How To Ascend Up The Rope?

Nifty little knots to get you up without touching the rock

We set out to find some dry walls to climb despite the overwhelming likelihood of rain and poor weather. There is not much you can do about springtime in Utah, it’s sunny one moment and snowing the next. Nevertheless, we set out to get in our climbing fix.

Upon arrival at our crag of choice for the day we found a nice warm up route, pretty easy with some fun crimps and good moves. Both took turns leading and then moved to something harder.

We found a short pitch with two good sized roofs that we thought might be fun to attempt. I believe it was a 5.10b, but had some great holds. The only iffy part was the slight dampness of the rock, it wasn’t really all the way dry, which made it a bit more slippery than normal.

We both made it up the route, with the one handed cross clip move and a sketchy finish to the route, with one bolt holding chains that looked to not be very reliable. There was another route to those same anchors so we decided to come down and clean the draws on the rest of the wall but top rope the other route for fun.

Instead of top roping though, Christian Thorn thought it’d be fun to practice ascending, since he just learned how to tie those knots and it was a good setup for it. So he set it all up and tested it out. Tied the rope as an anchor to the tree next to us, and then started up the rope.

He worked through all the kinks of how to motion it and in what sequence to do which moves to make it the most efficient as possible. Then came down and taught me how to do it. First, how to tie the appropriate knot, then how to get setup on the rope and tie safety knots as you go, and then I was off.

It’s rather simple, the knot you tie to the rope gives it a superhuman like ability to hold tight to the rope when any weight is placed thereon but leaves it complete freedom to move upwards. It is basically the ideal scenario you’d want in a knot that you are depending on not to let you fall.

The setup involves you sticking a foot through a loop attached at the bottom and the top piece of cord is attached to you, via your harness.

Essentially, you just alternate between moving the top knot higher and your foot sling knot higher. and your rely on whichever knot you are not moving to maintain your position. It holds nice and tight and you can make good progress pretty quick!

With some great instruction and a bit of practice I was able to make it up rather quickly, to get to the top, clean the anchors and then double rope rappel down to the bottom.

I’d highly recommend you give it a try, it’s super fun, not too hard and we’ll be adding a new video to @knotclimbing shortly on all of our channels.

You can subscribe to all our adventures and new updates here: https://www.instagram.com/knotclimbing/