Knot Crossing

Knot crossing are knot fun.

There, I’ve done it. I’ve made the obligatory knot joke, and will cease and desist. I promise.

The first thing you should be doing with a knot crossing is asking the rigger why you are doing it in the first place. Can they use a different rope to get rid of the horrid thing? Is there a re-belay on the pitch they can situate the knot crossing at instead? (See Note 1)

No?

Well you’re gonna have to do this the hard way then.

Going Down

1. Abseil down as close to the knot as you can get and still have space to fully lock your descender off
2. Put your long cowstail into the safety knot hanging out of the joining knot
3. Attach your hand ascender to the rope
4. Stand up in your footloop and attach your chest ascender to the rope
5. Remove your descender from the top rope, and then attach it immediately below the joining knot
6. Lock the descender of and (IMPORTANT) make sure you’re on the right rope to go down, not the tails of the joining knot @@@@@@@@@@@@@THIS SECTION DOESN’T WORK REAL WELL, PLAY WITH IT@@@ CURRENT DESCRIPTION LIFTED FROM VERTICAL
7. Downprusik both your ascenders to get them as close to the knot as possible
8. Remove your chest ascender
9. Weight your descender
10. Remove hand ascender
11. (Test descender, remove cowstail)
12. Continue your descent

This is basically an extended changeover across a knot, and it is thus important that anyone attempting to do knot crossings is already competent at changeovers. There are other methods for doing this, but we have found this is the most effective with the NUCC SRT kits. If you have a personal SRT kit with an unattached hand ascender, see Chapter 6 p103 of Vertical for another way to do it.

Going Up

1. Prusik up to just below the knot crossing
2. Place your long cowstail in the loop for passing it (I have suggested long for convenience, but there is a argument to use the short to reduce the impact of a fall on your hand ascender if your croll was to detach after moving it in the next step)
3. Stand up in your footloop, detach your chest ascender, and reattach it just above the joining knot
4. Move your hand ascender past the knot in the same fashion
5. Prusik up three times
6. Remove your cowstail and continue on your way

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Note 1: How to join two ropes at a re-belay-

• Step 1- abseil down upper rope and rig re-belay at desired spot as usual, preferably with a Figure-9 knot
• Step 2- coil up the rest of the upper rope that is hanging below re-belay, and tie a stopper knot in the end of it (there should be one already, but check anyway as this is a high risk scenario for someone abseiling on the wrong strand)
• Step 3- get the top end of the lower rope, and tie a rethreaded Figure-8 knot through the loop of the upper rope that is connected to the re-belay krab
• Step 4- undo the re-belay krab, thread the loop of the rethreaded Figure-8 onto it so that the krab goes through both loops, and do it back up
• Step 5- lower the lower rope down the pitch, making sure it doesn’t get tangled around the upper rope, and it has a stopper knot in the end of it
• Step 6- continue down the pitch as normal

This is done so that if the re-belay fails, the lower rope is still connected to the upper rope through the re-threaded Figure-8. You could muck around tying a Double Barrel knot in the loop of the re-belay I suppose, but that is much more faff, and this way you can use two ropes of different diameters. If the re-belay fails, I would strongly recommend establishing a new anchor, rather than relying on the two knots for your safety.