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The bowline climbing knot

Climbing knots | | September 2, 2009 6:56 pm

I’m told the bowline (pronounced ‘bow-lin’) is often used by cavers as it is a really quick climbing knot to tie your climbing rope to your harness, and easier to undo than the figure of eight climbing knot. In fact, it can be used whenever a loop at the end of a rope is needed.

Unlike the figure of eight knot, you don’t need to tie anything before threading it through your harness loops. There’s a video here, showing you how to tie it, although I would highly recommend that if you plan to use this knot to tie into your harness that you leave plenty of rope for a triple stopper knot (just to be sure).

This guy explains it in the same way as I have been taught. The rabbit comes out of his hole, around the tree and back into the hole again – brilliant!

It's good to share!

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Gareth Hanson is a hugely enthusiastic climber and the editor of Rock Climbing UK (this very website!), an online rock climbing magazine for UK climbers. Check out RCUK's Twitter account here.

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  • Colin

    The bowline is a great knot. But it can be a dodgy not too. By all means learn this, but I’d strongly suggest learning the double and some popular variants, for example the yoesemity finish. Both of these give the excellent bowline a little more security.

    It’s an excellent knot for sports climbing and at walls as it’s a little easier to manage. However it has to be done correctly and well stopped as you suggest.

  • Gareth Hanson

    Thanks Colin,

    I completely agree. I still prefer the good old figure of eight, though the Bowline is a nice, quick knot to tie. What’s more is that it’s easy to untie (even after a fall). It certainly needs a stopper method to be safe.

    I’ll definitely look up the variants you mentioned.

    Thanks for the comment.

  • Rich

    One thing to note is that when you fall all the force goes onto a single point of rope, whereas with the 8 it is much more distributed, as such, you damage your rope more (reducing its lifetime). You should be able to notice after a severe fall on a bowline a very hard point on the rope where all the impact was absorbed! Not cool!

  • http://rockclimbinguk.co.uk Gareth Hanson

    Great point Rich. Let face it rope doesn’t come cheap either!

    Apart from the safety element, that’s probably another reason that climbing centres won’t let you use a bowline on their ropes.

    Thanks for adding to the post mate.

    Gareth