The Knot you should NOT use when descending on your safety line
In climbing with ropes or using ropes as a means of descent in saddle hunting, redundancy means using a secondary safety mechanism should your primary descending/ rappelling device fail.
After perusing many U tube vidoes I have come across two different Utubers who are explaining how to use a Blakes hitch friction knot as the only device when descending. These Utubers are trying to earn money through advertisements, they are trying to get the required likes and followers by professing an easy way to descend, it is very easy for these folks to gamble with your life. Friction knots can and will slip due to their nature, if the slipping occurs unintentionally the user can drop very quickly until the knot catches possibly resulting in injury. It has happened to me.
The lack of redundancy combined with the inherent slipping nature of the Blakes hitch makes their methods unnecessarily risky.
The Blakes hitch is a good (Prusik knot is better) secondary means of descent control should your first device fail but should not be used by itself. A Munter hitch backed up by a Prussik friction knot is a good combination. If you are using a ladder or tree steps, that becomes your primary device and the safety rope becomes your redundancy, in this situation a single friction knot is applicable.
Continuing my discussion on knots extends to the use of the Hunter Safety Systems branded products, these pre-manufactured safety lines use the overhand knot, or in some older lines terminated with large staples. These are not the standard recognized terminations to use without a back up knot. Instead the tried and true figure eight knot should be used. If you have a Hunter Safety Systems line, a simple solution is to undo the factory knot and re-tie using a figure eight, a back up knot can be added but is not standard practice using a figure eight.
