Incident: Climber's Bowline Came Untied While Climbing at Rifle

Rick Blair wrote:Is a bowline the proper knot to use for top roping? A lot of down side and not a lot of upside for that application in my opinion.

The concept of a proper knot for something... ugh... misses the point. The bowline is a perfectly acceptable knot for TR'ing. A MISTIED bowline is not a proper knot for anything. There are NO limitations to a properly tied and backed up bowline.

Mark E Dixon wrote: This is a great knot. Compact, keeps the tail out of the way, easy to untie after weighting. I don't know why it isn't used instead of the retraced 8.

I like the idea of using this. Does anyone have info comparing the strength of this knot versus the other standard tie-in knots?

Mitchell E wrote:Funny this topic should come up just now. After a particularly frustrating experience with a welded Figure-8 last week, I decided to do some research and find out if I can safely ditch it for a Bowline variant. I landed on the Lee's Locked Yosemite Bowline, which shares some similarities with the final example 20 kN provided (the Bowline on a Bight with a Yosemite Finish).

I like scott's simple lock finish for a regular bowline.

Rick Blair wrote:Competition knot. Retrace an overhand, but retrace the strand from the belayer, not the strand from the harness. This knot unties easy after load, is the easiest belay knot I know to tie and super easy to inspect. Did I mention the tail orients downward after it is tied?

Pretty rad knot!

Is this something you climb on, Rick?

I like a knot that's tough to untie after a fall..makes me feel secure.

A million different knots...why ?

I've been using the retraced bowline for a few years, and I've sworn by its awesomeness. The competition knot is new to me, and I'm really interested. On first inspection, I would personally finish it with a barrel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au8KiUS4RCc

john strand wrote: A million different knots...why ?

Damn humans...

windexxx wrote: Pretty rad knot! Is this something you climb on, Rick?

Yes, when I am sport climbing this is my go to knot. During partner inspection I refer to it as my "questionable" belay knot since I am the only person I know who uses it :-)

john strand wrote:I like a knot that's tough to untie after a fall..makes me feel secure.

If you are referring to the competition knot, there is a little bit of a trick to untie it after a whipper but once you get it, it will untie with tired hands.

You ask why? Why not? it is easy to tie, easy to inspect and manages its own tail.

Morgan Patterson wrote: The concept of a proper knot for something... ugh... misses the point. The bowline is a perfectly acceptable knot for TR'ing.

The bowline is probably worth all the trickery for repeated lead falls, for top roping it does not make sense to me. It is a complicate knot. Teach someone to tie it and then teach them to tie a re-traced 8.

Mitchell E wrote: I decided to find out if tie-in accidents are actually more common with a bowline than with a figure-8. So I went to the Accidents in North American Mountaineering website,

Mitchell E wrote: I should make a few disclaimers right off the bat: First, ANAM does not include all accidents, not by any stretch. Many go unreported, and many others happen in climbing gyms or outside of North America. Second, the figure-8 is a more popular knot, so we can expect them to be overrepresented even if people are screwing up each knot at equal frequencies. But I don't think either of these things negates the results.

Actually, it does negate your "results". ANAM is a collection of anecdotes, not a comprehensive data set. You've got a very small sample size with a strong response bias, and no information about the overall population.

For example, if you want to know whether bowlines or figure 8s are used in more accidents, you need to first find the rate of accidents with a bowline and figure 8 - what is the ratio of accidents that involved a bowline tie-in to the number of times climbers tied in with bowlines in general; same with figure-8s; then you need to compare those two ratios. Comparing the number of accidents with a bowline to the number of accidents with a figure 8 is meaningless, even if it WAS a comprehensive and accurate tally of accidents, and even if you definitely knew how the knot contributed to the accident, neither of which you know.

There is a theme among a lot of bowline users. That is high humidity, possibly a slightly damp rope, possibly a salty rope, and definitely a fuzzy rope. The UK, Hawaii, Thailand, Caymans, etc. Those ropes clamp down like no other. Even a brand new dry rope will cinch down way tighter in high humidity. Getting super pumped and taking long falls on steep sea caves doesn't help either.

I use a fig 8 in Colorado because I believe it to be the right tool for the job. I use a double bowline in Bermuda for the exact same reason.

I certainly don't care if you want to tie a bowline variant on vacation but I'm not going to help you untie.

Competition knot (or a variation) is not new.

Yvon Chouinard in one of his old gear catalogs (late 60's-early 70's) talked about tying into the rope with a "one and a half barrel knot".

Yet another thread about a bowline coming untied!

