Passing the Knot on Rappel

[@thecma3]

Good video! Thanks for putting the knowledge out there. My errata would be to always use a rappel extension, and this video nearly demonstrated why. With the autoblock on your leg loop and the rappel device on your belay loop, we saw how close the friction hitch got to running into the rappel device where it could release. Using a rappel extension with the backup on the belay loop can avoid that scenario.

[@matthewwenger5030]

Your videos are FANTASTIC. Clear, concise, good audio, and most importantly, you explain WHY you are doing each step. As a teacher, I appreciate that fact, not just a "do this because I said so" mentality.

[@iamwendel]

Nice video, the only two things I do to speed it up, is I don't use a chest rig, and I don't use a foot prusik- I'll just j-hook to stand up, or you can wrap the rope around your foot twice, and then hold it- stand and release. I prefer the j-hook because you can also lower yourself back down to your device with it, it's much faster, and doesn't require you having a double length loop for a foot prusik.

[@Vodafone16v]

Excellent demonstration! The catastrophe knot is a great idea. Keep it up. Thanks.

[@douglasw2662]

To add, you put the chest harness on in this case to prevent yourself from falling backwards. If you were to fall backwards the prusik on the leg loop move closer to the ATC and would likely jam causing you to fall. Like others have said use an rappel extension.

[@jameslipscomb8971]

this can be done with a VT prussik (bluewater makes a great one) and a adjustable lanyard (like the petzl connect adjust, or even a properly sized runner). much simpler and likely a bit safer too. carry a prussik loop for your foot if you need to ascend for whatever reason(in conjunction with vt). just rappel as usual with your device till you are getting close to the knot, lock off with your device, attach vt to rope using the lanyard so it is positioned at around head level, unlock rappel device, transfer weight to vt and remove rappel device at this point you can use the vt to descend slowly until you are positioned immediately above the knot, pull knot up and attach rappel device immediately below the knot and lock it off again, use VT to decent a little more until your weight is on the locked off rappel device, remove VT from above knot, unlock your rappel device and continue passed knot.

[@MOSHONAS01]

Caution when putting an autoblock on a leg loop. Not only is a leg loop not rated for holding any force, if you get flipped around, the autoblock could get sucked into the ATC which 'could' allow the rope to slide freely through the ATC. I like rigging a rappel such that there is no way for the backup friction hitch to get close to the rappel gear - this can be attained by extending your ATC with a short sling which also allows your auto block to get hooked to your belay loop which is strong.

[@pascaljutras178]

Better extending all the time for sure. Personally I extend and clip my prusik on the belay loop, no chance to get prusik touching ATC. About the leg loop it will normally not get high force cause rope will get braked in the ATC, the only way it could get crazy force would be a total failing of the ATC or if you do not clip the rope in carabiner plus ATC and do not test the system before taking out your PAS.

[@jayjoshi6128]

Excellent demonstration 👌

[@soulspirit86]

very informative, i very much like your teaching style

[@rivelinophillip3074]

All the videos show great knowledge about mid way up and top down will you plz show bottom to top climb and how it's done thanks bro

[@grantvanvleet7526]

MMO on the friction hitch: you can pass the knot and then statically lower yourself onto the ATC. You can place a crab into the friction hitch with a carabiner and a double length runner so you can retrieve the prusik cord after loading the ATC past the knot.

[@TileStonePro]

I'm with Mike2x2x. You couldn't have made this more complicated! And it all starts with the wrond idea of self-belay off the leg loop...

[@Melanie-Shea]

only one suggestion try using a klemheist instead of a prussik it is much faster

[@elbergron]

best video ever about rops. thank you Sir.

[@gavilightsey6282]

gotta say that self arrest was PROPER

[@bradcastaneda]

Awesome videos man! Really enjoy them. Can you recommend a video demonstrating how to transfer from ascending a single line with prusiks, to abseiling using a belay device?

[@MazamasICS]

Thanks Bradley! I don't know of one but I'm sure there are some good ones out there. I might add it to the list of videos to make.

[@AnonymousOtters]

Just weight the upper prusik, connect belay device between the two prusiks, weight the lower one, then release tension on the upper prusik. Once released you will be hanging on the belay device backed up by the lower prusik.

[@iamwendel]

What Ian said- just weight the upper prusik, attach the belay device in the middle, unweight the upper prusik. You can take the lower prusik and clip it to your leg loop to use it as a third hand on the brake line.

