I've received some emails, mostly from new climbers but some not so new, who have emailed me with questions on how to tie the knotless or knotless loop. They tell me they've tried but can't get it right.
Well this morning one of my facebook friends posted a photo of his finished knot, which by the way is a knotless loop, and I was blown away by how perfect it looked. And looking at other photos on his page of his climbing area, he's doing some pretty serious bouldering! So I got to thinking that maybe my knot looks crappy because I've been tying too many knots in general.
I've always said the only knots you should tie are figure 8s for anchor building, and clove hitches to attach your rope to the climbing carabiner.
So this got me thinking that maybe instead of writing an article on how I tie my knotless knot, it would be better if I showed you how I tie my knots, and then you can compare it to the knotless loop.
Let's start with using two lengths of rope…well more like one piece of 10mm, more accurately 13'4" (4 meters), but if you buy a 60m rope they cut it into two pieces, so for this article we'll say 13'4".
Let's start with a clove hitch on the harness, because if you're using two ropes then your rope needs to be attached to your harness somehow.
I've been tying this knot for so long I know exactly how much tension to put on it before it's tied correctly, but if you're new to this here's a way to test it.
If your knot looks like the left side of the photo below, then you have too much tension on it and need to work at getting it flatter against your harness or tie a different knot.
On the right side of the photo you can see what it's supposed to look like.
If the knot is on the left side, then not only will you have too much tension in your knot once it's finished, but when you feed rope through your belay device (the small metal piece that goes into the larger metal piece) you won't be able to feed the rope through, or if you are then it will take forever.
Feeding rope with too much tension in your knot is also sloppy on the smaller climber's end when they're trying to tie their figure 8 follow through knot (which I'm not showing here because that article will come later).
