How to Tie an Alpine Butterfly Knot

Series Summary

Knot tying is an essential part of climbing and mountaineering. Climbers find that knowing how to tie knots such as the Prusik and the Monkey Chain Knot is very helpful. Knowing how to coil climbing rope is another important part of climbing and mountaineering. Coiling a climbing rope in a Mountaineer Coil or a Butterfly Coil will not only help you carry your rope but will help your rope last longer. Learn how to tie climbing knots and how to coil climbing ropes in this free mountaineering video series featuring Eagle Scout Derek Tarnow. Derek will demonstrate how to tie an Alpine Butterfly Knot, how to tie a Prusik Knot, how to tie a Klemheist knot, how to tie a Monkey Chain Knot, how to untie a Monkey Chain Knot, how to coil a utility rope, how to coil a climbing rope in a Butterfly Coil, how to coil a climbing rope in a Mountaineer Coil, and how to carry a Butterfly Coil as a backpack.

Video Transcript

"Okay, when we made a loop at the end of knot using the figure eight, you notice we had access to both sides of the rope, or to one side of the rope. If you ever need to make a loop in the middle of a rope, same thing kind of applies. You can use a figure eight just by doing that, but that's really not the best way of doing it because of the way the figure eight is structured. It's not the safest thing to do. And the overhand knot rule still applies. It's going to be tight, hard to untie and not, not the best knot. But there's a knot called the Alpine Butterfly. To start, you go through this way and I'm going to show you with just using the ends of the rope just because it's easier to tie. You can actually twist it around like this and get what you need this way, but for, it's much easier to see if you just wrap it around. You start with your rope over this way, wrap one end around, and then you take this and, and you kind of pull it back under this other side and create an X with the first side of the rope. To complete this knot, you take this end and just pull it through this way. And that makes your loop. Now you just kind of pull it through now, and tighten it and get it situated. And as you can tell, the rope as it goes through, it ends up on the same way like to where it's parallel to the other rope entering. If you were to use the overhand or the figure eight for this, you wouldn't have that result."