[@Katie_Mayo]

Why do we use the alpine butterfly for core shots? They can slip, right?

[@realname984]

Is there a quicker ( but also safe ) way?

[@redshift1976]

There is nothing more dangerous than a man at the end of his rope.

[@MattNicassio]

it looks like you have TWO belay loops on that harness??

[@iamwendel]

Several harnesses have two belay loops

[@mattyskinnerful]

Wouldn't it make more sense to rig for the knot pass with a prusik above the belay device and attached to your centre loop with a munter mule, mariner's hitch or releasable hitch of choice? Much quicker. It would be very difficult to do a knot pass in the way shown in the video if you were rappelling with an injured climber. I highly doubt your average human would be able to unweight the top prusik by stepping up onto a second lower prusik if they had the weight of an additional person hanging off them

[@SandeepKumarIIIT]

Releasable hitch of choice is a nice idea. When trying this out one thing I realized is that you might end up way down below, such that you are no longer able to reach to your prusik, and then you have to use a leg prusik to get back up to get back the first prusik.

[@mattyskinnerful]

Sandeep Kumar sounds as though your friction hitch is either too long or you are re-attaching your rappel device too low. Bottom line is you are not going to be doing much standing up with 100kgs of dead weight hanging off you. Might be possible to rig a pulley above to help if this has to be the case?

[@AnonymousOtters]

I don't think it is considered wise to rappel with the dead weight of another human attached to you. It seems like you ought to rig a way for them to be lowered independent of yourself. Lowering with that much weight is asking for other dangerous situations to occur. (And you have a big partner if they are 100kg)

[@mattyskinnerful]

That determination might have to be made mid-pick up and certainly a victim who is conscious may become unconscious during the course of a rescue. Super- munters (extra twist) work well for heavy raps

[@AnonymousOtters]

Good point. And now that I re-read your original response, it seems like that is a viable and safe solution. I will have to try it out on my wall and see what happens.

[@nilsholgerson4958]

Great video!

[@BenyaminMentchale]

Nice, methodological :-)

[@MazamasICS]

Thanks!

[@jakubpipek2266]

Alternatively you can use HMS carabiner with munter hitch and pass the knot in seconds.

[@charliejonas9015]

Is the chest harness critical? I can imagine that in an emergency situation you might have to make due with only a couple slings.

[@ChristopherSLucas]

Very well done. Thank you.

[@SeanHunter]

When its time to rig a foot loop to stand up to unweight the upper prusik, can you just make an fig 8 on bight or alpine loop out of the main climbing rope which is below everything? Then stand up on it, undo the top prusik and then sit on your belay device, and then undo the alpine or fig 8 foot loop and continue the decent? Would this method be safe?

[@johngo6283]

Sean Hunter yes, that would be a fine technique also. Even easier than tying a knot is just wrapping the rope a few times around your foot, and then standing up on that.

[@BWWGL9]

What is the BEST/ SAFEST knot for Tying to Repelling Ropes TOGETHER ?

[@AnonymousOtters]

Either a fisherman's (grapevine) or an overhand, both with sufficiently long tails, 12 inches give or take (longer is better (insert joke here))

[@JamieBenoir]

European Death Knot is a better choice than a double fisherman's. The EDK is smaller and is less likely to get caught when you pull the rope.

[@rarws]

How long of cordellete are you using for your whole setup. I've been wanting to know what a good length for several cordellete pieces would be for a set up like this. Thank you

[@SuperNXUK]

If I was descending a 60m Rappel and had an 80m rope and a 40m rope joined together, the join would obviously need to be further down from the anchor. Is this safe to do, combined with your technique to pass the knot? Thanks

[@nathanellison2371]

In that case you would be able to rappel on a single strand (with a biner block) and not even worry about the side with the knot in it (that would be your pull side).

[@mikemcquillan7560]

So a few questions.. When passing a knot, how do you get your rope back? When the need to pass a knot, Why? When the need to pass a knot, who in the group needs to know how to pass the knot? Why would only one person in the group need to know how to pass the knot. Can you explain a releasable/ contingency anchor?

[@AnonymousOtters]

You get your rope back the same way you would normally. Just pull on the end with the knot and the free side comes through the anchor. If you are passing a knot, likely everyone needs to know how

[@wtfwhereami]

Good info, but I can’t help but feel like you gonna open up with “have you heard the Good News?”

[@olegmilenin1975]

Awesome.

[@johngo6283]

Nicely explained, but I'd like to mention too any beginning climbers watching this that the real world situations where one might have to do this are pretty unlikely.

