Joining Two Ropes For Abseil

How many times have you had arguments with your mate when it comes to abseil knots.

Joining two ropes for abseil.

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. For normal abseiling if the ropes are dry then i use a well tied neat single overhand knot with ample tails. So keeping it simple makes sense. Although a series of alternative knots are discussed the edk is presented as the normal knot for joining abseil ropes.

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. Which knots do i personally use. The problem is we all know what happens if you get this wrong and abseiling is terrifying enough and if you aren. Times when you might need to abseil past a knot.

It is often said that a double fisherman s knot is the best for joining two ropes of different diameters. You can also abseil in the same way using two ropes. 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. The figure eight overhand double fishersman s are just three methods.

In this test on rock and ice all three knots tested were weaker with different diameter ropes. This like the belay chapter is a long one due the many different approaches that can be adopted.