cracks.
Finally, extending slings by linking them over and under into a reef knot is stronger than a girth hitch.
And I'd also opt for a Kleimheist or Autoblock over the classic Prusik.
Not sure if I think this was a good selection of essential climbing knots and the presentation was odd. For instance, I'd present the Prusik in an abseiling context. The article mentions using a Prusik to ascend their rope when they've fallen off an overhang, and I have yet to see that. What I see routinely is someone using a Prusik of some sort as a backup when abseiling.
But don't go climbing outdoors if you don't have someone that is experienced to go along with you. Take a course or several. It is possible to learn on your own, but it is a high-risk activity to figure these things out as you go on your own. Accidents, even fatal ones, happen to people that know what they are doing.
Fair point re: the Klemheist although the Prussik serves well enough.
For my part I wouldn't use a figure 8 in a bight to get a loop in the middle of a lonf rope that's going to take load - the butterfly knot is far superior.
Used the klemheist when I did rapelling to lock the break if I took my hands of the break. Preferred it over the Prussik as it bite better to the rope when under load because it twisted around it, and did release easily when the load was removed. It also was easy to slide along the rope.
Don't tie the clove hitch one-handed when working with auto-breaking belay device, that caused fatalities. Use both hands to tie the full knot first, and then clip it in at once:
some of those failure modes when i first saw them were freaky, they were so insidious and easy to do by accident! really glad i came across them, and thanks for sharing!
It is interesting to note how Climbing and Sailing use different knots because each sport has different priorities or different threat models.
When it comes to knot strength (how much the knot reduces the rope's breaking strength), they are quite similar, both sports seek strong knots after all both sports can apply quite strong forces on the rope, so better not to weaken it.
But when it comes to knot security (how easily the knot fails to hold) they go to very different strategies. Sailing knots mostly seek a balance between good-enough security and practicality, mostly knots that one can still easily undo even after it was tightened by a very strong load on the rope. While climbing knots seek top security above all, even if they can be a pain in the ass sometimes to undo.
Girth Hitch is also known as a Cow Hitch or Lark's Head. This combined with a simple half-hitch to lock it in place is the most useful knot in the world imho.
Don't use a double fisherman or water knot unless you're okay with cutting the rope afterwards to untie it (if you've jammed it or gotten it wet).
Tying a back-up knot into your trace-eight isn't necessary, but people have died from not having one (when they screwed up the eight), and it doesn't take long to do.
Alpine butterfly is a very useful knot for tying into the middle of a line. You'll use it more in life than in climbing.
A Hasty Harness or Swiss Seat is an easy way of tying someone into a rope or webbing if a harness breaks or is missing and you need to rappel or haul a person.
That's what I did during lockdown - got a knot book, taught myself twenty knots. A manager noticed and dared me to tie them blindfold. Did so, and won myself a metre of licorish!
This is a great video. A summary for those who don't want to wade through it:
The main message is that if the knot is slightly loose, or messy, the strands pinch unevenly in a fall, and it can be really hard to untie (depending on the rope). Most of the video is experiments to show that. The knot only had to be slightly loose to cause problems.
The part that surprised me is that there are two different ways to tie the knot that basically look the same. They only differ in which of the two outgoing strands is the one that's loaded. They're both perfectly safe, but one can be a lot harder to untie than the other after a fall. I actually find it hard to end up with the "wrong" version of the knot, but I might just be lucky with what my muscle memory has latched on to. I certainly wasn't taught to watch out for the difference.
When I was a Boy Scout we would compete on knot tying speed. My favorite was two people take opposite ends of a rope and tie a bowline around your waist. The first one done would then run, and try to capture their opponent's wrist in the loop mid-tie.
I know that I'm highly unlikely to use any of these but I like to believe I will and I need to know. Recently, Knots3D[1] was on Hackernews Homepage and I bought the app.
Now, while I'm waiting for something, and am not reading; instead of Twitter or other scrolling apps, I just watch the knots!