[@MazamasICS]

Thanks Johngo. I agree and hope that no one ever needs to do this in the real world. But we plan and train for those "what if's". Better to have the skill and not need it than to need it and not have it.....

[@johngo6283]

+Luke Loeffler Luke, it's pretty unlikely are going to have to wrap with ropes of two different lengths. Even if an end of your rope is damaged and you have to chop it, you can still probably make the next rap station with a slightly shorter rope. If you rope gets damaged in the middle, from maybe rockfall or a crampon spike, you can isolate the damaged section inside of a butterfly knot loop. Then, you could potentially have have to deal with getting past it. Better solution: Fix the good half of your rap rope,, and have everyone except the last person go down on the single strand.

[@zach7147]

+johngo6283 +MazamasICS +Luke Loeffler My friends and I were doing Hogwarts canyon in the North Wash at 3am a year ago. I being the most un-experienced of the group. We were single strand repelling the good side of a 70 m rope. Our pull side of the rope had 6 core shots in it. After what we thought was the largest reppel we noticed a core shot in the middle of the good side of our repel rope. With out much thought or pre-approval my friend cut the rope right where the core shot was. Little did we know, the largest reppel was yet to come at the bottom of the canyon and was over 100 feet. When we arrived we realized how screwed we were. We double fishermen the rope back together where we had to cut the rope, and in the dark, presiked over the knot mid way down at about 60 feet in the air. Luckily it was the last repel. we had to leave the rope because we didn't have a fiddle stick or enough accessory rope to pull the knot loose from the ground to retrieve the rope. This was the first canyon I had ever done aswell....

[@johngo6283]

+zach7147 That sounds like a really horrendus experience. You may want to ask your "more experienced" friends, why they are going canyoneering with a rope that has six damaged spots in it. If a rope is even close to being that damaged, you should destroy it, as in cut it into dog leashes. Also, daytime is better. =^)

[@matthewwenger5030]

+johngo6283 So are car crashes, but we still wear seat belts and have air bags. These techniques certainly are rare worst case scenario, but they will save you and/or your partners life. Beginners: Learn these techniques!

[@mhendriks609]

Why would't you start with a autoblock above the descend device?

[@Mateyhv1]

Because if you free hang on your autoblock placed above the descending device you will have a very tough time to release it in order to resume the rappel assuming you can even reach it. Placed under the descending device its purpose is to block the device itself in case you release your hand, not to hang directly on it. To resume the descend just push the autoblock down the rope.

[@MazamasICS]

Michael, good question. And Mateyhv1 gave a good answer, I'll just expand a bit on his answer. If you placed it above the rappel device you would need to use a Prusik hitch as it would be holding your whole body weight. And when a Prusik pitch is loaded it is very hard to release it to start rapping again. But if we put an Auto-Block hitch below our rappel device it only needs to be strong enough to hold our brake strand from feeding. And that doesn't take much. So then it's easy to start rapping again when we are ready. Hope that helps.

[@Dl-wh8bd]

nice vid. but how do we prevent semi crossloading the biner like at 4:25?

[@Zyoung1236]

+Dwight Lu Good point. Even with slight crossloading, carabiners are immensely strong. In a situation like this, a climber and their gear might weigh up to 250 pounds, and if the climber is static, not generating any shock loads apart from some bouncing on the rope, they would generate no more than 1 kN of force, which is far under the limits of even the most poorly positioned carabiner, which can usually support a 5-7 kN crossload. So yeah, crossloading a biner in any other circumstance is super dangerous, but in this temporary and low-force scenario, it's safe enough.

[@jameshuntsman6046]

My friend did this a much easier way. We had just climbed the nose in 2 days. Our first big wall. Freed up to 5.11, French free to 5.12. Then full aid after that. Slept on on a ledge at camp 4, the actual rock , no portaledge, space bags to sleep in, we went light. Now the relevant part. We rapped fixed single lines down the east ledge descent. I went first and had all the climbing gear. My friend Jared had our small haul bag. His ATC was in the bottom of the bag and I had my spare rappel figure 8, so I gave that to him for the rappel. Within 200’ of the bottom, I noticed the rope had a knot joining another 60 meter rope to the ground. I also noticed chains to my left with another fixed 60 meter rope to the ground. Seemed easier, so I swung over switched ropes at a ledge, then rappelled to the ground. Jared didn’t see me do this, and didn’t notice the knot until he was on it. By good luck and some bouncing the knot went throw the large eye of the figure eight rappel device. Badda-Bing Badda-Bang passed the knot in seconds.

