Hi, I'm Andrew McClain. We're here in the Wasatch to talk about ropes and knots for ski
mountaineering. Ropes are your basic insurance policy for the backcountry. They allow you
to repel over a cliff, get over all sorts of stuff. They're very useful, very handy.
So which rope to choose for ski mountaineering is always a quandary. What I like to use is a
standard 30 meters, that's how long it is, by about a 9.2 diameter rope. And this is called
a dynamic rope, so that means that it has stretch to it, but not too much stretch. So when you're
traveling in the mountains, you need to have a way to manage your rope. What I like to use is
called a mountaineering coil, and what I do is I like nice symmetrical coils, and that requires
putting a little bit of a twist. I'm doing it with my thumb at the top of every coil as I'm
wrapping it around. I know when I'm uncoiling the rope, I also give it a counter twist. And the
last coil, when you realize you have about maybe three or four feet left, you do a short coil.
So it's just a little bit shorter than the others. You're going to hold it in your hand,
you pinch a small loop, going backwards now, and you take this rope you reach under, and this is
the trickiest part about it, because you want to get a nice, tight loop there. So you get that
going, now you're kind of going back on it self, like that. Just keep each one nice and tight,
keep going until you've got pretty short little end, and you take that, poke it back through,
and you're able to find which one to pull, because it's your short rope, short line. Pull
that through, snug that up, snug that up, you can easily carry it like this. It's easy to take off
and hand to somebody. This is the mountaineering coil on a 30 meter rope, very handy. The most
important thing is how you attach it to your body, and the basic knot for doing that is called a
figure eight. You have your thumb pointing away from you like this, pinch, throw it over your thumb,
wrap it around, and poke it through, and it forms its namesake figure eight. When you're tying in,
you want to pass through both the leg loops and the waist loop. You're not tying it through your
belay loop, you just follow it back around, follow, follow, wrap around, follow. So that's a figure
eight. That figure eight knot is also a very good one to use to tie off to an anchor like a tree.
Ski cutting, maybe giving somebody a quick ski belay, something like that. It uses a minimal
amount of rope. So if you're going to rappel off a tree, if you just wrap it around like this,
when you pull the rope down after you're done, that's going to cut a slot in the tree. It's not
good for the tree, it's also not good for your rope. You get a lot of gum and goo on it. So you
have a sling, wrap it around, poke it through. You want to either use one locking carabiner or two
regular carabiners with the posing gates like this. You would then clip the rope in. This whole
kid is going to be left attached to the tree, and then as a final step, you oppose the gates so
they're not both pointing in the same direction. When you rappel down, when you get down and you're
done, you pull the rope at the bottom. The rappel knot that I prefer to use over a belay device
is called a munter hitch. It's so easy to tie, it can be confusing. You just put a twist in it,
and wrap it over the top like that. There's your munter hitch. You want to look for these two parts,
and then you clip your carabiner directly through those, lock it up, and you're in business. The
beauty of this is that it's reversible. You're going down, you get to the edge of the cornice,
oops, looks too big. You pull it back, it reverses itself around, you pull yourself back in like
that. And I like that because it's just one less piece of gear. It means all you need is a harness,
a locking carabiner, and your rope. You don't need to bring an extra belay device. Repelling
with it and something happens, like say you get hit from above by a boulder, and you let go. There's
almost no friction to it, so you really have to keep a tight hold on it. But it works well with
small ropes, it's very simple, it's reversible, it's just a brilliantly great ski mountaineering
knot, munter hitch. Munter hitch can also be tied with a double rope if you're going to pull the
rope at the end of a rappel. It's the same thing, you just wrap it around like that, you get your
loop, go through this time you're clipping through all of them. It looks a bit messier, but it's
the same thing. Nice reversible knot. So remember, ropes are as useful in the mountains as they are
in your bedroom.
