Page 36 - The Pocket Guide to Equine Knots

Tie-up knot, step 4: after pulling one or more bights through, put end through for safety.

Rope Types on the Trail

Lead ropes come in all sorts of material, cotton, nylon, manila, and poly being the most
common (see chapter 1, page 2). To review, cotton is nice on the hands, and for this reason
I like to lead my packhorse with a cotton rope. However, cotton is relatively weak, so cotton
lead ropes must be made with a larger diameter to compensate, which in turn makes them

bulkier to knot. Another disadvantage comes in cold weather. In a fall hunting camp in the
mountains, I’ve tied a horse with a wet cotton rope after a snowstorm, then tried hard to
untie the horse the next morning after the temperature has plummeted. Cotton absorbs
moisture, which then freezes when the temperature drops during the night.

Nylon is incredibly strong, and it comes in many configurations. As mentioned earlier, I
tend to prefer three-strand twisted rope, no matter what the material, because it’s so easy
to splice. But some of the soft nylon braided ropes are very nice on the hands. Nylon
stretches a great deal, a good thing for a lead rope since the stretch softens the jerk if a

horse pulls back.
Of the several types of rope nicknamed “poly,” it’s polyester that I use most often for the
sling ropes on my packsaddles, because I prefer less stretch for that purpose, and I prefer
it for highlines for the same reason. A highline of nylon rope is certainly strong, but you’ll find

yourself constantly tightening it.
Manila can be nice on the hands, is relatively strong, and is easy to splice. Being of
natural fiber, however, it’s more susceptible to rot than most of the synthetics, and while it
doesn’t absorb moisture as readily as cotton, a wet manila lead rope is still heavier and less

handy than a dry one.

Trail Hazards
On the trail, unless you put all your gear on a pack animal, you’ll take some (hopefully not

too much) along on your saddle horse. But before we get to details about hauling gear on
your saddle horse, a word about safety. All knowledgeable equestrians have an absolute
phobia about becoming inadvertently “tied” to a horse. The nightmare most often
emphasized is that of falling or being bucked off and catching one’s foot in the stirrup.

Riding in Spain using English cavalry saddles, our guide “tested” us by ordering a canter
(gallop, actually) up a gravel road the first time we mounted. I hadn’t studied my saddle