Essential Knots: Secure Your Gear When Camping, Hiking, Fishing, and Playing Outdoors

by Karen Berger

Overview

Learn to tie 21 knots for the outdoors and everyday life!

You never know when you’ll need just the right knot. Maybe you want to haul something atop your car. Perhaps you have to stake a tree or tether your dog. From tying a kite string to mooring a boat, Essential Knots has you covered. This pocket-sized booklet contains 21 versatile knots for getting things done at the campsite, on the dock, and at home. Author Karen Berger provides easy-to-follow instructions—supplemented by full-color, step-by-step illustrations—to help you quickly and correctly tie the knots you need. With this guide in hand, you’ll always know which knots to use and when, even if you’re a beginner. It’s conveniently sized to keep in your glove box, backpack, back pocket, or desk drawer, so it’s always there when you need it. Get Essential Knots and find a handy spot for it. You’ll be surprised how often you use it.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781591938996
Publisher:	Adventure Publications, Incorporated
Publication date:	05/21/2019
Series:	Adventure Skills Guides
Pages:	28
Product dimensions:	4.25(w) x 7.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Karen Berger has used a variety of knots while hiking, camping, kayaking, and riding horses on six continents. She is the author of 17 other books, including America’s Great Hiking Trails, a Lowell Thomas award winner and a New York Times travel best-seller. She lives in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts.

Read an Excerpt

Introduction

Has this ever happened to you? You need to haul something on top of your car or secure a package that is trying to burst open. Maybe you learned the right knot back in your Scouting days, but now you’re not sure whether it was the left end that went over the right or vice versa. You try to remember—a loop goes here, an end tucks in there—but soon the tangle you’ve created looks like a pile of spaghetti. A simple tug loosens the whole mess.

This book offers 21 versatile knots to attach this thing to that thing and keep it there. There are hundreds of knots and knot variations, but you don’t need every knot ever used by fifteenth-century maritimers and eighteenth-century frontiersmen. You need to hitch a horse to a post, tighten a tent guyline, haul a canoe, set up a hammock, or tie your boat to a dock.

This book will help.

A few notes before we start:

Safety The right knot can hold a guyline tight and a package closed, or it can save your life when you fall while rock climbing. This book is appropriate for practical uses of the nonfatal kind: It is not a substitute for expert instruction. If you are going to be dangling from a cliff, you must have professional instruction until you are knowledgeable enough to know how to choose the right rope and knot for a situation, how to tie the knot correctly, how to back it up properly, and how to check it for safety and soundness. The same goes for affixing heavy loads to moving vehicles, where a broken rope or failed knot could lead to damage or injury. Whenever you’re tying knots, you’re responsible for verifying that the knots you tie are correct and safe for the circumstances at hand.

Rope Rope comes in different sizes, lengths, widths, weights, materials, and strengths. It is important to have the right rope for the job. For example, you may weigh only 180 pounds, but your climbing rope needs to be able to bear more than 2 tons of weight because when you fall, gravity and acceleration increase the load the rope must bear. Thinner, lighter cords are used for lashings and tying off tent stakes. Ropes need to be clean and in good condition: Improper storage and dirt can weaken a rope. To prolong the life of your rope, protect it from dirt, sunlight, chemicals, and abrasion. To store a rope, coil it following its natural lay, and keep it in a bag.

Practice If you can tie it, you can practice with it. Parachute cord is ideal for learning your way around a knot. Cord in different colors will help you keep the different bits of rope straight as you’re learning. For hitches, you’ll also need something to tie the rope to, such as a fence post, a rail, a dowel, or the arm of your chair. You want to get these knots in your fingers so that they make physical sense to you and you can tie them in the dark.

Essential vocabulary:

The leading end of the rope (sometimes called the working end) is the end that you will move around to create the knot.

The standing end of the rope is the end that usually lies still during the knotting process.

A bight is a bend in the rope.

A loop is a bend that crosses over itself to make a full circle.

1. Half Hitch

The half hitch is not much of a knot on its own, but it is the foundation for other knots, including the clove hitch and the taut-line hitch, and can be used to secure other knots so they don’t come undone.

Step 1: Place the rope over a rail, with the standing end in back and the leading end in front.

Step 2: Cross the leading end under the standing end.

Step 3: Bring the leading end over the standing end and through the loop that is formed. Tighten.

Table of Contents

List of Knots

1. Half Hitch
2. Quick-Release Knot
3. Overhand Knot
4. Clove Hitch
5. Bowline Knot
6. Square Knot
7. Sheet Bend
8. Carrick Bend
9. Improved Clinch Knot
10. Blood Knot
11. Fisherman’s Knot
12. Grapevine Knot
13. Figure-Eight Stopper Knot
14. Figure-Eight Follow Through
15. Water Knot
16. Timber Hitch
17. Prusik Knot
18. Trucker’s Hitch
19. Taut-Line Hitch
20. Barrel Hitch
21. Chain Sinnet