What Happens When You Use the Wrong Rope Joining Knot?

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Some time ago, we did a short video about the “myth of solutions.” The idea, basically, is that when we have an inherently risky activity - an activity that can never be risk free - there is, by definition, no system, technique, tool, knot, or otherwise that can eliminate the risk.

Well, that seems tautological. Not very profound, there, buddy.

But, let’s unpack that. There is nothing we can do that eliminates risk. Okay, so that means all we can do is tradeoff risks, building a system or using a tool to reduce one risk but at the cost of increasing some other kind of risk. The idea, then, is to reduce the risks that are likely while accepting an increased risk on something that remains pretty unlikely.

This comes into play with rope joining knots, a lot. We could tie a really strong knot that can hand up to forces far beyond what we can put on it in any normal climbing context, but we are likely adding in risks around getting the ropes stuck when we pull them after a rappel or have knots that are very hard to untie after they’ve been weighted (thus taking time or maybe even making our rope more difficult to work with, being kind of “perma-joined”), or maybe both.

That’s why the flat overhand bend is the standard. It’s strong enough, but is less likely to get stuck and pretty easy to untie. We can add in other positives, too - being easy to tie and thus hard to mess up, easy to validate, etc. We did a whole video that goes deep into the reasons we use the flat overhand for joining two ropes on a double-strand rappel along with some of the knot’s limits.

Well, this video builds from that. There are some times when the climbing “standard,” our flat overhand bend, simply may not provide enough safety margin in strength to meet many people’s tolerance for risk. For example, we do not see the flat overhand used nearly as much in canyoneering, and there is a reason why: they do a lot more decent work on a single-strand. And we don’t see the flat overhand in rescue scenarios because we often have added a lot of weight. And when we start using new materials and extremely light and skinny ropes in combination, we might have new considerations not typical to standard climbing ropes.

There are very few systems, techniques, tools, or - yes - knots, that are right for all situations because they all are trading off some increased risks for some other risk mitigating benefits. If we find ourselves thinking “this works in every situation,” we are likely not thinking critically enough about those tradeoffs.

There’s a metaphor for life, huh?