- What's up guys?
I'm Miranda with REI and these are my top five
most useful outdoor knots.
(upbeat music)
So the first knot that I'm gonna show you in the bowline.
The bowline is a really useful knot because it
is load bearing but it's also pretty easy to untie.
I like to use this knot when I'm attaching a guyline
to my tent.
So to this knot, I'm gonna take out a length of cord
and then I'm gonna grab the cord
with my thumb facing towards the loose end of the rope
and fold it upwards to make a loop.
And then I'm gonna take the loose end of the cord
and pass it around this post here
or through the attachment point on your tent,
and then we'll take this loose end to go up
through the loop I made, around the backside
of the standing cord, and then back down through the loop.
I can then hold onto both of these ends here
and pull this guy tight.
And that is the bowline.
The next knot is actually a hitch.
And chances are you have used this hitch a dozen times
or more in your life, but you might not know the name of it.
So this is the girth hitch.
The girth hitch is really useful for attaching things
to your pack or attaching your dog's leash to a tree.
Pretty much for all sorts of things.
So to tie the girth hitch, what you're gonna do
is take your loop of cord and pass it around your post
or whatever you want to attach something to
and you'll take one end of that loop
and pass it through the other,
and go ahead and pull it tight.
Like I said, you're probably familiar with this
but this is the girth hitch.
- So the next hitch is the clove hitch.
The clove hitch is really useful for guying out tents,
and it's also great for attaching a cord
to any post or standing item.
So to do this, we are going to
hold the cord, hold a bite of cord
with one end in each hand and then I'll take my right hand
and cross it over my left, make a loop
and then I'm just gonna do the same thing again,
and then I'll take this second loop
and pass it underneath the first loop.
Now making sure that that second loop
stays underneath the first, I'm gonna go ahead
and put this over my mock post here
and then go ahead and pull it tight.
From here you can see that this will not come undone
or move if I pull on the loose ends.
And that is the clove hitch.
So this next hitch is a modified version
of the trucker's hitch.
The trucker's hitch is really useful
when you're guying out a tent as it replaces the need
for a cord tightener.
So to tie this, this hitch,
you're going to have one end of your cord attached
to your tent over there,
and then you're gonna tie a slipknot in the cord.
So I'll make a loop, pass the free end of my cord,
on a bite, through that loop and pull that tight.
When you tie this slipknot, you just want to make sure
that when you pull on the free end of the cord,
the knot, or the loop gets smaller
instead of the other way around.
The next thing I'm going to do is take this loose end
of cord and I'm gonna pass that around my post here,
or around your stake if you're guying out your tent.
And then I'll pass this free end of cord
through the slipknot that I just made
and pull it back towards the stake on the tent.
Once I've got it tight, from here I will pinch these ropes
all together, so the three cords all come together
and then I'm going to take a bite of cord,
put that over the two cords that are going to the stake
and then pass it through the loop and pull this
down towards my hand.
Then I can do the exact same things with another loop
just to back it up.
So we'll make that bite, pass it over, and back through.
Pull it tight.
And that is the trucker's hitch.
The great thing about the trucker's hitch
is that there are permanent knots in the cord,
so it's really easy to undo it.
I can just pull one end of the cord
and the whole things comes undone.
So the last knot is the Prusik hitch.
The Prusik hitch is a friction hitch
which means that it slides when there's no weight on it
and then it not slide when you weight it.
So to tie the Prusik hitch, you'll take your loop of cord,
and I'm gonna take the knot in one hand,
just slightly offset, and then pass the other end
of the rope, or other end of the cord underneath my rope
in this instance.
We'll take this knot, we'll pass it through this loop
and we're gonna do that, probably like two
or three more times.
From here, I'll take this joiner knot
and pass it through this loop that we passed
underneath our rope and then we're gonna go ahead
and dress this hitch, basically tighten it down
and make sure that it looks clean.
There we go, that is the Prusik hitch.
The Prusik hitch it cool because it will slide
on the rope when there's no weight on it,
but then if you put weight on it,
it's not gonna move in either direction.
If you're using cords that are of really different diameters
you're gonna get more bite into the rope
which can be a good thing or a bad thing
and it's a good idea when you tie this knot
to offset your joiner knot just a little bit
so that you don't have your carabiner or your,
your point of weight sitting directly on that knot.
And that is the Prusik hitch.
So those are my top five favorite knots,
I hope you also find them useful.
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We'll see you out there.
(upbeat music)