Tell me an uncommon climbing knot you use, and why

Hi guys,

Is there an uncommon knot that you use while climbing, and if so, what do you use it for? Just curious what works for some people and through your experience what you guys have discovered!

Thanks,  

Colin

I do all my rappels with a Sheepshank knot and just cut one of the strands before descending.  Bear Grylls style.  I've only died twice.

Alpine butterfly - easy to tie, easy to untie after loading, load either direction, and you can tie mid rope.

Sheet Bend to attach my 6mm chalk bag cord.

Constrictor Hitch to put cord around the neck of my water bottle

Adam J. Clark wrote: Alpine butterfly - easy to tie, easy to untie after loading, load either direction, and you can tie mid rope.

My fav knot... love to tie it!

Inline 8 or rethreaded alpine butterfly are probably the only two weird ones I’ve used in the wild.

Edit to add the why: inline 8 is good for a ‘summit belay’ so that you can build an anchor way back from the edge and still keep a master point near the edge.

Retreaded alpine butterfly for fixing a jumar rope direct to a anchor without a carabiner.

I used the equivocation hitch for a hand line on some really loose 4th class recently. It sure beat pulling the whole rope around the tree I was using as an anchor.  Still not sure I would rappel on it.

https://www.mountainproject.com/forum/topic/108779110/equivocation-hitch

When I'm TR soloing on two strands and intend to rap afterward, I use the stone hitch to fix my lines at the midpoint of the rope. When I'm finished climbing I just remove the carabiner, flick the rope to untwist it, and the rope is situated for a rappel.

If I'm on a route where I'll probably fall, I tie in with the double bowline with a finishing knot on the loop, because it unties easier after I fall on it. Watching sport climbing videos makes it seem like this is a very common thing, but I've never seen anyone else do it in person. 99% of the time I'm doing onsight trad where I'm unlikely to fall, though, so I go for the figure 8 retrace most of the time.

For a little while, I used the alpine butterfly bend backed up with a flat overhand to join ropes for rappels, because it doesn't bind up. The idea was that the butterfly bend takes the load off the overhand so both knots untie easily at the end. But now I just do an overhand backed up with another overhand in the opposite direciton--it's faster to tie and not THAT hard to untie. It's a tradeoff--either I spend more time tying at the beginning (alpine butterfly bend) or more time untying at the end (flat overhand). The flat overhand is easier for my partners to verify.

On my personal anchor, I use a directional figure 8 to extend my rappel. I never untie it.

When building anchors with static line, I'll often pay out too much line on one side of the anchor, then shorten it with an alpine butterfly. This gives me an easy adjustment, and also gives me a spot above the cliff edge to clip into while I downclimb to my master point, which is hanging over the cliff edge. There are other solutions to this problem, but this uses the least rope so I use it a lot in Peterskill where the my anchors are far from the cliff edge.

If you're really interested in knots my real advice would be don't try to just memorize a bunch of knots.  Instead, learn *about* them because most of the useful knots are variations of some similar themes.  Knots can be grouped into families of related patterns.  Understand what a knots purpose is, it's strengths and weaknesses.

For starters there's three types: Hitches connect the rope to some other object.  Bends are used for joining two ropes.  Knots by themselves create a shape or object in the rope itself.

Learning the pros and cons of even the "common" set of knots is way more useful than learning a lot of esoteric knots.

I don't have time to list every knot I use, so I'll just give a summary of some hitches:

* Clove hitch: easy to adjust its position, fast to tie if you have an open-ended object like a carabiner.  hard to tie around a non-open object and you're in the middle of the rope
* Bowline: can be extremely fast to tie (in fact, the sign of a really experienced sailor is the ability to tie on one-handed behind your back), easy to untie after being loaded.  Also easy to tie incorrectly (which is why it's not the default knot for newbies to tie in climbing)
* Figure 8: easy to verify it's tied correctly, unlikely to untie itself, can be very hard to untie after loading.
* Round turn & two half hitches: extremely fast to tie near the end of a line, not considered terribly secure -- don't trust your life to it, mostly for attaching objects
* Camel hitch: holds a rope to itself well, allows you to slide the knot along the line to adjust tension (mostly for things like tent guy-lines)

I could go on, even in this category.  There's a slew of friction hitches, there's hitches specialized for attaching to certain kinds of objects, like the cleat hitch, bollard hitch, tensionless hitch, trucker's hitch, munter hitch.  It's not going to be practical to memorize a lot of these.  Rather, it's better to understand why certain knots work for certain situations.  Most of the time many different knots could work for a given task -- and if you're trying to trust your life to them it's better to have a few really reliable knots than try to tie the "perfect" knot and get it wrong.

wivanoff wrote: Sheet Bend to attach my 6mm chalk bag cord.

Constrictor Hitch to put cord around the neck of my water bottle

Is there an advantage to the sheet bend over a square knot for this purpose? 

double sheet bend to connect 2 ropes. super easy to untie and can be used to join 2 ropes of different diameters

mike again wrote:

Is there an advantage to the sheet bend over a square knot for this purpose? 

I find it easier to adjust. My chalk bag cord is untied, but doubled. I used the ends to form the sheet bend around the midpoint bight

I think I see a trend happening with FrankPS's posts

Like with programming, I dislike being clever with climbing knots.

That said: the rescue spider is really handy when rappelling with a load, and it doesn't seem to get much treatment.

Jaren Watson wrote:

Perhaps it’s because he’s noticed a trend with the OP’s questions.

Yes.

At the risk of starting yet another bowline fuss-up, I tie in with the following extension of the Yosemite bowline

I don't know if it's unusual, but I use a Garda hitch whenever I can. I just like it!

Doug Hewell wrote: I don't know if it's unusual, but I use a Garda hitch whenever I can. I just like it!

I use a garda hitch to rig a piece that has to be held down.  It is the only way I know to fully tension down a piece when only one hand is available for rigging.

I like the bowline on a bight sometimes for 2 bolt anchors.  Used the same way as the "bunny ears" figure 8 variation.

Edit - as for why, its super simple to tie, easy to adjust to semi equalize, doesnt take much rope, and I can build an anchor with only two carabiners.  The tough part is giving you self the right amount of leash from the anchor.  I tend to err long and shorten with a knot as required.  For a master point, tie an 8 on a bight on the climbers strand below the bowline...I learned it from one of John Long's climbing anchors books.

I climb on what I believe to be called a Snap Bowline follow through. Never seen more then one other person using it.

Has all the benefits of a Bowline, without the downside of untying itself. The whole follow through would have to untrace for it to fail. I do still tie a backup just cause.
Whip on it over and over and it comes right out.

Uncommon variation?..to a common tie-in knot.