happyfrosh's happy place: learning how to dress knots‏

Late last year I spent two weeks in East Africa. Mostly I was there to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. But I also spent time looking at the pretty animals.

I brought a number of lengths of hemp rope, some climbing webbing, and a half dozen climbing carabiners. I brought a copy of the knottyBoys book.

I had a couple days at a lodge on Lake Naivasha called Elsamere (noteworthy as the former home of Joy Adamson). Most of the other guests were a group of American college students on a semester abroad program. The students were all focused on completing assignments for their coursework. I kept mostly to myself.

So I spent a lot of time practicing rope skills.
I spent hours tying single column ties on various railings.
I spent hours tying taut line hitches and applying tension.
I spent hours tying double coin knots exactly six inches apart for the length of a 30 foot rope, untying them, and starting over.
I spent hours performing block and tackle lifts. I would throw a piece of climbing webbing over a convenient branch, tie a water-knot and hang a carabiner. I would use a couple of water bottles or a backpack as a practice weight. I would tie the midrope version of the taut line hitch, lift the test weight 18 inches, and repeat over and over again.

I tied ladder ties similar to a karada on the porch of a building.

One of the students approached me and asked if I could set up a slack line. While I had never done so before, it wasn't horribly difficult to figure out. This was the first time that I had ever used a block and tackle system for webbing. This is the first time that I had ever had to untie knots that had been tightened with a several hundred pounds of tension.

I brought my ropes on the Kilimanjaro climb. To mitigate the risk of altitude sickness it is important not to ascend too quickly. This meant that there were long rest periods in the afternoon. While there were always people around, for the most part English wasn't their native language, and we didn't have much to say. So I spent time learning how to dress my knots.

On a separate note, the view from the top of Kilimanjaro was amazing.