How to Tie a Rappel

Video Transcript

"Hi we're here today to talk about how to tie or set up a rappel. It is very important that if you try this that you have an instructor or you take lessons or definitely go with someone more experienced because it is inherently dangerous and you could fall to your death. Generally when you rappel, if there is natural anchors if there is holes in the rock or some other thing you can anchor to then you can set it up that way which we'll show you in a moment. Here there is a really lovely tree and we'll use it. It is always good to protect the tree so that multiple rappels on one tree won't score the bark and then eventually kill the tree so we'll take this piece of carpet which is ideal and we'll wrap it around the tree, then we're taking a good either static or dynamic climbing rope, we'll wrap it around behind the tree over the carpet then it's very important to find the center of the rope because you don't ant to rappel off one end of the rope. Now we're fortunate I have marked the center of my rope with a piece of black tape and some ink. In this case the rope is a lot longer than this cliff so you'd hit the ground but it's always a good idea to tie a knot in the end of your rappel rope so you don't slide off the end of it. We use a figure 8 knot to do that. It is always good to use a figure 8 knot for this type of tie in, wrap it around behind the rope, back through the hole, tighten it. Now we use a butterfly coil which is basically one end on this side, one end on the other side, one end on this side, one end on the other side and so on and so on and that way when we throw the rope it has less tendency to tangle. O'kay, now I'm going to walk over to the edge of the cliff. Before you ever throw a rope or anything else off an end of a cliff, edge of a cliff, always yell rope just in case somebody else is down there. Throw it out and away from the rock and ideally you want to see it land on the ground and there you go."