Joining Two Ropes For Abseil

You can also abseil in the same way using two ropes.

Joining two ropes for abseil. I know of two climbers one british and one french who actually came to blows at the top of an ice climb once neither trusting the others tried and trusted techniques of joining two ropes. It is often said that a double fisherman s knot is the best for joining two ropes of different diameters. The figure eight overhand double fishersman s are just three methods. Which knots do i personally use.

In this test on rock and ice all three knots tested were weaker with different diameter ropes. So keeping it simple makes sense. A surprisingly high number of climbers die abseiling. When descending a single strand fixed rope where a knot has been tied to isolate a damaged section passing a knot joining two ropes during an emergency retreat as always first try to utilize the terrain to make passing the knot easier.

Instead of joining your ropes with a double fisherman s you could also use a bigger knot such as the re threaded figure 8 just make sure the knot is big enough so that it can t be pulled through the chain or carabiner at your main anchor point. For normal abseiling if the ropes are dry then i use a well tied neat single overhand knot with ample tails. Times when you might need to abseil past a knot. There s many reasons why you d want to join two ropes together but perhaps the most obvious one is to allow for a full rope length retrievable abseil.

Rethreaded figure eight there is more than one way of joining two ropes using a figure eight knot. This like the belay chapter is a long one due the many different approaches that can be adopted.