Today is National Fly a Kite day and with that I decided to go searching for how to make your own kite.  There are a ton of sites with kite making ideas on them and I think that next month, the windy month, I would like to sit down with the grandkids and make a kite with them.  The sites I found show easy to do kite making and some of them even use straws for the cross sticks.  It sounds fun.

Anyway, I was on a site that showed you how to make a double kite and one with a looped tail…pretty cool looking kite and in the instructions it said to use a “Prusik knot”…..A WHAT?

I had never heard of that kind of knot.  I guess I fall into the category that Hunter says, “If you can’t tie a knot, tie a lot”.  And so I went in search of what a Prusik knot was all about.

A very simple knot as I found out and one that I have used in the past, I just didn’t know it had a name.  Actually I thought I was very cleaver when I used it to tie on a second line to my main fishing line once.

Here is the knot in motion:

http://www.animatedknots.com/prusik/index.php

So, one never knows when they are going to learn something new…I did today, but don’t ask me tomorrow what the knots name is.  I’ll be able to show you how to tie it, but not it’s name.

Well, this new knowledge led me to investigate the source of this named knot.  And I found out that it is commonly (or was) used in mountain climbing to aid the climber to slip a foot into something to help them “stand” on the side of the mountain.  It was first featured in a magazine written for and by mountain climbers back in the 1930’s and a man named Dr. Karl Prusik was the first to use it.

They had the main climbing rope which was extending up the cliff above them and most often up and over the summit of whatever they are climbing.  These prusik knot rope loops would be placed up the main rope for the climber to hang onto with a hand and put a foot in the loop of a lower one.  Sort of a rope ladder.  It is also used in rescues to clamp another rope to and be able to slowly lower an injured person off the cliff etc.  Without this sort of knot the injured person could easily slide down the main rope like a bag of rocks.

The knots can be loosened and slid up or down the main climbing rope and will cinch down and hold when a load is placed on them.  According to Wikipedia, the elite US Army Ranger troops still use this knot to ascend a 90 foot rope and then can install prusik knot ropes and climb up that 90 feet in under a minute.

There you have it.

Bears Butt

Feb. 8, 2013