- What's up? I'm Miranda with REI, and
today I'm gonna talk about my five most commonly
used knots for climbing. Now, I'm not gonna talk
about the figure eight follow through that I use
to tie into a harness, we have a whole separate video on that, but these are the five knots
that I use most commonly. (bright music) So the first knot is not a knot at all, it's actually a hitch, and
this is the clove hitch. Clove hitch is most commonly used when you want to go direct into an anchor as it's easy to do and easy to take out. So there's two different ways of tying the clove hitch and the first is gonna use two hands, this is the most common way. So I'll go ahead and take my right hand and cross the rope over
the rope in my left hand, and I want to do that again
in the same direction. And then I'll take this second loop and pass it underneath the first loop. From there I'll take my carabiner
and clip it through both of the loops, and we're
just gonna go ahead and tighten everything down
to tighten up the hitch. And from here you can see
that if I pull on this side it's not going to come
loose, pull on this side, it's not going to come loose,
so that is a clove hitch. So the next knot is the
figure eight on a bight. Figure eight follow through
is used to tie yourself into a harness, and then the
figure eight on the bight is great if you need to tie
into the middle of the rope, or I also use it when
I'm cleaning an anchor and I'm going to lower from the anchor. So to tie the figure eight
on the bight, you'll take out a bight of rope, or a
loop of rope like this. Then you're gonna tie it just
like you do a figure eight. When you're tying in,
you will make a ghost, you will choke the ghost,
and then poke him in the eye. There's your figure eight on a bight. So the next knot is the barrel knot. So this is often used to
tie the end of your rope so that the rope won't pass
through the belay devive as you are repelling or belaying someone. And an easy way to tie
this is on your palm. So I'll take the loose end of rope here and wrap it over my palm and
then I'm gonna take that end and go back towards my thumb once, back towards my thumb
twice, and then take this end of rope and thread
it through all three loops on my hand towards my fingers. Then I can slide my hand
out and pull it tight. And that's the barrel knot. The next knot is the double fisherman's. So you might be familiar
with the double fisherman's as a stopper knot when you're
tying into your harness after you've done the figure eight, but it can also be used to join
a strand of cord into a loop so now we're gonna show you how
to tie a double fisherman's. So to use a double fisherman's
to join your cord in a loop you'll first want to start with both ends of the rope facing opposite directions. So an easy way to do this is
to hold one end of the cord in your hand like this, and
then you'll take the other end and you'll wrap it around your thumb and the standing cord,
go ahead and make an x and then take that loose end of rope and pass it through both
loops and pull it tight. And then we're gonna go ahead and do the same thing on the other side. So we'll hold onto that
cord, take the loose end, wrap it around your thumb
and the standing end, wrap it around again to
make an x and then go ahead and pass the loose end of
the cord through both loops. And then when you go
ahead and pull this tight you should have a neat knot,
or two double fisherman's four ropes in a line, and
that's the double fisherman's. So the last knot is the Prusik hitch. The Prusik hitch is a friction hitch, which means that it slides
when there's no weight on it, and then it will not
slide when you weight it. This is most often used as a
back up to a rappel or a belay. So to tie the Prusik hitch,
you'll take your loop of cord that you made with your double fisherman's and I'm gonna take the knot in one hand just slightly offset and
then pass the other end of the rope, or other end of the cord underneath my rope in this instance. You'll take this knot and
you'll pass it through this loop and we're gonna do that probably like two or three more times. From here I'll take this joiner knot and pass it through
this loop that we passed underneath our rope and
then we're gonna go ahead and dress this hitch,
basically tighten it down, make sure that it looks clean. There we go, that is the Prusik hitch. The Prusik hitch is cool
because it will slide on the rope when there's no weight on it, but then if you put weight on it, it's not gonna move in either direction. If you're using cords that
are of really different diameters, you're gonna
get more bite into the rope which can be a good thing or a bad thing, and it's a good idea
when you tie this knot to offset your joiner
knot just a little bit so that you don't have your carabiner or your point of weight
sitting directly on that knot. And that is the Prusik hitch. That's it for my five most
commonly used climbing knots. Check out our other videos,
and if you haven't already go ahead and subscribe and
we'll see you out there. (bright music)
