Page 181 - J. C. Turner - History and Science of Knots

A History of Life Support Knots 171

Friction hitches can be difficult to manipulate if the fingers are stiff and
cold; this can be made easier by incorporating a karabiner inside the knot,
against the main rope. Both the Prusik and the Klemheist Hitches have been
used in this way. Note that the karabiner is not used as a handle; the knot
enclosing the karabiner is simply moved in the usual way.

Fig. 43. Bachmann Hitch Fig. 44. Karabiner Hitch
The best-known of these semi-mechanical hitches, and the oldest, is the
Bachmann Hitch (Fig. 43), specially recommended [17] for use with wet nylon
rope. It is usually claimed that it also works well with icy ropes, though
Shepherd [29, p. 481 disagrees. The knot is often used with pulley systems
and for rescue work, with many applications similar to the French Prusik [14,
p. 134][21, p. 1001.
The Karabiner Hitch (Fig. 44) was originally developed by Meier [lo],
who said that it could work very well with dry laid rope with only one turn,
if the karabiner was held in the horizontal position. It does not seem to have
had much use until Prohaska [23] independently developed it for use with tape
slings, claiming that it needed fewer turns and was more reliable than the
Klemheist Hitch; he found it best to have the karabiner in its more natural,
sloping position as shown in Fig. 44.
Recent experience using this knot with tape seems to have made it more
popular using rope [19, p. 161.