How to Use Coiling Rock Climbing Ropes

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Bill with Zoar Outdoor here on behalf of expertvillage.com. Today we're at Chapel Ledges in Ashfield, Massachusetts, Trustees of the Reservation Property and in this series I'm going to be talking about rock climbing gear. I want to talk about coiling your rope. Not much good if you show up at the cliff and your rope is all bunched in knots. So there's the classic mountaineer coil that you've probably seen, big circular coil over somebody's shoulder. I like this coil, it's a butterfly coil or a butterfly coil. It's neat compacted and it doesn't twist the rope. Let me show you how to do it, surprisingly if you just take your rope and pile it on the ground, it's quite manageable. So I'm going to start with the two ends right here over my shoulders and coil from here without ever making a circle by just up and back and making loops and this won't twist the rope. It's doubled because in tight rope climbing you're mostly going to keep the rope middle at the top of the cliff and both ends on the ground. Get to within 10-15 feet of the middle, that's good enough, I'm going to take this off, hold the middle in my hand, grab out here, wrap it up. We're almost done, going to take a bite of this doubled rope, pass it through, cinch it up, pull the end through, there you go. One more thing you can do with this, you're going to stuff it in your backpack, just take a half hitch in here so it can't come undone, good to go."