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.

Joining two ropes for abseil.

How many times have you had arguments with your mate when it comes to abseil knots. Which knots do i personally use. This like the belay chapter is a long one due the many different approaches that can be adopted. Rethreaded figure eight there is more than one way of joining two ropes using a figure eight 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. Although a series of alternative knots are discussed the edk is presented as the normal knot for joining abseil ropes. The figure eight overhand double fishersman s are just three methods. 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. It is often said that a double fisherman s knot is the best for joining two ropes of different diameters. The problem is we all know what happens if you get this wrong and abseiling is terrifying enough and if you aren. You can also abseil in the same way using two ropes.

In this test on rock and ice all three knots tested were weaker with different diameter ropes. A surprisingly high number of climbers die abseiling.