Page 170 - J. C. Turner - History and Science of Knots

160 History and Science of Knots

much the stronger of the two, and able to withstand a pull on the two ends.
There is much confusion in the climbing and caving literature about these two
knots, many attributing the name and the excellent performance of the Alpine
Butterfly to the Half-Hitch Loop. Despite Wright and Magowan's claim to
originality, several general knotting books list one or the other of these knots,
usually under another name, stating that they were used by American electrical
linesmen; I have not seen any clear indication that in fact both knots were in
use, rather than that the linesmen shared the climbers' confusion about them.
As noted above, the authors were impressed with the advantages of taking
the pull of the climbing rope on several turns round the waist to lessen the
discomfort of holding a fall. They recommended the Bowline and Coil for an
end loop and devised a Three- or Five-fold Butterfly Loop for a mid loop,
having three or five turns, respectively, round the waist. These knots also
looked complicated, and I have never seen them mentioned anywhere else.
However, the authors investigated ways of attaching the bight of the climbing
rope to a separate length of rope wrapped round the waist. This also does not
seem to have come into general use, perhaps because it only allowed for two
passes of rope round the waist. I have not illustrated either of these knots. It
is possible, however, that this paper, though it did not itself provide a popular
way of taking the load of the middleman through several turns of rope, did call
attention to the idea. Certainly, the wearing of a `waist length' of several turns
of light rope round the waist became popular around this time. It was easy to
attach the end climbers to this waist length, but attachment of the middleman
only became practicable when a karabiner was used as a link between the waist
length and a mid loop in the rope, such as the Alpine Butterfly. This practice
continued until climbing harnesses came into common use in the 1980s.
Prusik
Ashley [3] in his great book of mainly mariners' knots recognised a class of
knots for tying on to the middle of a rigid rope that `may be slid up and down
with the hand but remain firm under a pull on the standing part'. Climbers
and, more recently, cavers have found some novel applications for some of these
movable or sliding hitches that can withstand many and frequent repetitions
of the load-unload-move cycle, and have come to call their knots either `prusik
hitches', after the first such knot to achieve widespread use, or, more generally,
`friction hitches'.
E. Gerard [9] seems to have been the first climber to recognise this need,
though he said only that it would allow the climber to climb up a smooth
rope of 10 mm diameter. He used three `rope rings' around 70-80 cm long,
made of plaited cord of about half the diameter of the rope. These rings
were tied one above the other onto the climbing rope with his special knot
(Fig. 18). One foot was placed in each of the lower rings, and the head and