Soft Pro Mystery Knot?

Sorry if this is in the wrong area but I figured it is a form of Trad.

I was just wondering what knot is used to make soft pro? A.K.A. stoppers made of cordage.

My friend from Germany has used these, I'll ask her what the knot is.

JL

Appreciate it greatly!

I've trying to find info on the interweb but no luck so far.

Here is a German page about the knots commonly used.

This page shows how to place such a knot.

The site's top level page on climbing in the Elbsandsteingebirge is here.

Thanks Perin! I guess you just have to know where to look.

Lets see how much German I can remember.

Its called a monkey knot, have it tied before you climb, takes like 5 minutes to tie.

sweet my german isn't that off. It looks like they also call it a childs head or a babies head.

Dave Miller wrote:Its called a monkey knot, have it tied before you climb, takes like 5 minutes to tie.

We always called it a monkey's fist.

awesome, now that you have learned to tie the knot and how to place it from a ahort description in German, go use it for pro!

Here is an animation of how to tie a monkeys fist tinyurl.com/2wjqfy hope this helps.

Thats very awesome. That is love for climbing and also for the area I envy it really. That tricam knot!! Crazy cool!

What I can't figure out about the monkey's fist is are they tying it in the middle of the cordlette an then like tying the ends together with a fishermans or are they tying the fist with both ends?

Nevermind, after further review of Joerg's photos they're tying the fist with both ends.

The real big knots they call a "baby's head."

Those 4 knots on the German page look like a figure 8, over hand, water knot, and monkey fist... to me atleast. Nothing super special.
Gotta make sure those things are super tight before you set em.

I was thinking about the stopper knot but since it doesn't have any taper to it it wouldn't set very well, unless it was a perfect spot for it.

yup, the first three are knots everyone should know, the monkey's fist is a beast its easy to tie but very hard to tighten well.

Achtung! Sie werden sterben ...

I would be prepared to solo whatever you protect with those knots. I'd like to see someone actually fall onto them. Looks like jingus to me. I saw a guy leading with those in Czech, once. He was climbing something so easy he could have just soloed it.

Perin Blanchard wrote:This page shows how to place such a knot.

Is the knot being poked into a crack with a knife in the 3rd picture?????

Besides placing pro with a blade, I think it would be plausible to fall on that.

I've used the water knot (aka simple overhand) in 3/4" tubular webbing as a dependable "stopper knot" it thightens well, keeps its shape, is dense, and nicely tapered. These can be made to diffferent sizes with different webbing widths and easily increased in bulk (flar angle)too.

I unfortunately could not view the pics on Russ's site, as my work filter blocked access due to inappropirate "sexual content"! arghh! guess that's the fetish in the title, will check later at home.

Now that's a rack even a dirt bag can afford triples in.
I want to make a knot rack just for fun now.

In the boredom of being a belay slay at various jobs, I've played around with soft pro a bit and was surprised about how easy they are to make and how well the work. Mind you, I was just traversing around a base, but they took good bounce tests and aiding without a worry.

The tricks I found were using overhand, and stopper knots in different types of cordage and tape. An overhand in webbing makes a very good stopper equivalent. One trick to placing them is leaving the smaller knots a little loose so you can wriggle it into a seam and them cinching it done really well. You want to make sure that the knot is super tight before relying on in though, or it might cinch down and work its way out.