One day, any day, at some fateful party with friends, we may need to tie a knot, any knot, and I'm going to pick up one from my mind palace.
Watching is unlikely to help. I tell scouts to practice them before bed and then practice them in bed after the lights are out.
Tieing them in the dark gives you practice on how the rope feels, the relationship of your hands, and how a well tied one feels.
A few of these kids have had to tie knots while assembling a tent in driving rain, lashing to a tree, tying them over their heads, etc (most of course have not!). Or tied something to car before highway driving. This is how they have the skill and confidence to do it right.
You only need a handful of knots and hitches as your go-to knots that will help you in 99.9% of situations you will encounter. You might as well learn them: they are some of humanity’s oldest inventions.
> One day, any day, at some fateful party with friends, we may need to tie a knot, any knot, and I'm going to pick up one from my mind palace.
A somewhat feasible scenario if you make friends with a certain type of interest, go to parties with a certain type of theme, and diligently study knots like the Somerville Bowline.
(There is, perhaps unsurprisingly, a good deal of overlap in the rope skills and gear required for mountain climbing and, well, the other type of hobby where one suspends bodies from a rope.)
A bowline and trucker's hitch is something useful in everyday situations. Like tying something down in a truck bed or to the top of a car (moving a mattress, etc.). People don't realize you can pull a line very, very tight and get a ton of grip but you need the mechanical advantage of a trucker's hitch type of knot and tension system. They're both extremely useful when camping too.
I have a 3m piece of 550 next to my desk. I use that to practice knots while in meetings (that I'm not participating directly in) or pondering a challenging problem.
I used to have a piece of string on my desk as a type of fiddle toy. Much quicker to learn knots by tying them than trying to memorize the instructions.
Climbers like to get way into the weeds on knots (“but if this one is loaded with a wet dyneema sling around a deciduous tree…”), so I thought this article was admirably restrained, and does a good job explaining why you’d use each. I’d personally say that a figure eight and overhand are necessary, followed by the clove hitch and prusik. The double fisherman is mostly useful for soloing what you just abseiled after your rope gets stuck. ;-)
There was an article on HN a while back about a particular way of tying a rope to two pins at the top of a cliff in sort of a y-shape that doubles the stresses on the rope rather than reduces it (apologies if the details are wrong - I don't climb). I wish I could find the article.
Pretty comprehensive. One thing to point out is that girth hitching slings (like they show in the girth hitch image) or other material together will eventually wear through so don't do this on a long term basis [1] but only for short term use like extending a sling.
[+] [-] PostOnce|3 years ago|reply
https://archive.org/details/TheAshleyBookOfKnots
This would have been sooner had Disney not robbed us of our own culture by purchasing whatever legislation they feel benefits them, regardless of the cost to the rest of us.
Sorry, I'm bitter, but it really is a fantastic book I wish more people could've read and expanded on sooner... Say, 50 years after Ashley died instead of 70.
[+] [-] kyledrake|3 years ago|reply
Another comment mentioned this too, it's much easier to untie if tied in a specific way and if you do lead climbing they usually show you the technique. You can also do it with a Yosemite finish for a similar improvement.
[+] [-] idealmedtech|3 years ago|reply
The process I follow to ensure a clean knot every time:
1. Tie your figure 8, with the tail the same size every time (use your body as a ruler, testing a few lengths to get the perfect size)
2. Pass the tail up through your hard points so the knot is only a few inches from the bottom hard point.
3. Orient your knot so the tail is coming out of the bottom right side
4. This is the most important step! Instead of passing the tail through the inside of the knot when starting the followthrough, pass it in between the tail strand and the bottom right of the knot.
5. Follow through as normal. It should come out almost clean (eg no need to flip strands over each other)
6. For all 4 combos of top and bottom strand, yank them to make the knot very tight. The tighter and cleaner it is, the easier to untie after a whip.
