My climber buddy pointed out my friction hitch had been backwards for 3 years

I was up in a red oak last month and my climbing partner Josh whistled at me from the ground. He said my Blake's hitch was riding weird and asked when I started tying it that way. I looked down and sure enough I had the tail wrapping the wrong direction around the rope. I had been doing it like that since I started climbing three years ago. Nobody ever caught it because it still held, but it was binding up on every descent. He showed me the correct way and the difference was immediate. I felt like a total goof but at least I know now. Anybody else find out they had a basic knot backwards for way too long?

2 comments

2 Comments

angelaellis15d ago

Dude, that exact thing happened to me with a figure eight follow through a couple years back. I had been twisting the tail the wrong way around the standing end, and it didn't even look wrong to me. A guy I barely knew at the crag pointed it out after watching me build an anchor, and I felt like such a knucklehead. It still held and functioned, but it was leaving a funky kink in the rope every time. And once you see it the right way, you can't believe you missed it for so long. Did you feel like your descents were a lot smoother once you flipped it?

river_bailey214d ago

Switched to a rethreaded figure eight and it cleaned up my raps completely, night and day difference.