Page 165 - J. C. Turner - History and Science of Knots

A History of Life Support Knots 155

stated that the knots were in actual use by mountaineers in any application.
They did not recommend the knots specifically, and they will not be further
discussed here.
This report [2] seems to be the first mention of what became something of
an obsession amongst British mountaineers-the claimed advantage of tying all
knots `with the lay of the rope'. Unfortunately, there seems to be considerable
disagreement about what constitutes `with the lay', though everyone agreed
that knots should be tied that way. Wright and Magowan [34] discussed this
point at length; to them, the phrase seems to mean that any twists and turns
of the rope within the knot should have the opposite handedness to the lay of
the rope.
Climbing down a cliff or other difficult slope is often more difficult, more
dangerous and much slower than climbing up. If any substantial height needs
to be down-climbed, it is a considerable advantage to use the climbing rope to
descend, putting all or part of the weight on the rope and controlling the rate
of descent by friction against the rope. There are reports that this method
was in wide use in the Chamonix area by the
1870s. The first record of using friction to slow
a descent on a mountain seems to have been
on the way down from a climb of Mont Blanc
by de Saussure in 1787. The climber glissaded
down the slope, sitting on the rope anchored at
the top and held tight at the bottom. The rope
passed between the legs and over an alpenstock
g
held 'across the body at thi h level. Friction
could be increased and the climber slowed by
raising the alpenstock or increasing the tension
on the rope [6]. Sailors, firemen and the like
have long used ropes for a quick descent, but
climbers have need for much longer descents,
often under more difficult conditions, so that
Fig. 8. Classic Abseil
they have developed novel techniques, calling
the activity `abseiling' from the German or `rapelling' from the French. The
arrangements of the rope may be called `flowing hitches' (see below). All
techniques before World War II involved braking with friction round parts
of the body, such as the thigh, arms or trunk [5],[18],[27]. Braking on the
body alone is now rare (see later) but is still used for quick short descents and
for emergencies where no extraneous equipment is available. The commonest
method still in use (Fig. 8) is usually called the Classic Abseil [10, p. 142],[14,
p. 159]. It is a variant of a technique practised in Chamonix in the 1920s [5].