[@hiddendragon882]

is this static or dynamic rope?

[@frankstain9791]

I "pass" a knot every now and then. not proud but u know...

[@Psiclone]

A little late for me to comment but excellent video. One suggestion would be to clip your autoblock to the inside of your leg loop and not to the side with buckle as the carabiner can cause the buckle to become undone.

[@martynwatson4929]

Or get an F8 and shove the knot through the hole...

[@joegaffney1959]

Looks like you're in an old church or something...

[@harness84_29]

wtf, i have never seen any of this stuff you are using!?!?

[@19SUREFIRE84]

Get it together dude?? Your terrible at rope access

[@mike2x2x]

Again Bro. First why are you rappelling on a dule line? Your wasting a resourse. Why wouldn't you rig releasable and not have to worry about it????? But heres how you do it in about 45 seconds with out all that nonsense and rigging and gear. VT prussic- let it lock you up 2 to 10 feet above the knot. Undo your rap device and rerig it up under the knot as tight as you can to the under side of the knot. LOCK OFF!!! now slide down on your VT till you your back on your belay device. DONE!!! WOULDN'T YOU AGREE????????????

[@AnonymousOtters]

All mountaineering and climbing is done on dual strands (not dule). In order to be on a single strand, the strand must be tied off at the top, meaning that you cannot retrieve it when you reach the bottom of a rappel. Almost all climbing applications require you retrieve your rope or ropes at the end and potentially use them for multiple rappels on single route. Good luck with your 10 ft. high prusik, you can't reach that high to set it. And no you cant pass a not with a single prusik unless you want to hang or stand off that prusik for the whole duration of switching.

[@mike2x2x]

You are incorrect sir. VT prussic 18" in length and releasable under load. Looking forward to your responce. Thanks for the spelling lesson. How ever you sir are incorrect again. You have been taught an old school way of thinking. Like much of the climbers and mountaineers I come across. Look at " contingency anchor" and why its used on a single line.(hope i spelled that wright)

[@AnonymousOtters]

I don't think so. Make a video of yourself completing this technique and share it with us. I would be happy to see it

[@iamwendel]

First off, this video is more for climbers. So he's rapping on a double strand because climbers typically don't bring pull cords, and on shorter raps, a pull cord is just more weight. Splitting a rope in half is much faster than setting up a biner block when you don't otherwise need to- but way to nitpick something completely meaningless to the video. Secondly, a VT is not easy to teach beginners, and you can't control descend any easier than any other friction knot- which he said was an option with the prusik, assuming it doesn't lock up. Thirdly, there is no reason to do it 10' above the knot, if your friction knot fails, that's just farther you'll fall onto the backup knot. Lastly, in answer to your question, it's "you're" not "your wasting", the VT is just that, the VT, not a VT prusik, and it's prusik, not prussic. So no, you didn't spell it right. Have a good day, bro. Happy trolling.

[@mike2x2x]

You don't need a pull cord. So Ill ask again. Why rap of both ropes and waste a resource ? Faster than a biner block???? Is your mom calling and you have to skip safety and rush home for dinner? I don't get when people say " Its faster" Faster then WHAT? Do you know how to rescue someone stuck on a duel line? So when someone gets stuck on a double line rap can you explain to us how to rescue them. I can. And Ill never have to do it because of the time it takes to rescue someone on a duel line. Plus you will need to carry a "rescue rope" to do a rescue on a duel line as well as most likely cut the rope the person is on at the anchor point. As far as the VT. REALY? Find some classes.

[@mikemcquillan7560]

First why are you rappelling on a duel line? If you don't know how to adjust your friction i can show you. Incase you screw up the system.....HA! DUDE. CALL me you would have been down by the 30 second mark..... but that you for showing us how complicated someone can make passing a knot which is almost as likely as needing to know how to win the lotto..... Love you guys who create problems to solve.... How about a video on how not to pass a knot?????????????

[@lxmzhg]

Do you have any videos that you created & uploaded to YT that can do better?

[@iamwendel]

Feel free to look at my comment on your other account. Troll much?

[@AnonymousOtters]

You clearly haven't spent as much time thinking as you have typing. Passing a knot is a necessity if for any reason your rope becomes damaged, but you still need to full length to rappel. Tie the damaged section off, pass the knot, and you are good. If you need to ask about rappelling on two strands, you need spend more time on ropes