7. If you do this all, the load strand will be on top, so no difficult flipped strands after a whip!
This is just my process, what's most important is doing something that works for you and that you can get right every time.
[+] [-] jfindley|3 years ago|reply
Whichever you do, if you do it different to the majority view for the region you can often end up with some heavily-opinionated person coming up and telling you that you're doing it wrong so I mostly switch depending on where I am. It's easier than trying to explain that [whichever way] is fine and common practice elsewhere.
[+] [-] wskish|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hprotagonist|3 years ago|reply
About 5-6 years ago the gyms became much more honest in their instruction for new climbers, and will now actually say the quiet part out loud, which is that a backup knot is really there to 1. ensure that new climbers leave enough of a tail on the figure 8 and 2. are a way to prevent that probably extremely conservative tail from whacking you in the balls when you take a whipper.
sport gyms absolutely do not like people who insist on tying in with a bowline.
[+] [-] geewee|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codeduck|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jvdvegt|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trollied|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jvanderbot|3 years ago|reply
Otherwise it'll snag and cut itself or catch your carabiner and cause all kinds of shock loads. (source is search and rescue training)
Ashley's is a great ref, but there's tricks to the trades so check a variety of sources.
[+] [-] steve_gh|3 years ago|reply
There are alternatives to the Prussik such as the Klemheist which don't jam as badly.
I wouldn't use a ring bend - the double fisherman's is superior for tying rope or cord ends together to create a sling. And I definitely wouldn't use either a ring bend or a double fisherman's to link ropes for abseil. An overhand tied in both ropes (with a 50cm tail) -aka the EDK or European Death Knot is way superior, as the body of the knot sits to one side of the line of the tightened rope, so it tends not to catch in cracks.
Finally, extending slings by linking them over and under into a reef knot is stronger than a girth hitch.
[+] [-] leksak|3 years ago|reply
If anyone is curious, I recommend reading https://www.andy-kirkpatrick.com/blog/view/rappel-knots-1 (it has helpful illustrations on why the EDK doesn't catch)
And I'd also opt for a Kleimheist or Autoblock over the classic Prusik.
Not sure if I think this was a good selection of essential climbing knots and the presentation was odd. For instance, I'd present the Prusik in an abseiling context. The article mentions using a Prusik to ascend their rope when they've fallen off an overhang, and I have yet to see that. What I see routinely is someone using a Prusik of some sort as a backup when abseiling.
If all of this sparked the curiosity of someone I recommend VDiffClimbing for further information https://www.vdiffclimbing.com/abseil/
But don't go climbing outdoors if you don't have someone that is experienced to go along with you. Take a course or several. It is possible to learn on your own, but it is a high-risk activity to figure these things out as you go on your own. Accidents, even fatal ones, happen to people that know what they are doing.
[+] [-] remus|3 years ago|reply
Broadly agree, but a ring bend is handy for tying lengths of tape in to slings. Pretty niche these days though given the ubiquity of sewn slings.
[+] [-] defrost|3 years ago|reply
For my part I wouldn't use a figure 8 in a bight to get a loop in the middle of a lonf rope that's going to take load - the butterfly knot is far superior.
[+] [-] hoppla|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sandgiant|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dima_vm|3 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9np7B1Zao4
[+] [-] smeea|3 years ago|reply
With some practice it's very effective, fast and don't require to watch at the rope.
[+] [-] LesZedCB|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SkeuomorphicBee|3 years ago|reply
When it comes to knot strength (how much the knot reduces the rope's breaking strength), they are quite similar, both sports seek strong knots after all both sports can apply quite strong forces on the rope, so better not to weaken it.
But when it comes to knot security (how easily the knot fails to hold) they go to very different strategies. Sailing knots mostly seek a balance between good-enough security and practicality, mostly knots that one can still easily undo even after it was tightened by a very strong load on the rope. While climbing knots seek top security above all, even if they can be a pain in the ass sometimes to undo.
