Stopper Knot is the most crucial part of rappelling and 90% of the population does not know about rappelling properly. So we have decided that this is high time that we guide you about stopper knots for rappelling. This article has proper information about the Stopper Knots for Rappelling.

So let’s start from the beginning, you use stopper knots when you are rappelling to prevent yourself from falling off when you reach the bottom of the rope. While rappelling, it sometimes happens that you lose concentration and forget where you are on the rope and if you forget to tie your stopper, you risk having the ends of the rope pass through your device, which will detach you from the rope and can cause a really deathly injury.

Stopper knots are super easy to tie because it takes less than five seconds to tie them and they protect the end of your rope from passing fully through the belay device and sending you into a deadly fall. Stopper knots do so because of the opening in your rappel device or gri gri because instead of passing through the rappel device that you are using, it jams in place and prevents the rope from moving any further, which in turn stops you in your descent and keeps you attached to the rope.

Stopper Knots: Why You Need Them

Tying a stopper knot isn’t even part of your safety routine as it is more similar to tying a figure 8 knot or connecting your belay device to your harness. Tying the stopper knot is an essential step in the process of preparing yourself to repair. Whoever tells you that a stopper knot is not important he/she is completely wrong.

Now let’s move to another important question and that is why are stopper knots so important for rappelling?

Your intuition would tell you that rappelling is very easy and the problem can be easily prevented because all you have to do is simply glance down, see how much rope you have beneath you, and ensure you don’t let it pass through your device. But you know what that is a great mistake because all of us are humans. We tend to get tired, distracted, and lazy. and even forget where we are, misjudge distances, or we get too occupied by taking in the view or talking to our fellow climber to even pay attention.

Another issue is while rappelling, people mostly tends to hold their ropes down and out of sight, because it makes it easier to break but the problem is that you will be unable to see the end of the rope until and unless you feel it pass through your hand and as soon as that happens you lose all friction in the system, the rope goes slack, gravity takes hold, and you are in a deadly fall and if you were smart enough to tie a backup knot, there’s a chance it will be a great safe but if not, you will be having a second or two to realize your mistake before the rope gets pulled full through your belay device and you become away from the rappel.

We have heard of an incident where Tommy Caldwell once had to stop his fellow climber, who had forgotten to tie a stopper knot, from rappelling off their rope while 2,000 feet up in El Cap. So you can imagine climbers like Tommy Caldwell did such a thing then the stopper knots for rappelling are really important.

Do you know something that recently in the year 2019 California dirtbag-turned-icon Brad Gobright died because his climbing partner forgot to tie a stopper knot while the two of them were simul-rappelling and the man who pushed the limits of trad climbing and did the most daring ascent of The Nose, died just because they had forgotten to tie the stopper knot, so you can imagine how much dangerous it can be?

Stopper knots are important because, you are human and there is going to be a time when you will get distracted while rappelling, or you’re too busy looking for the anchors to pay attention at that point of time you will be super glad that you tied a stopper knot.

How to Tie a Stopper Knot

As we have done talking about the importance of the stopper knot, so now it is the time where we should discuss how to tie a stopper knot.

The most important thing about a stopper knot is that the normal type of knot you tie is not that important because the most common one is a standard double-barrel overhand knot, which is quite similar to the type of knot that people will tie over their figure 8 knot to keep the tail out of the way and to tie this kind of knots we have to follow the following steps:

1. Take about 2 feet from the end of your rope
2. Fold the rope in half
3. Loop the loose end of the rope around the other half of the rope twice
4. Pass the remaining rope through the loops in a downwards direction
5. Pull to tighten the knot

The more times you loop the other half of the rope, the rope will in turn become more solid and the chance to get ‘pushed’ down once you apply weight to it, will also reduce. We have seen that some people do three to four loops, while the rest simply use an overhand knot if they are in a hurry.

The next question that needs to be addressed is where you should tie your stopper knots and let us make it clear that there is no hard and fast rule for this, but we would recommend you all to leave at least a foot of slack below your stopper knot because this will give you a little bit of a time and will also prevent the knot from coming undone if it slides to the end of the rope while rappelling.

I Have an Auto-Locking Device, so do I Need to Tie a Stopper Knot?

Absolutely!

Not many rappel devices have auto-locking features, but they’ve started to get introduced as equipment companies look for more and more innovation and this is really cool because your gri-gri will stop the rope automatically if you let go of the handle. But the thing is are you sure about it?

Yes, it will do its job, but there are a few issues that involve the trust on your device with respect to a stopper knot. All types of auto-locking device is going to have a lever that you need to activate to allow the rope to pass through it and while rappelling, you are already going to have this lever switched on so that you can get down the rope.

If you forget to tie a stopper knot and you’re holding your device in ‘open’ mode or the point where the camming feature is disengaged, in that cases it is no better than your standard ATC in terms of catching the rope and there is a slight chance that you are able to see what is happening and let go, but this goes against normal human instinct because if you are holding something and you suddenly think that your life might be in danger, then you are obviously going to hold on tighter which in turn will open up your device further and prevent it from being able to catch the rope.

Frequently Asked Questions ( FAQs)