I am shocked.

not.

Mitchell E wrote: Second, the figure-8 is a more popular knot, so we can expect them to be overrepresented even if people are screwing up each knot at equal frequencies. But I don't think either of these things negates the results.

Dylan B wrote: Disagree. I think it's quite possible that the ratio of climbers using eights vs. bowlines is ≥ 5:1, and that the proportions found in your results either (a) reflect the sample population, or (b) are based on a sample size too small to control for chance. Under either case, there's no way to draw any conclusions from this data about any meaningful difference between the knots.

You're right, I should have been more clear about my claim. I don't think this data shows that the Bowline is better than the Figure-8 or even that they're equal. It's such a small sample that it doesn't show much of anything, honestly. But I think it does show that the common impulse to blame the bowline is misguided. I hear a lot of claims in these conversations that the Figure-8 is so easy to tie and check that it's nearly impossible to screw up, or that every time a tie-in fails the climber was using a bowline. These five accidents show that's simply not true. Any knot is vulnerable to error.

jkw wrote: I like scott's simple lock finish for a regular bowline.

That's a solid option too. The main reason I didn't go with Scott's is that it's ugly. With Lee's Locked Yosemite Bowline (or with the 20 kN's Bowline on a Bight with a Yosemite Finish) I can just tell my partner "if it looks wrong, it is wrong." I've tried mistying these in various ways, and in every case it either falls apart or just looks like a total mess.

Mitchell E wrote:The main reason I didn't go with Scott's is that it's ugly. With Lee's Locked Yosemite Bowline (or with the 20 kN's Bowline on a Bight with a Yosemite Finish) I can just tell my partner "if it looks wrong, it is wrong." I've tried mistying these in various ways, and in every case it either falls apart or just looks like a total mess.

I'm not sure about the aesthetic argument, but I think scott's is very easy to verify because the tail takes a direct route back through the knot, and I think it has a distinctive shape. But obviously everyone should use what they are comfortable with assuming the knot itself is safe.

Mitchell E wrote: It's such a small sample that it doesn't show much of anything, honestly. But I think it does show that the common impulse to blame the bowline is misguided. I hear a lot of claims in these conversations that the Figure-8 is so easy to tie and check that it's nearly impossible to screw up, or that every time a tie-in fails the climber was using a bowline. These five accidents show that's simply not true.

You were right the first time.
5 accidents don't necessarily show that it's simply not true. If "nearly impossible" means to you, say, 1 in a million chance, then if these were 5 accidents out of 5 million or more climbers using a figure 8, then it's as rare as is generally thought.

Hey, have whatever educated opinions you'd like, but this isn't data and it doesn't show anything, really.

My friend is always trying to get me to switch to a bowline. It probably would save me around 15 minutes a year in loosening knots. No problem with the figure 8, so I don't see why to switch.

My point is that bowline haters don't have any data on their side. Neither do bowline defenders. All we have are anecdotes, and we can go blow-for-blow on those—there are anecdotes of failure with both knots. Until there's some sort of quality statistical study, claims of bowline inferiority are unwarranted.

Mitchell E wrote:My point is that bowline haters don't have any data on their side. Neither do bowline defenders. All we have are anecdotes, and we can go blow-for-blow on those—there are anecdotes of failure with both knots. Until there's some sort of quality statistical study, claims of bowline inferiority are unwarranted.

Absolutely true! Both knots have been tested and are strong enough when tied correctly. Both knots, along with many, MANY other things in climbing, can kill you if you do them incorrectly.

You are the one that cited ANAM "data" to try to make a point. But it sounds like we're actually on the same page here.

Em Cos wrote: Absolutely true! Both knots have been tested and are strong enough when tied correctly. Both knots, along with many, MANY other things in climbing, can kill you if you do them incorrectly. You are the one that cited ANAM "data" to try to make a point. But it sounds like we're actually on the same page here.

Yea, totally fair. In my defense most of this research and posting has been fueled by insomnia. :)

I don't think the data allows us to draw any conclusions. All I really ought to have claimed is that looking at the ANAM data highlights the anecdotal nature of the so-called case against the bowline (properly end-locked, of course), and that the argument based on anecdotes could be framed to support either side.

Mitchell E wrote:My point is that bowline haters don't have any data on their side. Neither do bowline defenders. All we have are anecdotes, and we can go blow-for-blow on those—there are anecdotes of failure with both knots. Until there's some sort of quality statistical study, claims of bowline inferiority are unwarranted.

BULL..a fig 8 is a better knot to tie in with..do you heat about a fig 8 coming undone ?