[+] [-] max51|3 years ago|reply
Outside climbers and rope-access often use other alternatives like the figure-nine or double bowline that are easier to untie
[+] [-] throwaway787544|3 years ago|reply
Don't use a double fisherman or water knot unless you're okay with cutting the rope afterwards to untie it (if you've jammed it or gotten it wet).
Tying a back-up knot into your trace-eight isn't necessary, but people have died from not having one (when they screwed up the eight), and it doesn't take long to do.
Alpine butterfly is a very useful knot for tying into the middle of a line. You'll use it more in life than in climbing.
A Hasty Harness or Swiss Seat is an easy way of tying someone into a rope or webbing if a harness breaks or is missing and you need to rappel or haul a person.
[+] [-] MrVandemar|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] panzerklein|3 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAr-uHd8h8o
[+] [-] imurray|3 years ago|reply
The main message is that if the knot is slightly loose, or messy, the strands pinch unevenly in a fall, and it can be really hard to untie (depending on the rope). Most of the video is experiments to show that. The knot only had to be slightly loose to cause problems.
The part that surprised me is that there are two different ways to tie the knot that basically look the same. They only differ in which of the two outgoing strands is the one that's loaded. They're both perfectly safe, but one can be a lot harder to untie than the other after a fall. I actually find it hard to end up with the "wrong" version of the knot, but I might just be lucky with what my muscle memory has latched on to. I certainly wasn't taught to watch out for the difference.
The difference between the two knots is shown at 13m 24s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAr-uHd8h8o#t=13m24s
His demo of one way to get the knot the right way around is at 7m 41s of another long video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJkCaUUhqgs#t=7m41s
[+] [-] SamBam|3 years ago|reply
e.g. "I need to make a loop that doesn't slip." "I need to tie two ropes of different widths together." etc.
I know most knot books and sites do tell you the purpose of a knot, but I often find their organization doesn't easily lead me to the answer.
[+] [-] Cd00d|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jimmcslim|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Brajeshwar|3 years ago|reply
Now, while I'm waiting for something, and am not reading; instead of Twitter or other scrolling apps, I just watch the knots!
One day, any day, at some fateful party with friends, we may need to tie a knot, any knot, and I'm going to pick up one from my mind palace.
1. https://knots3d.com
[+] [-] gumby|3 years ago|reply
Tieing them in the dark gives you practice on how the rope feels, the relationship of your hands, and how a well tied one feels.
A few of these kids have had to tie knots while assembling a tent in driving rain, lashing to a tree, tying them over their heads, etc (most of course have not!). Or tied something to car before highway driving. This is how they have the skill and confidence to do it right.
You only need a handful of knots and hitches as your go-to knots that will help you in 99.9% of situations you will encounter. You might as well learn them: they are some of humanity’s oldest inventions.
Plus the math can be fun.
[+] [-] Freak_NL|3 years ago|reply
A somewhat feasible scenario if you make friends with a certain type of interest, go to parties with a certain type of theme, and diligently study knots like the Somerville Bowline.
(There is, perhaps unsurprisingly, a good deal of overlap in the rope skills and gear required for mountain climbing and, well, the other type of hobby where one suspends bodies from a rope.)
[+] [-] qbasic_forever|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JustSomeNobody|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ent|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] username223|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fizzizist1|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] z5h|3 years ago|reply
Super easy to tie (on a bight). Can be loaded in any direction. And then easy to untie.
[+] [-] jacksonkmarley|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dinopete|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] colordrops|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] martopix|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beefield|3 years ago|reply
https://www.theclimbingguy.com/european-death-knot/
[+] [-] gadders|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tppiotrowski|3 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.climbing.com/news/loss-of-a-legend/
[+] [-] peterbraden|3 years ago|reply
Ring bend should only really be used for webbing.
[+] [-] marcyb5st|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] leksak|3 years ago|reply